Birthday surprises

Hey folks,

I'm very excited to be able to reveal the birthday presents I made for Rachel (visit her blog here). As you know we met up at the NEC earlier this month and I took with me the presents I'd made here, She was very good and only opened one as we needed the scissors. I'm not sure I'd have managed to wait 3 and a half weeks though.

So as you can see I made her a biscornu, matching scissor fob and keep and a keyring/bag charm. The biscornu pattern was from CSC 200 and came with one for the scissor fob too.

And the back, both have clear, silver lined seed beads on them, which show up a little more in the close ups. The thread is one of my favourites and is an Anchor varigated called Harlequin.

I used design elements from the pattern to make the scissor keep and backed it with pink felt and edged in the same pink ribbon used on the fob. I did also pop in a small pair of pink embroidery scissors for Rach too. They all have these gorgeous glass like buttons in the centre that I found at my local sewing shop and absolutely love.

I had the smallest biscornu left over as it was a pleasant mistake lets say! Hubby gave me the idea of a keyring and using ceramic 'icing' beads from the Brighton Bead Shop, made it up as I wasn't sure what to do with it at all.

There were two other gifts in the bag (Pink and spotty of course). One was a box of Turkish Delight and a little felt heart with a cute little wooden heart shaped charm. I forgot to take a pic of this so will get Rach to post one later.

I also made little sweet bags for her boys to put on the Christmas tree with their initials on. The alphabet was from a recent Cross Stitcher.

This week I've been stitching things for exchanges, I did a card for Laura on Monday evening and stitched a humbug last night which just needs beading and making up. That's the plan for tonight.

Christmas Fayre fact: I used 480 buttons to make the 164 decorations and brooches!!! more fayre facts on the next blog. Can you guess how many metres of ribbon it took?

Well thanks for reading, Have a lovely Wednesday. xx

NEC Hobbycrafts stash fest!

Hi Everyone,

I'm sorry it's been a while since my last blog, but I promise they'll be more frequent again now that I have all this new stash to play with and plenty of Christmas makes to get on with. Welcome to my new follower Danielle, I hope you'll pop back from time to time.

So yesterday saw me on the 8.24 train to Birmingham International armed with a coffee for the Hobbycrafts and crafts for Christmas show with my lovely friend Rachel (who's blog you can read here) We saw so many gorgeous creations, idea's for cards and stitched designs. So here goes for my picture heavy post showing all my new goodies.

So there it is all laid out. The peel offs are all Christmassy ones as we saw some fab cards made with them. I didn't think I'd be buying peel offs in a month of Sundays  but I ended up with 9 sheets of them. The A4 sheet is for paper embroidery so I thought I'd give it a go. there are various brads and buttons. I paid 50p for 2 packs of 5 snowflake embossed card blanks. Also in there are a corner rounding punch, and some wire mesh ribbon from Ribbonbox. The bottom 10 images in their gallery are all made with this amazing stuff. Look out for my creations over the coming weeks.

Rach and I found this gorgeous satin tag printed ribbon on the first stall we went to. I'm looking forward to making some fab cards with it.

The spotty ribbons look great fun and the one on the right co-ordinates with the ribbon tags too.

A few little handmade by tags to use with my work and the little heart sums up how I feel about chocolate too.

These gorgeous glass beads were hard to resist and I'm looking forward to making a necklace with these.

My very lovely wooden buttons from Button-it. As you can see i've started colouring in the snow man using Gel Pens. These will go on the filigree hearts and become some gorgeous handmade decorations for my tree. I may order some more to make some for my mum too. Thomas is keen to help me do it too.

My obession with beach huts continues, and well spotted Laura there was a giraffe too!

More pots to make some stitched cards.

And lastly some mini buttons and a lovely little label too. I've realised there isn't a pic of the filigree heart but they are on the button it website and very pretty indeed. I brought 5 so I can make some lovely decorations.

We did stop for a coffee mid afternoon at the Weatherspoons on site as we were fit to drop. It was a great chance to have a quick look at the stash and plan our next move. It was only when we went back did we discover the wire mesh ribbon and saw the demonstration. Rach and I were gobsmacked by what you could do with it.

My last picture is of one of Rachels birthday presents. You'll have to wait until December for the rest of the pics as Rach wanted to keep the rest for her birthday. The design is from Cross Stitch Collection 200, although I did alter it somewhat to make the scissor pouch.

Thanks for reading and allowing me to share my stash fest with you all. I hope everyone is well and getting stuck into their crafting.