Hello everyone and a big welcome to another Handmade Monday, our creative link up. It’s time to be inspired by some lovely creative ideas so grab a cuppa and enjoy a scroll through.

I found a few minutes to experiment with some of my art materials this week and try something a bit different. I think this would be classed as mixed media but to be totally honest I’m not entirely sure! I used watercolours to paint a random background and then when it was all dry added some details in a mix of pens, a black fine liner, a black calligraphy pen, a glittery red gel pen and a white felt tip pen which is always a bit of a disappointment as it never really shows up very well despite the person who sold it to me assuring me it would work brilliantly on all surfaces! I am still on my search for that holy grail of a white pen that really works well and lasts more than 5 minutes. If you know of one please do let me know in the comments.

It was a lot of fun and I do plan to fit more arty experiments like this into my life whenever I can. I figure I’ll learn lots by just by doing; this time I learnt that you really do need to clear your desk before doing dry brush splattering because quite a lot of items on my desk now have a delightful covering of fine blue dots!

Let’s just check out the features from last week’s Handmade Monday.

Click through on the photos to see the original posts.

• Remember if you want to pin any of these ideas please make sure you click through via the photo to the original project.

Bianca from Selbst die frau has made some lovely bags, including this denim one. She’s provided a pattern to download which is in German. Don’t worry too much if your German is not so great though as there are loads of photos of every step so it doesn’t look too difficult to work out how to make your own. Or maybe you could get google translate to help you.

Ann from The Apple Street Cottage has made this beautiful wind chime from an empty wine bottle, I just love the look of that wrapped copper wire.

I’m making your Google translate work overtime this week (unless you’re German of course!) because I fell in love with Carolyn from Flickensalat’s post about a world record charity fundraising project she was involved in a few years ago. The largest crochet village in the world was created and it’s just adorable with so much detail. What a gorgeous project to be a part of.

Congratulations to you all. There is a "YAY I was featured" button over here if you want to add one to your blog.

A like on social media, a comment or share is an easy way for us all to help to support one another so please do take a moment to visit some of the other projects linked up this week. It’s not mandatory to be able to join in here, there’s no easy way to check if you did but it costs nothing but a few minutes of your time and is just a nice thing to do!  

The rules for Handmade Monday are very simple:

• Did you make it? Yes - then yay! We'd love to see it

• Add the link to a specific post, not your main blog url

• You can link up to 3 posts each week but try to make sure it's not something that you've shared here before

• Mingle - visit some other links - comment - share - be social

HANDMADE MONDAY IS NOT A PLACE FOR SELLING SO NO LINKS TO ETSY OR OTHER SELLING PAGES, THEY WILL ALWAYS BE REMOVED. THANKS

If you are not sure of anything more details can be found here.

At Handmade Monday the links are shown in a random order so it’ll look different each time you pop by.

Julie