The first thing I did when I arrived in the UK

Of all the things I suddenly realised once I had relocated to London back in 2006, the fact that I missed sewing was the weirdest. It's as if I became aware, through having the luxury of a workspace and hoards of hobby shops taken away, how very much I wanted those things. I hadn't even considered that it would take a long time to set up the connections, the space, the tools and the material store I had built up over many years back home, and one of the first things I noticed about London was the distinct absence of art and hobby warehouses I was accustomed to having around the corner.

Anyway - this is what the first few months of creative-withdrawal symptoms caused me to create: A fold-up Backgammon Board. I think the desire for sewing was stirred up by a donated sewing machine from my fiance's mom - thanks Aunty Liz ;-) - and I liked the idea of incorporating it into the final product.

I used two fairly large pine picture frames for the base and frame of the board, removing the glass / perspex completely:

Sanding down the corners with sandpaper, and varnishing the wood to get rid of splinters:

Fixing the two frames together with hinges so that the 'board' opens up for playing and closes for storage:

I then went down to the local haberdashery and bought a meter of dark blue denim fabric and a meter of white denim / canvas fabric. The light blue backside of the blue denim served as a third colour for the board.

Sewing! I cut the big panels of dark blue denim to cover the hardboard piece that comes inside the frames, and then cut 12 light blue triangles and 12 white ones for the backgammon play area, finishing their edges off with white zig-zag stitching:

Fixed these to the main denim panels, and stitched the edges down with a broad, dense stitch to cover any fraying bits. Instead of trying to hide the stitching, which is difficult with denim, I made a feature out of it.

I cut two extra bits of left over white cloth to match the main panels, then stitched them to the back of the main panels to create a sort of sleeve out of the two panels, to pull over the picture frame hardboards. Then i fixed the hardboards back in place. The pic on the left is the back of the frames, the pic on the right is the front, with the panels in place inside the frames.

The last bit to do was the counters or checkers. Backgammon requires 15 checkers of each colour, and I needed something with unusual texture to complement the denim texture of the board:

The checkers needed to be a little thicker than the 2p and 10p pieces I had in mind, so I doubled them up, sticking them back to back (with the queen's face showing on both sides) with normal adhesive (£3,60 in total :)

Munny Munny Munny

Halloween Munny for a custom Munny competition held at They Walk Among Us in Richmond...

I made a whole apple with Fimo clay, but broke out the bite chunk before baking it to get an authentic break texture. After baking I painted it with normal acrylic, then glazed it with about 6 layers of clear acrylic nail varnish.

The bandages are made from narrow strips of frayed canvas soaked in white PVA. This was a mistake, as the paint takes forever to dry - but I'm not sure what I would use instead. Possibly acrylic could work. The idea is to wrap the wet strips around the Munny and let the drying paint act as a glue.

Dried out red capsicum pips (baked in the oven) mixed with cotton wool and orange acrylic paint.