Strawberries Anyone?

Hi everyone! Well anyone fancy some strawberries? I know I do, but these one's aren't edible I'm afraid, although they have been making me hungry whilst I make them!

This is my latest beading project - strawberry earrings!

They've taken about 6 hours to make and were much more fiddly then the brooch I did last month, but still great fun and they never cease to put a smile on my face when I look at them. Now I want the matching necklace pattern but that's a wee bit expensive and I'm meant to be saving money at the moment, so I think it's going to be on the christmas wish list from my brothers (but who knows - if i'm bored and unemployed it may be purchased before to save me from loosing my marbles!)

Hope you like them! thanks for looking and happy crafting! x

Wedding Cake!

Morning all,

Now before you all jump to the wrong conclusion - no I'm not getting married, I'm still single thanks lol! This cake was a request by a colleague of my dad's who mum and I have made numerous birthday and graduation cakes for in the past. Her son is getting married on a budget this weekend and she asked mum if she could make the cake any cheaper than the ones in the shops - the other issue was it had to be a sponge cake! eek...... well mum's an ace when it comes to cakes (although she disagree's every time someone says that) and she said she'd try and make it all for under £100. Oh! and the theme was cream and gold :S seriously, not fun when it comes to decorating - I assure you.

Once again she came through- it came to £94 near enough with 3 flavours of sponge at the bride and grooms request:bottom-chocolate, middle-lemon, top-vanilla. And everything is cream and gold - even the wires!

 The cake in all its glory

 The top cakes flowers

 The middle cakes flowers

The bottom cakes flowers

The flowers are all made from Sugar Paste - so they're not edible but assuming they're looked after they should last forever. Now the reason i'm showing this off, other then i'm so proud of my mum - is that I made all the teeny tiny fantasy flowers whilst mum made the roses. Now please don't be fooled by the size of them - there is over 150 of them on all the cakes and they took me 7 hours in total to make. In the same amount of time mum had made the the first 3 layers of all the roses.

Anyway, I hope you like it - I do. Mum's freaking out because she doesn't think its proffessional enough *rolls eyes* but hey!

I'll be back next week with some cards and hopefully one of my other projects i'm working on too.

Take care and happy crafting!

Twit - Ta - Who?

Morning all,

I hope you're all well, I thought I'd share with you some little cross-stitched owl keyrings I've been making for the church bizarre. I have another couple that aren't made up as I need to find some suitable backing fabrics to match their colours but i'm sure these four will give you an idea of them.

They're about 5cm tall and soft and squiggie! Perfect for your house keys which - if they're anything life mine - always end up and the bottom of the bag and are almost impossible to find unless attached to a big keyring.

Each one took me two evenings  after dinner to stitch (so about 5 hours in total) and another hour or so to make up as everything is hand stitched together. I just need to add their tags and work out how much we should ask for them and this is one more project finished.

I've been asked on a few occassions now if I ever sell the things I make independently and until now the answer has been no, as i've not ever had enough interest to warrent doing so, but if there's anything I make that you would like to purchase, drop me a line and we can discuss it.

Thanks for looking and happy crafting!

xxx

A Magical Birthday Card

Hi Everyone, I'm finally back on my blog *wait's whilst everyone recovers from shock*

It's been a while, I know - things are still hellish around here. Nan is still desperately unwell and I'm unemployed in 6 weeks :S again! grrr!

But rather than dwell on the negative, I finally got around to making a friends birthday card and it's all about Harry Potter - she's the same age as me (mid 20's) and one of the biggest Harry Potter fan's I know. It was the perfect excuse to use the magical trio from Tiddlyinks, throw in the knarley tree [which reminds me of the whomping willow] and a border from the steampunk victorian range and this is what I came up with:

The image is coloured with promarkers and I added some leaves cut from SU paper, using my cuttlebug dies. I added some sparkle with star dust stickles and that was it. I kept it plain so that she could keep in on display as long as she wanted - as it isn't clearly just a birthday card. I hope she likes it and I hope you do too.

Take care and see you again soon (I hope)
Happy Crafting! x

Beading Mad!

Morning all,

Well life carries on in it's typical railcrash fashion, bouncing from one thing to the next. Work is busy (for all we have a serious lack of visitors) and we've gone from one event - William Murdoch's Birthday Picnic -and heading on full steam to the next - Napoleonic Day [bank holiday monday] and then we'll bounce over the hill of a weekend on to the 3 days of heritage open weekend! Tiring? oh yes!

Nevermind. It wouldn't be so bad if free time wasn't currently split between visiting my nan in hospital - where the only change in her condition is the fact she's developed kidney stone! *sigh* and when i'm not there i'm busy job hunting! As unemployment is rapidly looming. If I can't get work soon I was thinking I may try and sell some of the things I make but I'm just not sure anyone would buy them..... must get my thinking cap on.

But my latest project isn't for sale - this one was all about me. I recently visited the spellbound bead company in lichfield for some findings, for various projects i've been doing for the church bizzare. But whilst I was there I fell in love with some of their projects. Now as i've never beaded in the sense of making jewellery with beads I thought i'd start with something middle of the road and choose a really sweet brooch pattern. I finally got around to making it up on monday and 4 hours later I was left with this:

I was really pleased with it and as i've got enough beads to make a second one (I think) i'll be making another one up just as soon as i've got the pin and larger beads for the centre of the design. Not sure what I'll do with the second one yet - most likely it will end up being a present though.

Hope you all like it and I promise I'll try and get round to making some cards soon!

Take care and happy crafting

Glove Puppets

Evening all!

Just a flying visit as i've not been making cards recently (see previous post) but given the number of hours i've been sat in the hospital or unable to access my card supplies has meant i've been getting a whole series of cross-stitch projects for mum out of the way. More on those another time.

Talking of mother dearest, I thought i'd share her latest project as they're sooooooo cute! Every two years, our church and other in the diocese send out teachers to our sister church's in Malawi, where they run a 4 week programme with local teachers there. The aim is to help them improve their teaching (as most of them are volunteers) and provide them with the materials they need to improve the children's lives. This year, we were asked for supplies for primary school children - amongst the plee was the request for glove puppets. And so 20 of the following designs are on their way to a new home and we're making more to send out in the container shipment in the new year.

That's all for now, hope you like them as much as we do. For those who have been asking after my grandmother, there's no real change and we're looking at weeks before there is any improvement. Thanks for all your messages and i'll be back soon I hope x

Diamond Wedding Anniversary Party + Update

Morning all, I'm so sorry that I haven't done this post until now, I really did mean to but life's been a bit hectic recently.

So anyway! on Sunday 24th August we celebrated my Grandparent's Diamond Wedding Anniversary with a 3 course dinner for 50. Mum and I did the cooking, the decorations, the inviations..... yeah the whole lot - with the exception of the flowers which my godmother (and mums cousin) came to help us with.

We were given the use of the church hall for free and as it has a catering standard kitchen we were well away. We started to set up on the Saturday with the flowers. It was a hoot - my godmother did the 4 massive arrangements in the same time mum and I made 7 table centres.....LOL! oops.

There were 3 of these in total in each of the window spaces

My Godmothers stunning arrangements - the pictures don't do them justice

After that mum and I went to get some balloons we had ordered and arranged the tables and chairs. Afterwards it was onwards to the shopping for all the vegetables and ingredients for the deserts. We spent Saturday afternoon baking castle sponges, making a huge lemon cheesecake, prepping all the vegetables and getting the raw ingredients for the soup starter ready.

Sunday rolled round and at 7:30 mum was at the church hall, heating the oven up for the beef. At 8:30 I arrived with dad to do everything else. I laid the tables with their centrepieces, diamond scatters, menus and the blasted favour boxes!

Now I've made these bird boxes many times before, but these were the bain of my existence. My grandparent's wanted them to look like green finches..... eek! so to start with sourcing the card was a nightmare. Then I had to cut them all out, emboss them and stick them together..... only they wouldn't stick! extra strong double sided tape, didn't stick! superglue, also failed to stick - in the end I had to resort to a hot glue gun and still some of them were looking a tad dubious when I laid the tables! I was not a happy bunny.

 Top table

 Table from my grandfather's seat and the nightmare bird boxes

The centrepieces and diamond scatters

The whole hall

After this it was just the work of cooking! eeek.... well actually it went really well and the menu was:

Salmon and Prawn medley or Minestrone Soup to start, Roast Beef or Chicken in a white wine and dill sauce with all the trimmings and seasonal vegetables, followed by desserts, cheese and crackers and coffee/tea and biscuits.

And then, if that wasn't enough - mum had made her parents a rich fruit cake to cut and people still ate slices of that too..... (where they found the room I will never know).

The roses on the flower are sugarpaste and not that you can see them very well but there are further diamonds studded into the sides of the cake.

All in all it was a wonderful affair, although given I spent the whole thing serving people and running round like a headless chicken it didn't feel like it at the time! LOL!

So that's the end of that, sadly though on the wednesday after this event my grandmother suffered another massive stroke and has been in hospital ever since (hence the lack of any blog updates). She's stable but as this is at least her 7th stroke (actually I think it's her 9th according to her records) the affects are horrific and its a waiting game to see how things play out.

Now that you're all up to speed I hope you don't mind if my blog updates are few and far between over the next few weeks. There's not much I can do, but I do feel that I should visit her or at least run errands for my grandfather in my free time, so that's what i'm doing.

I hope to have some crafting to share with you soon, but please be patient!

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!