I’m not sure how or when I discovered the blog of Elizabeth Abernathy – but since that day I have been an avid follower.  There are lots of reasons to love her blog, her projects, her writing style, her varied interests, her Canadian-ness (had to throw that in there), her photography… I just felt a connection – has that ever happened to you?

When she and her sister published their first issue of “Nuno" Magazine” I rushed to buy it.  It is an online magazine; “a new issue every season and each one is an entirely ad-free collection of sewing, craft and needlework projects made from recycled and salvaged materials.”  I poured through the first issue, swearing to try each project.  By the time the second issue came out I knew I was in trouble – so many beautiful projects, so little time.  When the chance came to review their latest issue, I jumped at it.

Let me start by asking, when was the last time you bought a 90-page craft magazine with no ads for $3.75?   And $1 of that goes to charity.  And it includes full-size patterns.  And you get to flip through a few pages before you buy it, just to make sure you’ll like it? Yeah. I thought so…

The project that intrigued me immediately was the peonies made of plastic bags. I was drawn to them having just finished making about 48 tissue paper flowers.  I wanted to try something a bit different and I love the idea of having a bunch of these in a basket on my patio while I wait impatiently for summer blooms to arrive.

My next favorite is three little sewing projects. The authors used one linen table cloth to make a bird bean bag, a cloche hat and a lovely clutch purse.  Those of you who know me well and have seen my linen collection know that I could make many many versions of each of these with linen to spare.  Yes, I can see these in my future.

Sadly, I don’t crochet (well, my friend Sophie tried to teach me and I can crochet a mean triangle which makes for lovely pine trees but I digress…) but once again, I wish I could. There are quite a few gorgeous patterns and ideas for crochet flowers.  Flowers, a lovely recurring theme in this issue.

There are paper crafts as well – bunny masks (the “Forest” issue also had wonderful animal masks!) and printable flowers.  The authors suggest and show examples of, printing the flowers on water color paper and using water colors to paint them.  And speaking of watercolors, I absolutely love the idea of cutting out butterflies from old poetry books and adding water color – gorgeous and what a wonderful jumping off point for so many other similar projects.

Writing this made me go back and look again at the first two issues.  I am just so impressed with Nuno and the work of Elizabeth and her sister Rachel.    Thanks so both of you for the chance to review your magazine and tell my friends about it!

ps  the photos on this page are from http://www.nunomagazine.com/