Three good things arrived today.

The first was some lovely pictures of Babybel, from her other granny - thank you S. You can see one at the right, taken on the only hot day this year, during a walk in the country park.

The second was this, which we ordered from John Lewis when we ordered the third thing. Although she is a little young for it yet, I think it will be Babybel's birthday present. along with a VHC quilt. [I don't think this will spoil the surprise because I don't think she reads my blog.]

This is what is inside. There is a plate in there as well.

Even the box is cute - and as it quite sturdy I hope it will be recycled.

I happened to be experimenting with transfer dyeing today - so I couldn't resist doing this. Sorry about the photo - the butterfly is on satin so I couldn't use the flash because of the reflection. [Carle's butterflies always look upside down to me.]

Here are some of my other experiments, prompted by some suggestions on Ario's website:

http://www.ario.co.uk/samples2.php

The top one is sgraffito - transfer crayon rubbed over previously transfer painted paper. I didn't put enough crayon on because I didn't think it would work - but it did. it would probably also have been better with a lighter colour underneath, but one of the problems with transfer paints is that you don't really know how they will turn out till you iron them.

The lower one is also transfer crayon over transfer paint, using a rubbing plate. It reminds me of something but I can't remember what it reminds me of, if that makes sense. Both are on polyester satin - if you haven't tried your transfer paints on poly satin - you should.

These are all on Vilene. The first used wire as a resist, as suggested by Ario, but I thought it looked a bit thin. It might be better with lots of coils of wire.

For the second I scrumpled the paper, straightened it out, ironed it on, then rescrumpled it and rubbed a fabric crayon over it before ironing it again.Ario's example had more pronounced veins than mine -I was a bit light handed because I was worried about flattening out the scrumples.

The third was my attempt at a thicker resist bu using a pipe cleaner. Obviously the pipe cleaner 'fur' is a man made fibre because it took the transfer dye beautifully.

And finally - the piece I like best. Ario suggest using a leaf as a resist. I went out to get a leaf and right by the front door was - a dandelion. [You can tell what sort of gardeners we are...] So this used dandelion leaves and heads as resists. The heads were a bit tricky as I had to cut them off as flat as possible and then hope they didn't collapse. The paper had had transfer crayon squiggles painted on before washing with transfer paint.

The piece told me it wanted to be quilted, although it is quite small as I only had a small piece of satin left. Not sure what I am going to do with it - I don't really want to hide it in the journal. Anyone got any bright ideas?

And the third thing? This. Am I sad to be excited about a new washing machine? Well - although I am not one to air my dirty linen in public, this is what has accumulated since the old one died. Yes - I could have hand washed it. I used to hand wash everything when we were first married - that's why I like washing machines!