Halloween Filmfest: Costume-ish

As you may remember today is the day of the filmfest .

As I thought was appropriate I bought a new tee from Qwertee  added some crappy red eyelashes from Tesco's dubious Halloween section and will be sporting what can only be described as a boufantt hair do.

I'll be blogging fully about our filmfest soon ;D

Luna Lovegood Costume

It's was my friends 30th fancy dress party at the weekend. The theme is L or B. So I decided on Luna Lovegood. 

I secured myself some sprectrespecs, a ravenclaw tie, a butterbeer cork necklace, some dirigible plum earrings and a blonde wig, found a white shirt (that didn't button up the top but I quickly amended with the use of safety pins) and wore my Viven of Holloway pinafore skirt. 

I think I looked pretty awesome! Of course, hardly anyone knew who I was meant to be but hey ho, I got to dress up as Luna andnd Tim went as Sirius Black :D 

It was a super night, and a great party, happy birthday Becky & Lauren! :D xx

Adventures in Needlework

My lovely friend Ginger bought me this amazing book for my birthday, Adventures in Needlework by Jessica Aldred and Emily Peacock. I cannot wait to try it out, it looks chock full of interesting projects including canvas work, appliqué, silk shading and goldwork!

Crafty Club: Felt Lavender Pomanders

In April my friends and I got together for our first foray into a shared craft collective, ingeniously called: Crafty Club! The idea being, we all take turns to hols it (if you want to - you can just join in and not host one) and we do a different craft each month pooling our knowledge, learning something new and having fun and good old gossip at the same time.

I held the first meeting and we all embroidered cards, unfortunately I accidentally deleted the pics from the day (stoopid). 

On Sunday the next instalment was held at Chelle's pad and felt lavender pomanders were the choice of the day.

Chelle was a great host and showed us all step by step what to do. With her help I mastered a blanket stitch something I have seen a million times over in craft projects and tutorials but I have never been able to figure out from written instructions (I have a crap working memory because of dyslexia and mild dyspraxia so written instructions aren't good for me, verbal a little better but visual the best!). 

I think we all did very well, thanks Chelle for you patience, supplies and hosting a fab Sunday avo of craftiness!

 

Frenchi's bright and beautiful  for her lovely nephew, Caleb  

 

Kat's emo

 

Chelle's country chic 

 

Hazel's floral heart 

 

My purple felt, all finished. I eventually decided to hang it in the car to make it smell a little sweeter 

(the camping trip and fast food trips have made it smell icky!) 

Glossybox drawers - Embroidery station

I have seen many a tutorial for Glossybox drawers but I do believe this was the first to pop up and has been the basis of most of the others online.

After having a little organise (may be an understatement) I decided I really ought to make use of my old Glossyboxes that were piling up and it might be an idea not to keep all of my threads in a jumble in a random storage box in the living room.

So I followed the above tutorial and first off sorted my threads into colours.

Made up the drawers, which wasn't too tricky from the instructions I was super careful before I glued anything though!

Then I added the drawer ties which I did in matching colours to the silks contained within.

I popped my needles, scissors, seam ripper (and later other bits and bobs) in the top and ta-da, all done! A darn sight prettier and tidier than my mess was previously. 

Crafting: An old storage box gets a makeover

As you may remember from an earlier post when I went to visit my Nana in May she gave me a car load of knitting/sewing stuff and gave me this box:

I think she made it from an old orange box (or what I have heard to referred as an orange box - an old wooden crate). I had some material left from a previous sewing project, so glue gun in hand I went to work and covered it in a rather more pleasing colour. The inside is lined with dark blue satin. 

 

Alas it looked quite plain, even though it was better than before, so I thought I'd do a little bit of stitching and add some buttons I had also left over from previous crafting. I probably should have thought about it before I glued the lid but I still think it looks good, even if you can see the the knots at the beginning and end of stitches. 

Tim had the great idea of me adding to it with the little bits I have left over, making pockets out of scraps of material etc around the sides, something I will definitely do in the future. 

First Birthday Present Crafting: for Seb

Today is not only my other half's birthday, it's the lovely little Seb's birthday too, born of Hazel and Craig of House Sommerville & Connell (can you tell I've been watching Game of Thrones?!)

He was born into the world after a bit of a tiresome pregnancy (understatement) and he was born covered in his own poo. None of this surprises me, it would never be any other way with Hazel.

Little Seb is a wonderfully, happy, gorgeous little boy with creative parents.

This is what I made (using my makeshift lightbox):

As previously with Jack's birthday, Seb got his very own monogrammed canvas made from buttons and hand embroidered card. I hope he enjoys them as much as he can, being a one year old and probably having no idea what is happening!

As you can most likely tell, the card was drawn freehand by me.

Also, one last pic: Buttons. They're like treasure to me. This is what happens when your Nana gives you the button box to sort when you're a kid to keep you out of trouble!

Little Shop of Horrors Crafting

This blog is copied from a previous elsewhere blog. 

Clothes Eating Plant

Drawing inspiration from Little Shop of Horrors, I made a Clothes Eating Plant for a photoshoot with Kate Donovan for Donovan's Darlings, a classic 1950s cheesecake pin-up website. 

I cut out the card for the mouth and covered this with green felt and stuffed it with soft toy filling. After gluing the felt in place I then made the teeth out of thick white card and added these. Next I made a hinge from the card, as I didn't want anything too stiff. I attached both sides of the mouth and added red felt for the middle, followed by a lovely pink tongue. 

I added industrial strength magnets to his mouth and covered these over to ensure that the mouth snapped closed when needed.

I attached his stalk, an old cardboard tube covered in green felt, then I popped him in a plant pot and made a little covering of brown felt to look like a top layer of soil. 

The shoot was brilliant and a lot of fun, there's a one photo from it in the gallery below and the rest are of me making him.

I called him Timothy 2, because Audrey 2 was so named in little shop because Seymour loved her, I thought it was only fitting for me to do the same. 

First Birthday Present Crafting

Today is my lovely friends Shazza and Dave’s little un’s 1^st birthday.

Jack came into this world after some frantic nesting on his mother’s part and has been the apple of his parents eye since day one, he’s a little sweetheart.

And this is what I made him: 

It was quite easy to do, I bought the canvas and buttons, marked the on the canvas using my makeshift lightbox and a water soluble marker and simply stitched the buttons on. 

and of course I stitched his birthday card too

I hope Shazza, Dave and Jack like it and have a lovely day munching on birthday cake and having lots of fun together. 

Love to the three of you xxxx

52 Reasons

I can actually post this now.....today is my 5th Wedding anniversary. I have the most amazing husband, his name is Timothy.

This year we'll be celebrating 10 years since our first date too! Maybe we should take a trip to our local Tesco and he can kiss me in the pizza aisle again (our very first kiss, how romantic?!).

I decided to make something for Tim this year, something that would express just a little of how much I love him and the things I love about him.

I found this amazing idea for a book of cards listing reasons I love my husband online here 

I wish it was my idea but it wasn't! It turned out to be not that hard to do, I created the inserts in publisher, ordered the cards and got sticking. The tricky but was punching the holes in the right place but apart from a couple of errors I seemed to do okay....I made this about six week ago but obviously haven't been able to pot anything about it but as we're currently jetting off on a plane to Brussels I have been sneaky and scheduled this to go live while we're up in the air.

I found it very hard to whittle it down to 52 reasons if I'm honest. There are many, many things I love about Timothy, but here are a few pics of the finished product (and the non too mushy ones!) ;D

He really does! More than anything else in the world (apart from me)

One for the wrestling fans out there

A little cheeky one at the end!

And here are a few more pics of our wedding:

Happy Anniversary Timothy, I love you lots :D xxxx