Summer swap part 2

Hello again,

 So I showed you all the marvelous goodies that Steph sent me in our summer swap. As I mentioned we each chose colours and Steph chose yellow and purple. I had great fun crafting for this and here are my makes...

So I made a biscornu from a recent pattern in a WOXS chartbook. It's the same design stitched with the colours reversed for the base with different thicknesses of threads.

And then the biscornu's got a little smaller...the one on the necklace is about an inch or so big and the small one is about 3/4". It had been ages since i made really small ones so these worked well with the fabric scraps from the biscornu.

I made a 'Steph' charm bracelet and matching earrings.

I hadn't made any felties for a while so when I brought the made in felt mag I fell in love with the mermaid and little bear so made both of them for Steph, changing the colours to fit our swap. I added some angelina fibres to the mermaid body for some shimmer.

I also made a little pansy bookmark, nailfile cover and a friendly plastic brooch.

I also popped in some fabric, beads, buttons, ribbon and charms along with some wool.

and a jelly belly candle, tissues and 2 handmade soap I picked up at a craft fayre a while back. My son also made Steph a bracelet. He chose all the beads himself ans put it together, just needing a little help with the findings.

The second part of the swap were summer themed ATC's. It's been about 12 months since I made any but I had a couple I'd stitched already and I made the friendly plastic beach hut and needle felted the ice cream.

This swap wa so much fun to do and I think Steph liked her presents.

Birthday goodies for Laura

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are loving this  glorious weather if you are in the UK. We spent some of Saturday at one of the parks in town at the splash pad. It's a great free activity and is basically a set of water fountains and jets for kids to play in. We went with friends and had a picnic and it was so much fun. I've seen the splash pad so full you can't see a spare blade of grass but  it was busy but not overcrowed so we could easily spot the children coming at us with cups and bottles of water to throw at us!!! Sunday was spent watching the Mens Final of Wimbledon. Awesome match. Go Andy! It got a little noisy in our house with all the shouting!


On to Laura's present, Some of you will know Laura from her blog Strawberry Mouse Crafts and as she celebrated her birthday last week I made her one or two bits and sent them down in a pretty tin and popped in some fun cup cake cases as Laura loves her baking, some chocolate and button tissues.

I added a little bit of stash including some fab buttons (on cards) which I found at an independant card shop in town, a charm pack of fabric and a few other buttons and some felt flower embelishment. The purple theme was all rather by accident than design.

So on to the makes... I stitched this no place like home cushion as part of the Needlecraft Haven monthly challenge. As soon as I saw it I wanted to do it for Laura as she is a big fan of the Wizard of Oz. The design was from here.

I made a friendly plastic brooch set into a metal frame. I really like how the FP looks in these frames.

No parcel would have been complete without a biscornu, so I made this lovely colourful one. The button in the middle is one I brought when I met up with Laura in February.

And personalised the bottom of it...

Laura has been very generous to my children so Thomas made Laura a pincushion, He sewed together on the sewing machine and sewed the buttons on too which were his choice. I also stitched the little piggy keyring from a pattern on Les chroniques de Frimousse. It was easy to stitch but a challenge to sew up!

Finally there was a charm bracelet, with lots of charms that 'are Laura' I have already used the beads to make Laura earrings so now she has a bracelet to match! (Thank you to Steph for some great charm ideas too.) Laura sent me a text to say she loved the parcel so I'm very pleased.

My next big project is a summer swap with Steph. I've lots of ideas so should be fun!!

Thanks for reading

Travelling Box Makes - round 3

So the box has made it's way to South Africa and is now with Cucki so I can reveal all my makes for the box. The travelling box really is a joy to make for so I had no problem coming up with several ideas for it. So below you can see, knitted bunny, satin corsage, bunny scissor fob, flower bookmark clip, heart feltie, friendly plastic brooch and the close ups I'm about to show you...

This was a piece of printed fabric where I crossed stitched over the top of some parts to give a raised effect. I brought the fabric when visiting Laura.

I love making charm bracelets and here is one with some pretty mottled beads. I couldn't decide on the earrings so ended up making 2 pairs!

More jewellery, this time the bracelet was made by my 8 yr old. He chose the beads and pattern and I just helped him put on the clasp and made some matching earrings for him.



So here is a little toadstool keyring bag fob thingie with some glass bead charms. It's from a biscornu chart designed by Steph.



I had to add a biscornu and here is one on some hand dyed linen.

And the bottom, I really love working on Steph's hand dyed fabric and the little mill hill beads worked perfectly as they were a kind of grey with different coloured centres.

I once again stitched on hand dyed linen with another of Stephs fab charts is the wee faerie. This is Wee Plum Faerie and I do love her. She is a joy to stitch and I made her up into a little cushion hanging thingie. Not the best picture I must admit, propped up on some duplp, perhaps haniging from something may have made a better pic...oops!

The other thing I wanted to show you a close up off was the dragonfly brooch I made in friendly plastic using a shaped frame I found in a craft shop, but there doesn't appear to be a pic of it on my camera. you can just see the tail in the picture with the toadstool keyring. I've got a couple of others to try out so hopefully I can show you then.

So just a few more months until the box returns and I can't wait...on with the travelling box round 4 making ideas list!!

Don't forget my Hexagon qiult kit giveaway too, It's open until Sunday. You can find it here.

I shall apologise now if  I have another little break from blogging as most of my projects coming up are secret ones so posts may be few and far between.

Happy crafting friends.

101 update - the 10% mark

Another quick update as it's been about 6 weeks since the last.

Days remaining: 796
Things completed: 12
Percentage: 11%
In progress: 27

So I've done two Craft swaps with Steph (biscostar below) and McKenna - the card is below. I'd not swapped with either of these beofre so that was great.

Completed my 5 crafts off of pinterest boards. (Bauble wreath, Biscostar, CS Lewis bookmark, Crayons , Snowflake feltie)

I've eaten lots of ice cream, I've tried the following Ben and Jerry's flavours - Core berry White, Winterberry brownie, Core Karamel sutra, cookie dough.

I've tried a new craft with the friendly plastic, something I''ve never done before so that was good fun.

I'm still reading lots and you can see my progress in the 50 books challenge. The movies haven't been going quite so well, but plenty of time as I only need about 18 more movies. It's my own fault as I only really like rom coms and some action films, so I do limit the field a little.

My friend Janet is doing the 101 too (I blame her for getting me into it1) you can find her blog here, she'd love some new followers and has some really interesting things for her list.

Thanks for stopping by, I'm off to stitch, after all it is March Madness!!!

Malvern Creative Craft Show

Hi Everyone

I thought I'd share with you my day at the Malvern Show. It's much smaller than the ones at the NEC, but as it's closer to home and as a friend had won two tickets, who was I to refuse a free ticket :-)

One of the main reasons for going was to do the workshops.

The first one was called Magical Effects and the basic concept was to use nylon organza and cut and fuse it with a soldering iron. It was great fun, although I did get a little muddled with my seams! Here is my sampler piece...

The top right was made up using 6 strips of organza and they were cut and fused to form the patchwork. The bottom left was made up two organza squares with organza confetti sandwiched between the sheets and using a metal template the flowers were cut out with the iron. A third organza square was added to the bottom and then the flowers fused back on in the centres. Here is me working on my piece at the show.

The other workshop was with free motion embroidery. Now I'm a bit nervous of things like this, My machining skills are very limited, but my friend Vickie wanted to do this workshop so I decided to go for it. I'm so, so glad I did as it was great fun. We were using felt to make an aplique piece and here is mine.

There were die cutting machines with bird and flower templates and basically we had free reign with the colours and how we laid our piece out. I loved the teacher Jan Linnet's advice - one wobbly line looks like a mistake, two is a design feature, so each shape was sewed round at least twice! Good thing really as my lines were very wobbly. I'm planning on turning it into a cushion for my stitching corner, and will be getting a free motion foot for my machine.  Not bad for an hours work!

Although I didn't do a workshop, I did see a demonstration for friendly plastic and brought a kit.

Here are some of my first attempts. I did it as soon as I got back from the show.

So here is the stash I brough...Felting tops and Angelina

A couple of Mouseloft kits...

Fat quarters, labels, buttons and a little kit to make a quilted needle book (bottom right)

I had a fab day and best I now get saving for the next one!