Monica's Creative Room

Flowers on bars

After a very rainy start of summer we had some good weeks in July. I have been busy working in the garden but I finally found some time to do some concreting. During spring I made some flowers and put them on iron bars. When casting, I used a large straw cut in shorter pieces and plugged in the end, to make the hole for the bar. The flowers where quite fun to paint. I have still a big bunch of roses to paint, maybe during winter I will find some time to do that. 🙂

Vibration table

I have since long ago always wanted something that helps vibrating molds when casting. Last year I saw a very neat idea on you tube where they built a vibration table using a car tire and an electric motor. This I had to try! I already had an old motor and an old tire was easy to get. I screwed a plywood on top of the tire and then the motor underneath. On the motor shaft, I attached a small weight to get the vibrations. I had to adjust the weight on the shaft a couple of times to get it to vibrate as I wanted. It works like a treat. I just have to get it higher up because my back hurts when having it on the ground.

Spray paint

Using spray paint is fun. I bought some bottles with metallic paint and thought I would try this on a cast rhubarb leaf. All of a sudden I had painted several leaves! They are so beautiful! I have to paint more…

Glass globes becomes concrete balls

During winter and spring I have bought cheap old glass globes on flea markets. Whenever I find a cheap globe I will buy it. Also big glass vases and other glass items are useful if the shape is right. I fill them with concrete and after some days I put them in a bucket of water and crush the glass using a stone. Sometimes the glass will not come off directly, but if leaving it in water for a day will make it easier.

Horror in the pond

Last fall my daughter’s boyfriend bought a mask for a masquerade. I quickly snatched the package that the mask came in, because I saw a potential mold for casting. It was a flimsy plastic package shaped as the mask. Now I finally got to use it. I used sand to support the mold. I also did cast a pair of hands using dishwashing gloves.

Now, visitors in my garden will get a small shock when they are looking down in the pond!
Moahaha…

Monica

At last all the snow has melted. The early spring flowers are blooming. I’m busy cleaning the flower beds from leaves and dead plant material.

Just a week ago I could walk on the ice on the pond. Today I have cleaned it up and just started the pumps. I love the sound from the streaming water and from the fountain.

All my seedlings are growing fast now when I have moved them out to the greenhouse. It seems that I managed to reduce the amount of plants this year. I only have about 600 of them now. Earlier years I used to have more than 1000. 🙂

The tomatoes have started to bloom. Here they are transplanted in the biggest pots I have. Next, the final transplant will be in big buckets.
The cucumbers are still indoors, they don’t like the low temperatures at night in the greenhouse. I have a heater on but I can’t heat it up as much as the cucumbers needs. They have to wait one or two weeks more before the temperature is high enough.

Sorry, I have no fresh pictures of the other plants but this is how it looked 24 April when I just had carried them out and transplanted them. Now they are much bigger. Soon we will have daylight around the clock, this makes the plants grow very fast.

Monica

I got a request for a tea light box with a heart theme. Of course, I had to do this! 🙂
The box fits well with the hearts and the card I made earlier.

You can find the new file here.

I have made some new hearts that I think will match the card I made earlier. Hope you like them!

You can find the new designs here!

The snow keeps melting!

It has been quite warm the last weeks and the snow has thawed quite a lot. Now it’s no problem to get to the greenhouse but it is still to early to move all my seedlings out.

Here are some pictures from today. In the first picture I’m standing in the greenhouse looking out to the garden. The second picture is from the backside of our house and on the last picture you can see that the strawberries are on their way out of the snow. 🙂

Monica

It’s still winter here

Still, we have lots of snow left. Two weeks ago it was really beautiful outside when I woke up one morning. All the trees where white of frost and I had to go out just to take some photos.

Now two weeks later some of the snow have melted and soon it will be possible to enter the greenhouse. I have spent a lot of time to take care of all my seedlings and I still have lots more to sow.

Here is how the greenhouse looks right now and also a picture of all my seedlings.

I am truly addicted to casting

That was what my daughter said to me some days ago and she is right! I just can’t stop making moulds and I cast different items every day. It takes more than two weeks to finish a latex mould. When it’s finished I can use it many many times. Here is some of all the items I have casted lately. I have several big boxes full of finished items and there are things everywhere right now. I really don’t know yet what to do with them all. 🙂

Here is just a minor part of all things I have made.

Earlier in January when it was really cold, I used some silicone lego moulds and made some ice lego figures. I placed them outside the kitchen window and glued them with water on the windowsill, it froze instantly as it was about -30 degrees C. It looked quite cool to have them peek into the window.

At last a new cutting file

As you can see, I have been quite busy lately and it’s hard to find time to make new designs. I also work almost full time at a company nearby and this makes it even harder to find time to do everything I want.

This time I have made a new gate fold card. I know I already have made lots of them but I couldn’t resist to make one more. This card is really suited for wedding invitations, I think.

You can find the new card here.

Monica

This house is made with inspiration from Italy. I have cut it in 180 grams cardstock and glued it
together using permanent high tack tape runner.

You can find the new design here.

There is an assembly instruction also included in the zip file.

Monica

Today it has been really cold weather. In the morning it was -31°C. We had planned to go to town for shopping and I was a bit worried that the car wouldn’t start, but it was no problem at all!

Usually when it’s this cold, it does not blow. But in our city, Luleå, it’s always blowing. We use to call it “the city of the 4 winds”. The wind chill factor made it feel like -45°C and my cheeks started to ache straight away when going from the car park to the shops.

Now in the evening it’s still -29°C. We have to wait until tomorrow evening before it will get a little bit warmer.

I think this will be the last tea light boxes, at least for a while now. 🙂

You can find the new files here.

Monica

At last I have finished these designs. It’s the last two with candles on. I hope it’s not too late now when Christmas is over and the new year is here.

For the folded one, I have cut out six pieces and then glued them together. Then added a string and some pearls.

It’s a little bit tricky to fold the design due to the thin lines. I use two rulers when folding, this makes it much easier.

I don’t put glue on the whole design, just some small dots on the thicker parts. I love to use the E-Z Runner that gives small strips. I pick them up one by one and put them on the design.

You can find the new files here.

I hope you all have had a wonderful New Year!

 
Monica

December 22 have the shortest day and the longest night of the year, it’s the winter solstice.
Where I live, the sun just rise above the horizon and then turns down again. Today the sun rose at 9:55 and went down at 13:06. Three hours of daylight is what we get, and then the sun is right in your eyes if you are driving. Cloudy days, it never really gets bright.

Knäck

I have been busy making more Christmas candies. I always make knäck for Christmas, it’s a Swedish toffee that is very easy to make. The recipe is:

2 dl sugar
2 dl heavy cream
2 dl golden syrup
2 tbs butter

Put all ingredients in a heavy based saucepan and stir it all together. Simmer it for a long time until the temperature is about 134 degrees C, this gives a hard knäck. If you want a softer knäck, 124-128 degrees C is recommended. I use a cooking thermometer for this. Then pour it up in waxed paper cups. Leave to cool.

You can also add chopped almonds or grated zest of one orange plus a few drops of orange aroma when you have reached the right temperature. The orange knäck is really delicious!

Monica

During the past moths I have been quite occupied making latex moulds and castings items for Christmas. I had a plan to make a landscape with spruce trees and a led string. For this I bought some plastic Christmas trees on eBay and made latex moulds on them. Then I could cast several trees. I use fibre-reinforced self-levelling compound when casting, not concrete when making small or detail objects. I have found that self-levelling compound works much better than concrete for this.

This is a mould in progress. I’m using liquid latex for this. It is ready after about 20-25 layers of latex.

I’m mixing the compound powder with a little water in a small bowl. Then I fill my moulds up and shaking them a lot to get rid of all air bubbles. Afterwards, I clean up the bowl with water. Remember to not pour the water out in the drain! I use a bucket to pour all the cleaning water into. When all the sediments have sunk to the bottom, I pour the clear water out. In the end I will have a big lump that fills up the bucket.

More moulds and some casted items.

Finished landscape!

Other casted items

Some of all the new things I have made.

Here I have painted the hearts in shimmering colours.

On these hearts I have made decoupage using napkins.

Pine cones, painting in progress!

Monica

I have made some new designs of traditional Swedish electric candlesticks. The electric candlesticks, I use to put in almost every window during Christmas.

You can find the new files here.

The snow has almost melted away and turned to ice. It has been raining every now and then but I hope soon to get more snow. The daylight keeps disappearing, now the sun rise at 9.00 and goes down at 13.40.

Monica

Now when winter is here, it’s time to light up our homes. Here are some more tea light boxes to use for this. You can never have too many tea lights!

You can find the new files here.

A little more snow have arrived, not much but it’s enough to make everything white and beautiful.

Monica

Today we got our first snow for the season! It’s still on the ground but I think it will melt pretty soon. The days are also getting quite short and right now the sun rise at 08.00 and goes down at 14.30. When Christmas comes it will be much darker than now, but then we will light up our homes with lots of electric candles.

This is some old traditional Swedish candlesticks I have. When I looked at them, I thought that they would be great to use for some new cutting designs.

I made some different designs and made two versions of each because I couldn’t choose which one to use. This is the first set of candlesticks. There will be more of them later.

You can find the files here.

Monica

Here are some more tea light boxes, as I promised before!

When not using the boxes, you can just unfold them and store them flat until next time you want to use them.

You can find the new boxes here.

I’m happy to say that we have not had any snow yet. The autumn has been quite warm and with good weather. Actually, I was out sowing some seeds during the last week. This has never happened at this time of the year before, because the ground is usually stiff with frost. The seeds will germinate when spring arrives.

Monica

It’s a little bit late but I couldn’t resist to make a tea light box for Halloween. I also included a spider for decoration. 🙂

You can find the new file here.

Monica

Now when the days are getting shorter we need to light up our homes. For this I have designed some tea light boxes. These will be nice to put on the table for Christmas, I think. Only use battery tea light for this!

I have put vellum inside so the light will look softer. There is a design for the vellum insert included in each file.

I hope you don’t have any problem cutting my intricate designs. When cutting on my Silhouette Cameo, I mostly use 180 grams cardstock. The settings I use is “Heavy cardstock” the knife on 2, thickness 30 and speed 10. I don’t know if the setting window have changed in the newer version, as I use an old version and will not update if I don’t have to.

This is how one of the boxes look like when cut and lifted off the mat. I don’t have to weed at all. All scrap is left on the mat. I just use a small aluminium ruler to scrape the small pieces off.

This is how I assemble the box:

1. Pre fold everything and put glue on the small tab. I use a strong double sided adhesive tape. No more glue is needed for this. Glue the sides together.

2. Fold the bottom tabs as in picture.

3. Close the bottom with the last tab.

4. Cut out the vellum insert.

5. Pre fold it and put glue on the small tab and some glue dots along the edges.

6. Glue the insert together and slide it into the box all way down to the bottom. The insert will fit nicely.

7. Now the box is ready!

There will be more of these boxes later on. Why just make a few when you can make a whole bunch of them! 🙂 I just have to cut them out and prepare all the different file formats before I can upload them.

The first four boxes can be found here.

Monica

I’m sorry that I haven’t updated my blog in a loong time. There has been so much to do in the garden during summer and there is still a lot to do before winter. I also work almost full time and have a very stressful job that drains my energy quite a lot. I hope that soon I will have time and energy to make some more designs.

The weather this summer has mostly been cold and rainy, so all my planned work in the garden has been affected by this. One of the plans was to build a bigger place for the strawberries. It took the whole summer to finish this. I started in the end of June and it took two month to finish it, or almost finish it. I will continue next summer putting small concrete tiles around the big blocks to make it easier when moving the lawn.

It was heartbreaking to dig up the plants when they were in full bloom.

Here I am preparing for the big concrete blocks that will make the edge.

Now the edge is on place. It was a hard job to lift them in the right position as they are quite heavy. Now I have to fill with it up with lots of new soil.

I used almost all the compost I had in the backyard.

Now it’s almost ready for planting. I will use a ground cloth on the soil and make holes for each plant. Then I will cower the cloth with bark.

This is how it looks like today. Quite bigger than before and I hope it will give us a big harvest each summer from now on.

Today I tried to clean up and organize my paper and cardstock storage. What a tremendous amount of cardstock I have! I will never have time to use it all up! Furthermore, I can’t just skip buying more, when I see a great offer! 🙂

Monica

This time of year we have daylight around the clock. Sunset and sunrise are within the same hour so it’s only getting slightly less bright at night.

I love this time of year, it’s so uplifting after the dark winter. You can be outside working in the garden as long as you want (except for the mosquitoes that are terrible in the evenings and make you want to go inside).

I was up in the attic last night at half past twelve, it was half way between sunset and sunrise, and I took this picture. The sun will rise a little to the right of the picture.

Monica

Here are the new designs I promised. 🙂
I don’t know when I will be able to make more designs, I just have so many other projects ongoing this time of year. The garden and all my flowers need to be taken cared of, and I’m also in a very creative concrete phase right now. 🙂

You can find the new lattice patterns here.

/Monica

Cleaning the pond

At last all the snow from winter has melted. On the north side of the house there where snow just two days ago, but now it’s all gone. Today was the first day I was working in the garden barefoot. Hooray! It was quite warm when the sun was shining. Now the pond is ready for summer! I took off the net I had covered it with last autumn and scooped up a lot of leaves from the water. Then I lifted up the water plants from the deepest place and put them in shallower water. It was freezing cold in the water! I put the pump in and started the filter to the small stream that is built in the flower bed above the pond. Later I will put in the fountain when the water have cleared.

Last weekend we pruned all the spirea bushes in the upper line of the flower bed. They where so broken by the snow and the mice had eaten all the bark of the rest of them. Nothing else to do but prune them. The garden looks so empty and naked now. Nothing is hiding the filter. I have to put some high flowers around it this summer, I think!

Greenhouse

This time of the year is very busy. My greenhouse is full with flowers and some tomato plants. Last time I counted the flower pots in there, there where around 1000 of them. I have to continue grow them in the greenhouse for some more weeks before I can plant them out in the garden because we still have frost at nights. The tomato plants will stay in the greenhouse all summer together with the cucumbers and the physalis.

Soon the trees will be green again. The leaves have started sprouting!

Later this week I will upload some new lattice files! 🙂

Monica

I have made a new cupcake wrapper, a place card and a new set of borders. All using the same design.
Hope you like them!

Monica

The new cupcake wrapper can be found here.

The new place card can be found here.

The new set of borders can be found here.

To cast bigger items in concrete are not appropriate to do indoors. I long so much for spring to come, so I can be outside doing this. Meanwhile I have to find other things to do to ease my desire for casting. I have so many ideas that I want to follow out. 🙂

First out is the “dragon egg shells”, casted in fibre-reinforced self-levelling compound. It’s a cement based mortar for floors but can be used in many other ways too. One thing to keep in mind when casting with this, is that it has not the same strength as concrete.

I mix the compound powder with water so the mix becomes quite thick, like a bun dough.
To make the “shells” you also need some balloons and something to put the balloons on to hold them up. I used plastic pots.

Shape the mix to a flat ball and place it on top of the balloon. Hold the balloon and the balloon holder firmly and tap it a couple of times to the table. The mix will start to slowly spread out. Shape the mix to small petals and tap it to the table some more times. Don’t tap it too much, then it will become too thin and will break when handling.

After about an hour you can put a plastic film over it. Leave to cure for one day.

Remove the “shells” from the balloons and wrap them in the plastic film. Leave them to continue cure for another day. You can rinse the balloons in water to wash them and them reuse them.

Now it’s time to give the bowl a base. Form a small ball from the mix and put it on the bottom of the bowl. Gently tap so it will spread slightly. Turn it over and press it gently down on a plastic film. Leave it to cure for a day before you remove it from the plastic.

When the bowls have cured for a week you can start painting them. First I painted them with a uncoloured concrete sealer on both the inside and outside before I painted them with metallic paint.

They look very nice with a tealight in.

I have many other casting projects on going and I will post pictures from them later. 🙂

For those who are waiting for new cutting designs, you have to wait a little bit more. I can’t do everything at the same time. 🙂

Monica

Before Christmas I made these designs but I have not had inspiration to make all the needed files ready until now. Five more cards are added to the collection!

You can find them here.

/Monica

We have had so much snow lately but last night it began to rain and thaw. I woke up early this morning by a huge rumble when all the snow on the south side came down from the roof. A large pile of snow totally blocked the view from the windows. The bird feeders that I had put on one of the poles were nowhere to be seen. Even the poles where gone, buried deep in the snow.

View from the kitchen and living room:

Outside:

We started to dig for the bird feeders. I had to screw the hangers back as they had come loose. Now the birds can eat their nuts again:

Then we had to dig away some of the snow so we can look out through the windows. Here is my husband shoveling snow from the roof while still standing on the “ground”:

I went up on the roof to take some pictures. It was easy to climb up as the snow was higher than the edge of the roof on the lower part of the house. The last picture is a beautiful view of our neighbours:

We have a storm warning for tonight and the temperature has dropped below freezing again.

I have not had time or inspiration to make new designs lately because of all the work the snowing have caused, and because of some other things that have occupied my mind for the past few weeks. But I will soon be back with some new designs, I hope.

Take care,
Monica

Over the past two days we have got a huge mass of snow. Nearly 50 cm (20″), and we have shoveled like idiots. Last night we also shoveled the roof of the greenhouse. I was getting pretty worried that it would not survive the enormous mass of snow. It was quite difficult to even get to the greenhouse when it was one metre (40″) of snow on the ground. Each step was a pain to take, because the snow reached my waist. My arms and shoulders are aching!

Today we are resting but it will start snowing again late in the evening and it will continue snowing for at least two more days.
PLEASE, we don’t need more snow now!!!

Monica

Here are some boxes that are made from the earlier Christmas Crackers designs. I made these designs before Christmas but I have not had time or inspiration to make the sets ready to publish until now. I know that they are too late for Christmas but they are useful for many other occasions. I hope you like them!

You can find the new files here.

Monica

The recent days have been quite cold here. In the morning it was -28C. We had plan to go out shopping so we had prepared the car so it had the engine heater on for more than three hours before we were to go. That was good, otherwise I don’t think the car would have started. Now at least, I have all the ingredients I need to make a delicious sandwich cake (smörgåstårta) for New Year’s Eve.

The sun is still absent most of the day. It only rises just above the horizon for a couple of hours before it goes down again. I very much long for the longer days to come!

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Monica

Some days before Christmas I started to make candy, lots of candy. I love to make fudge as it is so easy to make and tastes so good.

This year I made six different fudges, salt and sweet liquorice fudge, cream caramel fudge, chocolate fudge, orange fudge and rum/arrack fudge.

My fudge recipe

Ingredients

450g white caster sugar
200g double cream
150g butter
50g glucose syrup
50g syrup

Flavourings

Sweet and/or salt liquorice: Mix 2 tbsp licorice powder and 1 tbsp ammonium chloride in the sugar before the wet ingredients are poured in. Exclude the ammonium chloride if you want sweet licorice.

Chocolate: Mix 100g chopped dark chocolate before boiling.

Vanilla/orange/rum etc: Stir in after boiling 1 tsp of the desired taste. Add more if you want stronger taste.

Directions

1. Grease an 18cm square cake tin.
2. Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring all the time. Put a sugar thermometer in the pan and keep on boiling until the mixture reaches 116C. This usually takes 15-20 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 5-10 minutes.
4. Stir in liquid tastes (and colours if you want) and beat the mixture with a wooden spoon. Keep beating until the fudge cools to about 70-80C.
5. Pour the fudge into the tin before it gets too thick and leave to cool.
6. Cut into pieces with a greased knife.

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring all the time. Put a sugar thermometer in the pan and keep on boiling until the mixture reaches 116C. This usually takes 15-20 minutes.