You Can't Sink A Rainbow

I'm delighted to announce that I have put together a 'Rainbow Collection' which will soon be auctioned to raise funds for the new Rainbow Warrior! Let me explain why the Warrior is so important to me...

There are a lot of charities and NGOs out there in the world, all doing wonderful and important things, but there is one in particular that has a special place in my heart and that is the mighty Greenpeace. Greenpeace defends the natural world and promotes peace by investigating, exposing and confronting environmental abuse, and championing environmentally responsible solutions. A most noble and incredibly difficult mission!
Unlike the majority of organisations, Greenpeace relies entirely on donations from individuals like you and me to keep afloat, receiving no financial assistance from corporations or governments. This, for me at least, is part of the beauty of Greenpeace - it is accountable to no-one and thoroughly independent.

After 21 years as a Greenpeace ship the current Rainbow Warrior is heading for retirement and Greenpeace needs your help to replace her.
The new Rainbow Warrior will be one of a kind. As the world's first purpose-built environmental campaigning vessel ever created, she will enable us to take action more often, more effectively and in more places around the world than ever before. That persistence and dedication is what enables Greenpeace to win important victories. And we need those victories more now than ever before.
As part of her role the new Warrior will work at the front line to:

• Promote clean, green energy - blocking coal shipments and launching activists to draw attention to the desperate need for a global revolution in renewable energy.
• Defend our forests - she will track illegal shipments of timber, collecting the evidence needed to prosecute rogue companies and bring about tougher government regulations.
• Protect our oceans - her helicopter carrying facilities will enable us to spot illegal fishing operations from miles and bring criminals to justice and work towards establishing marine reserves.

The new Rainbow Warrior will be:

• purpose built to the highest environmental standards, primarily using wind power instead of fossil fuels
• custom-designed to campaign, educate and take action both at sea and in harbour
• able to transmit compelling images of environmental injustice to the world’s media in minutes

Now, Greenpeace need your help to cover the costs of building the new ship. Please donate today.
For full details check out this amazing website: http://anewwarrior.greenpeace.org/

The collection is not quite ready to be unveiled just yet but in the meantime why not stop by the Eshop and spend a Euro or two on some boat parts, or visit the donation page? It's for a very good cause, after all :) We are the Rainbow Warriors.

I'll leave you with this sneaky peek, something colourful this way comes...

Spring Green Fauxsaic Cane

As you'll have seen if you've taken a look at My Creations over on my other blog, I'm a huge fan of the faux mosaic (or Fauxsaic as I like to call it - see what I did there? :D) 'cane'. A cane is simply put a log of polymer clay with a design running right through it, much like a stick of rock, that can be sliced off and used in a wide variety of ways. A heck of a lot of time goes into creating these designs and so I thought it might be nice to document the process.

I start by blending my colours. I've been waiting for a chance to try this cane in many shades of green. At the time of writing this ( January ) the weather outside is grey and miserable, these colours remind me of spring which I have to keep reminding myself is just around the corner :D I love spring, it's so full of life - unlike midwinter which I find rather dark and depressing! :(

I marble together a few of these colours as I thought it might look interesting, and mixed some pearl ex powder (in duo green/yellow) into the lighter, almost turquoise green.

Each of these colours (I find six varying shades give a really nice effect) is rolled into six equally sized logs, which is the covered with a very thin sheet of white clay ( I use a pasta machine for this but you can do it by hand using an acrylic roller or even a glass. Don't use a wooden rolling pin - the clay WILL stick to it and that is a real pain!)

The next step is to arrange the logs in a pleasing way. Once I'm happy with this I then begin the process of turning this cluster of logs into one big one! It's most important at this stage to ensure there is no air trapped inside. I press the logs together in the middle, working my way around the sides and moving outwards until I'm sure all the air is well and truly out.

This 'shape' is now worked into a large log of all six colours. The ends are now quite distorted so how the cane will actually look is really kind of unknown at this point! This is one of the things I love most about this cane, you have a rough idea of how you want it to look but the final result is always a lovely surprise :)

Now I am faced with a big, squat log of clay and the fun really begins :D The next step is to cut right through the log. It's best to try to intersect as many colours as you can, the more blocks of colour you cut through the more 'tiles' your mosaic will have. Next I cover one of the exposed 'faces' of clay with more of my 'grout'. The next step is crucial, flip one of the cut pieces over so the colours are no longer aligned :D

I repeat the action of slicing and grouting several more times and carefully reposition my pieces in an arrangement I find pleasing.

Then it's time to reduce my cane, again starting in the centre and creating a kind of hourglass shape before thinning out from the centre.It's important not to roll a cane to reduce it as this distorts the image inside.

Squee! I'm really happy with this :D The next step is to use this design to cover one of my glass votive holders for a gorgeous effect.

This cane took around five hours to produce and will probably cover up to five tea light holders which will likely take the same amount of time again! This is why I LOVE handmade items. No mass produced item has had this level of love, care and attention paid to it's creation. Handmade or crafted items have soul, which is simply priceless if you ask me :)

If you would like to see what I made with my Spring Greens cane, take a peek at my Etsy shop

Hello World!

Welcome to my shiny new blog! I'm a Craft Addict. I know it, my family knows it, my friends know it and know you know it too. :D

A friend of mine recently posted a status update on Facebook, offering to make handmade items for the first five people who commented, whom must then update their status to offer the same. Of course, loving all things handmade I jumped straight on it and was delighted to see the handmade love spreading all over my friends Facebook pages! This confirmed something wonderful to me; most people really do love handmade items as much as I do *joy*

A few days later another friend, realising how many of us there were that adore to 'do it ourselves' started a Facebook group for us 'Homemade Hunnis', giving us a fantastic opportunity to share some pictures of some past projects.  I posted a small collection of photos of some of my crafted items and soon realised I was flooding the wall (not the best way to stay friends with your friends!) with my pictures.

'This will not do!' I thought to myself  'I have too much of this stuff - it needs it's own group, but not just for the cool kids on my facebook. If only there was some kind of way to somehow 'log' my projects on the 'web'...some kind of  'blog'. Oh wait, they do exist - yay!'

So here it is.