Thought for the day

The only thing that's left to do is ...

Get another tattoo!!

I had my heart/tree tattoo done for my 50th birthday 2 years ago.  It didn't take very well and I never got around to getting it redone. 

I've been asked if I just liked the design or whether it had a particular meaning.  Well, on a purely practical level I love trees, they look great, they take a long time to develop and mature, they can provide shelter and weather all sorts of storms. They are essential to our whole eco system.  The lungs of the world.  On a more airy fairy level, the leaves of the tree represent the people with whom I commune: my family and my friends. So it's also about community. Past, present and future.

The hearts are one of those love things.  It's what keeps us all together.  I'm not always very good at it, but I try to be and aspire to be better. 
 

The past 2 years I've  been thinking  that I would like some sort of wording underneath it, but wasn't sure what to get. The music of Frank Turner has had an enormous impact over the past couple of years so I chose the line from one of his songs.

Life has a way of devastating us at times.  Sometimes it's hard to bounce back from the things that are thrown at you.  Failed friendship, the loss of dearly loved ones, sickness whether physical or mental.  We've all been there, somehow, somewhere.

I found that it is possible to come through the sadness, and the darkness and the bitterness to find that the sun is still shining up there.  And the realisation that, really, at the end of the day, we have only one shot at things. 

If we can, we might as well make the most of them. 

What else is there to do?

Laura at Mr Personality, Sheffield - doing the wording

Touching up the tree - this was the point where it really started to hurt!

Very pleased with the results

Sunday Special

This years books

Read, almost read, half read and not yet read

The problem ...

with  trying to wring every last bit of goodness out of life, is it leaves you exhausted.

Hearts are flowers

Last one for the night. Just been messing about with some diddy hearts and came up with this.  Still waiting to be stitched (some stems and around the outline) and I think I will make it into a card.

Guess I better go tidy up the devastation I've caused now!

Now for the fiddly bit

Next I had to remove the backing paper from the trunk and each leaf - time consuming and fiddly but part of the process.  I then ironed everything into place using a dry tea towel between the design and iron to stop the pieces from sticking to the bottom of the iron.   I tentatively pulled the tea towel back sure that I had misplaced some leaves, but thankfully everything was where it was supposed to be.

So, now I have my design on my backing material. 

Time to get the sewing machine out!

Change of colour

I wasn't happy with the darker trunk so decided on a pink one instead.

I cut out a large square of white cotton material for my background piece then spent a while arranging the leaves until I was happy that it looked fairly balanced.  I've found that taking a photo of something in progress reveals it's flaws more than just relying on my eye so there was a bit of tweaking until I was happy with the layout. Needless to say I ended up taking loads of snaps as well. 

2 hours later ...

Thought I would try another tree similar to the one I made last year but different colours.  Step one was to draw and cut out some trunk and leaf templates then trace them onto the back of some Fus-a-Web.    I'd already attempted to do each leaf seperately but found the webbing was flaking off.  Second attempt was to trace 10 leaves and cut out the whole block, iron it onto the material then cut the leaves out once they were already fused to the webbing.  This worked much better!!

I then laid the bits out on my ironing board to get an idea of how it would look.

Pinks.

Time for a new project.