Here I will show you how you can quite easily pull together your own Christmas light Garland like the one on the left.

I hope you enjoy making your garlands.

Wealie x

What do you need?

• covered bells in silver and/or white.
• 15-20 medium coloured metal bells.
• 6mm Jute string – approx. 6 metres.

• 6mm christmas style butcher’s string – approx. 6 metres.
• One set of LED Christmas lights approx. 4 metres, with 80 bulbs and preferably battery operated.
• Approx. 15 Christmas wooden shapes – I used three different types, but you could use more or less.

Putting it together

Cut three lengths of the Jute string approximately 2 metres long. Knot the three lengths together at one end leaving about 5 cm of string above the knot and plait together. You could also substitute one of the lengths for butcher’s string for a different effect.

Leave about 5 cm of string free at the end of the plait and knot the lengths together - you should have around 1 – 1.5 metre plait length.

Attach the light furthest away from the battery pack to the beginning of the plait using the 5 cm of free string. Weave the plait over and around the lights. At the end of the plait tie the closest light to the end and then turn the lights, tie down the first light after the turn half way between the next two lights. Weave the rest of the lights in and out of the plait and lights so that they are evenly spaced and you have lights on both sides of the plait. Tie the final light to the plait using the free string at the end.

Cut a length of about 1.5 metres of the butcher’s string and tie it around the first light on the plait leaving about 10 cm of string free. Weave the string around the lights tying it around every second light until you reach the end of the plait and tie it around the final light and again leave about 10 cm of string free at the end. Cut off any excess string and knot the 10 cm ends so that they form loops for hanging the garland

Using the jute string attach one of the small coloured bells aroud every second light. In the lights without bells proceed to knot your shapes and the larger bells in sequential order.

You’ve now got your very own Christmas lights garland!

For extra colour why not incorporate some ribbons or faux berries and holly.

Where to buy the materials

If you would like to make the same garland as me you can buy all the materials I used here:

• You can buy a variety of pre-cut wood shapes on Amazon
• Buy three rolls of  the jute twine string on Amazon
• Buy the red and white butcher’s twine on Amazon
• You can buy two sets of the battery operated christmas lights on Amazon
• I bought the coloured small bells in my local Rymans stationers
• The large white and silver covered bells I bought in Waitrose, red and white versions are available to buy online

All materials are included in the price and of course you get to keep your finished artwork and the opportunity to buy additional materials to create more art. These prices are based on me coming to your home or a pre-paid location and there may be an additional charge for fuel and materials, which will be discussed at the time of booking. See the sections below for more details about the types of arts and crafts activities I can do with you.

Abstract Mixed Media

Whether you want to make a canvas, a box or maybe a mask; I will teach you my all in one decoupage technique.

We’ll be using tissue paper, textured materials, fabrics, ribbons, re-purposed jewellery, oodles of glitter and sequins and anything else you can think to find in your craft draw!

Organic Ink Art

Using glossy card and high quality watercolour spray inks and shimmering mica powders, I will demonstrate how to manipulate the inks and mica powders to create gorgeous one off organic designs

You’ll make excellent abstract pictures and take home some ready made greeting cards to share with friends and loved ones.

Tangle Patterned Piggy Bank

Using ceramic paint pens I will demonstrate how to draw intricate designs onto the pottery piece of your choice from: plates, mugs, bowls, cup and saucer, tea pots, plant pots, piggy banks, etc.

We can also personalise your design with a name or special words or saying of your choosing.

Tangle Pattern

Using high quality Indian rag paper or quality card stock with water colours, water colour brushes and micron fine liners and specialist gel and alcohol ink art pens.

You can explore your inner patterns to create intricate designs remincient of paisley and zentangle art. These designs make lovely pictures and greeting cards and are a very therapeutic art form.

Using quality card, aluminium plumbers tape and some standard embossing tools I will demonstrate how you can make great embossed metal designs on a budget and how to colour them with alcohol inks to bring them to vibrant life.

These designs are affordable and make great pictures, greeting cards and bookmarks with very little materials.

Geli Plate Mono Print

Using a gelatin plate I will show you how to make great abstract acrylic mono prints using a variety of tools and materials.

These make excellent tools for those interested in art journaling and wonderful backgrounds for zentangle pattern makers.

If you are interested in arranging an adult workshop or children’s party please email me at info@wealie.co.uk with a contact number so I can call to discuss your requirements.

The Caterinas

All you have to do is download the entry form, print it off and colour in the design. Once it’s coloured in fill in the form and email a picture of it to info@wealie.co.uk by 31 June 2014. All entries will be displayed on the Wealie Arts section of the website and the winner will be announced by 12 July 2014.

There is a really interesting TED Talk video about the difference between our experiencing selves and our remembering selves that I highly recommend you watch and is embedded below.

The experiencing self is where we feel and experience things around us in the moment and the remembering self looks back and reflects on our experiences as memory. At 3.45 mins in I started to see how perhaps the science here could be useful to comms and engagement professionals in our interactions with audiences.

Daniel Kahneman the TED Talk lecturer recounts a study from the 1990s and what is really fascinating when you compare the real time experience with the memory. In the study one person experienced more pain during a medical procedure than another (they were asked to log their pain in real time) in that he/she had more pain spikes and over a longer period of time than the other.

When later asked to recount how painful their experiences were the person that suffered more in the moment did not remember the pain as much as the person that suffered less spikes over a shorter period of time. What contributed to these results was the fact that the person who suffered less pain in the moment ended on a high pain moment, whereas the first person who suffered more ended on a relatively low pain moment.

So what does this tell us, perhaps that it’s not the sum total of a person’s experience of a painful or stressful situation, but how it feels at the end. What I’m wondering is how can we use this knowledge to improve employee engagement and successful delivery of culture change by improving the last ‘moment’ of our audience’s communication and engagement activities.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Wealie x

Gemma Worrall's now infamous tweet

Gemma shared a woeful lack of political, geographic and spelling knowledge by misspelling Barack Obama’s name as ‘barraco barner’ and mistakenly thinking he’s was the British president (let’s not even go there) in reference to him getting involved in the Russia/Ukraine affair.

Though Gemma’s story is extreme it does highlight how people don’t realise the potential size and breadth of their audience, the effect of their words and the potential fall out on themselves should the reception be negative. I feel for poor Gemma and her comments about some of the responses she has received as a result are a sad testament of our times.

Tips for Maintaing a Healthy Social Media Profile

Here’s a few things to keep in mind before you commit your thoughts to your favourite social media.

• Remember, social media is not the same as having a chat with a friend in the pub, round the dinner table or over a cuppa of your favourite beverage.
• By putting something in writing you are creating a record that can be referred to and shared and re-shared beyond your scope of control and influence, rather than a throw away comment to a limited audience that may be forgiven and forgotten.
• If your writing is public, such as tweets on Twitter, your blog/website entries and public posts of Facebook/Google+ then it is published in a legal sense. This means you are then opening yourself to defamation and libel laws should your words be construed as unlawful.
• Remember that when you write something people can’t perceive your facial expressions and body language, they have no cues from your tone of voice, so it is that much easier to misconstrue the meaning of your words.
• Make sure you read over your words before you click send/publish, think about the way people will potentially take it. Replace any ambiguity with clear meaning where possible.
• If you think what you are intending to write is controversial then weigh up whether your desire to express your opinion outweighs your ability to deal with any fall out. If not then don’t write it, save it for a private chat with a trusted individual/group.
• We all have bad days at work and we’ve probably all had a bad boss, work situation that we need to vent about, but there’s a time and a place for it and putting it in writing is rarely the answer. Never write anything openly hostile or negative about your employer or a company you wish to work for in the future on social media. Chances are if it’s a public post there are people employed to monitor all comments about the company and it could get back to your boss/recruiter. If it’s private, well exactly who is on your friend list, in your circles, perhaps you have a work colleague there that you didn’t remember or perhaps you added your boss?
• Be honest about yourself – if you have conflicting messaging, views, opinions and data about yourself on different social media (e.g. between LinkedIn and Facebook) chances are that recruiters and employers may pick up on it and start to question your honesty and integrity.
• You are entitled to a private life, but online you have to take steps to ensure that you manage and protect it. Social media like Facebook and Google+ will automatically default you to the most public and open settings and each time they bring in new tools and features you’ll automatically be opted in.  If you want to keep a private side to your online life then make sure you regularly check your privacy settings and use tools such as the ‘view as feature’ in Facebook to see how different types of people view your profile.
• Having no public Facebook presence can raise concerns with recruiters. It shouldn’t have an effect, but it sometimes does. In some places (notably the US) recruiters are illegally asking candidates for employment to give over their personal Facebook information for recruiters to ‘peek’ at your world.  My advice is to never give this kind of access and be sure to state that what they are requesting is against the law. However, it is possible to avoid getting into this situation in the first place by putting the occasional public post up that is non-confrontational and says something about what you’re interested in and do with your time. You can see my public Facebook profile as an example of this.
• Regularly google yourself and any aliases you use. You’d be surprised by how much information can come up and how a post you might have put on the internet back when it wasn’t all that popular (if you’re as old and geeky as me) can come back to bite you in the bottom! I make a point of googling myself about once every other month and always google myself before I start looking for work.
• When you’re looking for work it’s a good idea to become a bit more publicly active on your social networks, most notably LinkedIn to increase your chances of getting noticed by recruiters in your field of expertise. I find writing about my expertise and field of work helps enormously. I contribute to groups and try to blog on my website more often.
• Don’t be afraid to sell yourself, but not too much – when I’m looking for a new contract I update all my social networks to show that I’m looking for work. However, be mindful that on your more ‘social’ social networks like Facebook your friends might not want you to keep going on about needing a job. With LinkedIn, it’s the opposite, take time to refresh your status and profile, post frequently – but only on relevant topics, be active in groups and state that you’re job seeking where appropriate. Take the time to recommend colleagues on LinkedIn that you would like a recommendation from and then request a recommendation in return. It’s a lot harder to turn down someone’s request when they’ve already done something for you.

So, in conclusion use your social media to raise your public profile in a positive way that helps attract recruiters. When using social media for personal use take a moment to think before you publish your undiluted thoughts and feelings in a public forum. Most people don’t say everything they think and feel in crowded public places, perhaps it’s time to adopt this thinking for online as well as offline interactions?

Happy posting!

Wealie x

Thank you to everyone that entered the competition I had a difficult, but fun time judging, so much so that I couldn’t decide on just one winner, but more on that in a minute.  As the standard of the entries was so high I will be emailing a pdf copy of the halloween colouring book to everyone who entered.

There are three winners in three different age brackets, Millie Claridge in the 5 to 6 bracket, Sean O’Sullivan in the 7 to 8 bracket and Ashley Knight in the 9 to 10 bracket.  The winners prize is to request for me to draw their very own zentangle doodle art design on whatever subject they would like.  Once I’ve completed the drawing requests I will post the pictures on the website and then post the originals out to the winners

The Winners

I really loved how Millie incorporated some mixed media elements into her design and at 5 years old I think she has done an excellent job of colouring it in so brightly.  Any witch would be tickled pink to wear a hat like this.

Millie Clardige - Winner 5-6 age group

What I liked best about Sean’s entry was his great use of colour and how he really gave the hat a face with his bold and bright use of colour.  I also liked how Sean used vibrant wax crayons.

Sean O'Sullivan - Winner 7-8 age

Ashley really went to town on her design using sequins and glitter mixed media elements, but also colouring in the background, which I thought was really wonderful and she even sent me the original picture in the post when she must have really loved it.

Ashley Knight - Winner 9-10 age group

The Runner Ups

Tia’s entry was lovely and bright and again made some great use of mixed media.  I really liked how Ruby Elena went with a colour scheme and made good use of white space. Ned used cooking oil to give the paper a translucent effect when put up to a window or the light and I really liked his witchy green colour.

Tia Claridge

Ruby Elena Williams

Ned Roberts

Joelle used pencils and created a beautiful colour scheme.  Isobel had a great use of colour blocking that really made elements of the hat stand out.  Charlotte went for a bright and vibrant colour scheme and I liked how she incorporated her own patterning into the mix.

Joelle Chow

Isobel Stevens

Charlotte

Anya Daburn

Amy Moore

Olivia Daburn

Eleanor

Lauren Welsh

Thanks again to everyone for entering the competition

Wealie x

LinkedIn is an excellent tool and social network and as I’ve previously mentioned in other blog posts I highly recommend that everyone should maintain a LinkedIn profile if job seeking and it is also a highly useful resource for learning and sharing whilst employed as well.

Disturbing Practice by Pay Day Loan Employees on LinkedIn

Of late I’ve come across a disturbing development on LinkedIn; first I’d like to recognise that this isn’t a practise perpetrated by LinkedIn, but by enterprising pay day loan company employees! Basically these loan companies are creating LinkedIn profiles which have a normal person’s name and a photo, but the majority of the profile is advertising for the loan company and a link through to their website.  These profiles then send out spam connection requests to actual LinkedIn users like myself and are also liking your LinkedIn activity posts to garner good will and perhaps attract people to view/connect with their profiles.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of accepting one of the connection requests on the iPhone app as the name sounded familiar to me.  The iPhone app doesn’t show as much information as the full LinkedIn site and in the past I’ve often accepted a connection without really checking his or her profile.  A few days later I realised my mistake when I received more spam connection requests from profiles with similarly named loan companies as their current employer and I started receiving likes on my activity updates from these and other pay day loan style profiles. I promptly went onto the full LinkedIn website and found out how to remove a connection and flag a profile as spam to rectify the situation and hopefully stem the tide of further spurious spam connection invitations – I’m still getting a few.

This is a completely unprofessional practise on the part of the pay day loan companies and the profile owners.  I am supportive of businesses marketing their services to potential customers in legitimate advertising and forums, however, there are limits and rules governing how and when they do so.  LinkedIn does not condone the use of your individual profile for blatant advertising and we as the LinkedIn community have a duty of care to report this abuse of the system when we see it happening.

What angers me more though is that this practise is being perpetrated by an industry that I have absolutely nothing good to say about as it takes advantage of ill-informed and desperate people and muddies the good name and reputation of financial services as a whole, where there are reputable companies and institutions who provide valid and vital services to our community.

All I can say is that it was a really bad tactic for these companies to target me; all they’ve done is draw my attention to their further unprofessional practise and spurred me on to add my voice to the growing cacophony of the call to regulate and stamp out this reprehensible business practise of what amounts to legalised loan sharking.

My Advice

1. Don’t accept any LinkedIn invitations without first checking out the connection’s profile to be sure that they are who they say they are, even if you recognise the name and profile picture.
2. If the invitation is spam wait until you can view the full LinkedIn website and report the invitation as spam.  The option to do this is only available on the full LinkedIn website and is shown as a third option after accept and ignore.  This will inform LinkedIn so that they can deal with the situation and hopefully deter the individual behind the profile from doing it again.
3. If you see a spam profile visit the full LinkedIn website and view the profile and then use the flag a profile as inappropriate option.  Again this will inform LinkedIn so that they can deal with the individual responsible for the profile and deter future unprofessional practise by the individual.
4. If you do inadvertently accept a spam invitation visit the full LinkedIn website and remove the connection in your contacts page and flag a profile as inappropriate.
5. Don’t, whatever your circumstances or problem take out a pay day loan, it really isn’t worth the terrible consequences that you’ll face if you default on paying back the loan and the extortionate interest rates you will incur.  It might not seem like it, but you do have options.
6. There’s always a better option than dealing with these pay day loan companies and I’ve listed some sites and organisations below that have your best interests at heart and can offer practical advice and support in getting you back on track with your finances.
7. If you know of anyone considering taking out a Pay Day Loan encourage them to learn as much as they can before doing anything and point them in the direction of alternatives that might be better for their long term financial health!

About Pay Day Loans

For those of you unfamiliar with pay day loans they are short term loans due to be paid back between a week and a month that are given on the back of proof of your wages/employment for usually small amounts, anything up to £1000 and don’t require a standard credit check that high street lenders use.

On first look they seem like a great idea; a short loan of a week or so to tide you over until pay day, but delve a little deeper and you realise that they charge extortionate interest rates of APRs in the thousands, compared with the average credit card which has an APR of between 17 and 40% and the average high street loan of around 9%.  These loans are targeted at people who are ill informed and desperate, taking advantage of individuals who are unable to obtain regular credit and most in need of professional financial guidance!  What’s worse is that often these companies are not following the standards of the Irresponsible Lending Guidance (ILG) required of all companies licensed to provide consumer credit under the Consumer Credit Act (CCA).

Lots of people who take out these loans are already in financial trouble and fall into a debt spiral as they can’t afford to pay back an initial loan and have to keep taking out further loans to pay back the balance and continually increasing their overall debt.  People can end up being unable to cover to the interest let alone the original sum.  Stories of people borrowing an initial £100 and owing up to £20,000 are sadly not uncommon, with many people taking out multiple loans from different pay day lenders and ‘rolling up’ their loans four or more times with individual lenders. Rolling up is the practise of taking out an additional loan with the provider to cover the original debt and the interest accrued.

These companies may have a professional veneer of snappy TV advertising and slick websites and sometimes shop fronts, but please do not be fooled.  We’ve all heard of loan sharks and how they are best to be avoided, well Cambridge English Dictionary’s definition of a loan shark is “a person who charges very large amounts of money for lending money to someone else” and that’s exactly what these pay day loan companies do.  The aggressive debt collection activities of these companies is also not dissimilar to the bullying tactics of the traditional loan shark as evidenced by the horror stories reported in the press and on the internet.

Before Taking out a Pay Day Loan

If you are interested in learning more about pay day loans or are considering taking one out I suggest reading this very useful article from money.co.uk: Warning: Payday Loans Can Seriously Damage your Wealth and checking out The Guardian Payday Loans section on their website.

The industry of pay day loans is under review by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and has further referred the pay day lending market to the Competition Commission citing “…concerns the OFT has about deep-rooted problems with the way competition works”.  The OFT’s Payday Lending Compliance Review Report had some shocking key findings including: “38 of the 50 lenders we inspected failed to comply with at least one of the complaint handling rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service”.  You can find out more at the OFT’s Payday lending compliance review pages on their website.

If you are struggling with your finances there is lots of information on the internet at sites such as money.co.uk, Money Super Market, MoneySavingExpert.com and The Money Advice Service.

The following organisations offer free and independent services to help you to get your finances back on track: Citizens Advice Bureau, National Debtline, GOV.UK, Step Change and Debt Advice Foundation.

You can also read about other peoples’ sad pay day loan horror stories here:

Bude & Beyond: Payday Loans – It’s A Horror Story!

Money Saving Expert: My Payday loan horror

Mirror: Suicide dad hounded for cash as he lies in hospital

The Consumer Action Group: Pay Day Loans Forum

Mail Online: Father dies…after being hounded by payday loan companies….

Mail Online: Rugby league player…hanged himself after getting into huge debt with payday loan companies.

The Sun: Payday loan debts killed our son, 18

Hypnotica - Abstract fine liner doodle art zentangle

I’m looking forward to tomorrow as I get to have fun demonstrating my art at Hobbycraft Bristol, Cribbs Causeway as their Artist in residence.  I’m going to be doing some dylusion ink art, mono printing on my Gelli Arts Gel plate, see some examples of the different types of art I’ll be doing throughout this article.

Wealie Arts Halloween Colouring Book Cover

Dylusions Ink Art Design

I’m also going to be doing some abstract doodle art, or  zentangles as they are sometimes called and I’ll be launching my very first abstract doodle art colouring book, a snap at just £3.50  Don’t despair if you won’t be able to make it to pick up your copy, keep a watchful eye on this space as I’m hoping to upload it as a downloadable pdf at some point in the not too distant future.

I’ll also be launching a halloween colouring competition for kids up to the age of 13 to submit a coloured version of one of the designs (the witches’ hat) from the colouring book, with a prize of their very own zentangle doodle art design of whatever subject they would like me to create.

Firery Waves - Mono Print

The deadline is 31 October so there’s plenty of time for the kids to get colouring and you can download a copy of the competition form and rules here.  I’ll post the entries I receive on a special blog post on 05 November together with the announcement of the winner and will post a pic of the winner’s doodle choice once I’ve completed it.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

R
x

To give myself that extra edge in my job seeking I decided to create an infographic CV and it went down really well with recruiters and the employer I ended up working with really rated it. For those of you not familiar with the term Infographics, they are graphic design tools for showing facts, figures and information in a much more visually pleasing and easy to digest format that is proving to be very popular, esepcially on the internet. If you haven’t seen any go to google or pinterest right now and type in infographics and you’ll see that they can be about almost anything, as long as there is some data and a story that the data can tell the viewer.

I must mention that I’m lucky enough to live with an exceptional graphic designer, Ben Chapman, who has helped me to pull together the infographic CV below.  If you are interested in having your own infographic CV you can email Ben at: info@benchapmandesign.co.uk to discuss your requirements. My infographic CV gives extra insight into my background, experience and skills that my traditional CV format does not and gives an at a glance guide to the type of person I am and the work roles I’m suitable for.

Ruth Weal Infographic CV

The great thing about infographics is how they can take a lot of seemingly boring data like the number of years experience I have in different sectors and visually show them in a way that is more meaningful than a paragraph of words or bullet points.  The fact that I have more years experience in Finance and IT than other sectors comes out if you read the whole of my traditional CV, but with the infographic CV you can see it explicitly with just one glance.

I think of it as an additional marketing tool, not a replacement for my CV. I still upload my word doc version to the recruitment sites. Where I use my infographic CV is on all social media such as flickr and Facebook and it’s on my Linkedin profile and my website blog. I send it out in speculative emails to companies and recruiters. I also take it along to interviews. Wherever a recruitment website has the option to upload picture files I put my infographic cv there too.

I have to warn you though, this took a lot of hard work and collaborative effort from the designer and myself.  Like any document or report an infographic is only as good as the data that you feed into it.  Here are the main things I learned from going through this process:

• The important thing is to work out what you want your infographic CV to display, what’s the story you want it to tell? Knowing you want one and knowing what you want to put in it and what you want it to say about you are very different things!
• I did a lot of research before preparing the data for mine; I looked at good and bad examples on the net, thought about why I felt they were good or bad and how I could follow the best practice and avoid the bad.
• I thought for a long time about the type of information that my traditional CV struggled to get across succinctly or explicitly and the type of additional information that I felt that recruiters would find interesting and useful to know about me.  After all, if it isn’t going to enhance my CV and recruitment prospects then it wasn’t going to be worth the effort.
• I ended up with loads of potential ideas for the content and then used a logical thought process to prioritise the information to select the items that made the cut.  One of the biggest examples of bad practice was where people tried to cram too much into their infographics and where they didn’t tell a story.
• Finally I worked closely with the designer to make sure that the end result still ‘felt’ like me.  For instance the swirls are very much a part of my Wealie Enterprises and Wealie Arts branding and something that speaks of my creativity and the about me words are my own vision of my personality.  Just like a traditional CV it is important that you feel this is something that is a true representation of who you are.

In conclusion I enjoyed the process of creating the inforgraphic CV it also helped me in my thinking to make some enhancements and changes to my standard CV as well. I must stress though that I don’t advocate replacing your traditional CV with an infographic. It’s better to think of it as an additional marketing tool, not a replacement for your CV.

When job seeking I still upload my word document version to the recruitment sites and always send the word document out to recruiters and companies, but now I also attach my infographic CV as well.

Where I really make my infographic CV work for me is on all social media such as flickr and Facebook and it’s on my Linkedin profile and my website blog. I also take it along to interviews and wherever a recruitment website has the option to upload picture files I put my infographic CVthere too.

I hope you found my tips above useful and that it has perhaps inspired you to start thinking about creating your own infographic CV. Here’s some useful links to get you started:

Visualize Me
re.vu
Kinzaa

Good luck to everyone else who is back on the job market, if you need some help and advice on job hunting I have written a series of articles about job seeking which you might find useful:

Hints and Tips for Job Seeking
Networking and Your Online Professional Presence
Using Recruitment Websites
Hints and Tips For Successful Interviews
Job Hunting and Standing Out from the Crowd
Hints & Tips for CV Writing

Just lately I’ve taken up crochet and I’m really enjoying it. It turned out to be a lot easier than I had originally anticipated and I’ve already made a number of items from scarves to crochet flowers and the beginnings of a granny circle blanket, though I do find following patterns a bit challenging still.  I’ve mastered the basic stitches and played around with some special stitches all of which has been great fun.   I bought myself quite a few good books for learning to crochet, learning different stitches and some lovely patterns and designs to try out.  I also used some of the great videos from crafters on YouTube and have pinned many, many great crochet designs from Pinterest, all of which you can find on my Arty Crafty pinterest board.

As a left handed person from the UK (US terms for many basic stitches are different to the UK versions) it was a bit more difficult to find good books and instructions on how to learn crochet, follow patterns, complete certain stitches, but there are a lot of good resources out there if you look.  The book I found most useful in helping me to get to grip with the basics of crocheting UK style was Crochet Unravelled: A Clear and Concise Guide to Learning Crochet which you can buy on Amazon for just £6.29.  I highly recommend this book, it had instructions for both left and right handed people and explained the basics very well and is an excellent starting point at a reasonable price.

Back to my crocheting, below are a few of my creations so far, some are completed, others are still a work in progress, but as I’m having so much fun with the crochet, it is hard to focus on just one project at a time.  To see all my crocheting projects check out my Wealie’s Crafts pinterest board.

Happy hooking!

Wealie
x

My Crochet Projects

1. Sid the Sloth purse - this started out with the intention of being a monkey purse, however as my partner Ben pointed out the purse looked more like Sid, so the ears of the monkey turned into the eyes of Sid

Sid the Sloth purse

2.  Flower motif – I made this motif using a multi coloured bamboo viscose yarn and it will be going on a scarf that I’ve made out of the same bluey-green yarn, but have not yet had a chance to block , so for now it’s just the flower to see.

Crochet Flower Motif for Scarf

3. Granny Circle Blanket – A work in progress as it is more of a dinner plate size at the moment.  I’m enjoying working with the bright and colourful cottons on this project, but envisage that this may take some time to complete.

Crochet Granny Circle - WIP

4.  Crochet Baby Hat – This was my first proper item that I created from following a pattern, which I’m still finding a little bit challenging; so I was very proud when I completed this and the fact that it did in fact look like a hat at the end of the process.  I used a pattern in the UK magazine Craftseller, but changed the motif from a flower to a star and changed the colours to blues so that it would be more boyish for my new nephew Jack, who unfortunately had grown out of it before he got it :-S  It was a great project to work on though and I was very pleased with the end result.

My first crochet baby hat

5. Crochet heart flowers - I found this pattern on the wonderful pinterest and decided to have a go.  Took me a little while to get the hang of crocheting in the different loops on the same row, but once I got into the flow it was quite an enjoyable process and I’m hoping to maybe use this design to make some kind of cushion cover or blanket.

Crochet Love Hearts

6. Crochet pansy – Making up my own patterns here for flowers was an interesting experiment that turned out quite well. I might add a bit of black as stamen detail and yellow pollen stain at the centre to make it look more realistic though.

Crochet Pansy

7. Crochet headband – Having mastered the rose effect I made up quite a few little roses while practising and decided to put them to good use as a head band, which one of my lovely friends Ashlee now has

Crochet Roses Headband

8. Rainbow crochet flower - One of the first crochet flowers that I created using a lovely rainbow bamboo viscose yarn. Haven’t decided what to do with this one. I might make it into a brooch or headband at some point.

Crochet Rainbow Flower

9. Experimenting with Chevrons – I’ve mastered chevrons in crochet, what I found most difficult was keeping the number of my stitches even; on my first attempt the number of stitches per row, increased and decreased alarmingly! This swatch is a bit too small to be a cushion, but I thought I might be able to work it into a hot water bottle cover or maybe a handbag design.

Yay I can do chevrons!