Cosy laptop!!

After looking around for various ideas and projects I came across the idea for a laptop sleeve! After helping to make another beanbag I used the leftover fabric and some fleece to create a design to fit my laptop in!! Very easy and simple and I love it lots!! My laptop is now very cosy and happy too!!


After the success of the door stop I decided to make my granddad one as he was just saying he needed a new one! So I made a simple cube with inner and outer layers to keep the sand in. I found some hessian for the outer layer and I think it gives it a great look!

A hard afternoon of crafting!

The other day myself and Jenny sat down to do some hardcore crafting! We set out to make a couple of button cushions and a couple of door stops!

After much fiddling, prodding and some very wonky circle cutting we finally got our sewing machines to work with us to create the cushions!!! My cactus pin cushion came in very very handy, and as you can see he has new colourful pins!!

After finally sewing our not so circular circles (they have corners you know!) we chose our fabric pen colours and drew our button shapes on! We like to think the slightly odd drawings add to the crafted look! On to the door stops! After making the inners out of a thick, sack material (and nearly forgetting to leave holes) we filled them with sand! We then made the covers using some material, mine was an old pillowcase from Ikea! After some fiddly sewing (I blame the cushioned handles) they were finally finished!! I was in jenny’s words ‘beside myself’ with my finished door stop and still am!! It even holds the fire door open! Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing!
We are having far too much fun doing all these wonderful things, we may have to extend the list and never return to uni!!

What a great day!!!

Well after a great day we finally covered a couple of sketchbooks with some fabric that jenny bought from folksy recently. They are lovely and we are so pleased! Thanks to the wise craft blog for the idea!! Watch this space for some covered with our own fabrics!!!

On to what has been a great day!! We visited the lincolnshire show for FREE! Loved the gorgeous weather, picnic and general shopping!! We purchased some cactus and succulents from this stall, we love the square pots! After walking an incredible 5 miles today we have had a brilliant day!!!

These are possibly the best ever finger puppets!!! Lama, monkey, tortoise and lion!! Only £1 each and they were for charity! Brilliant!
After the cactus purchasing we decided to repot some of them, and i gained a prickly pear!! This is my decking which is slowly being taken over by plants and the occasional bean bag! Im loving it more and more!

Our garden is being taken over by poppies at the moment, they keep popping up everywhere including in the path!Finally I thought I should mention our recent obsession, UNO!!!!! We have played several versions but this is by far the best! Feel I should also mention the genius game of pictionary, you would never know we were art students by the state of those pictures!

Quick crafting

Just a couple of new shrinkles i made this morning before going to work!

Sunday fun!

Well I feel I’ve had a very productive day and had a very special visitor! I have named him Henry and he is now my hedgehog!!! I have included a picture but shortly after this was taken he crawled up and onto 2 bin bags, had a good root around then feasted on the food I left out!! He then toddled off down the path home!! He’s a night adventure hedgehog!!

Another wildlife spotting today, while Nathan was at the yard he came across a blackbird nest! These are some hungry babies!

I have made a couple more shrinkles today and a smaller cactus pin cushion but have mainly been drawing! The small grey patterned pieces will be used as patterns for rings, the large green piece is one of my succulents and I threw in a raspberry for the fun of it!

Excuse the above photo, for some reason its uploading upside down! Here is my mini cactus pincushion, in possibly the best craft box I have ever seen!! I bought this yesterday from Boyes and I love it!!!! Here are a few of today’s drawings! Hope to create new patterns from these, and already have ideas of what to do with some of them! New pieces coming soon!!

recent crafting fun!!!!

Well I think I have finally figured out the best way to place photos on my blog! Just in time to add all these new crafty activities!!

A while ago myself and fellow blogger jenny thought about making bean bags. After much thinking and many many bags of beans here is one of three I made using material from IKEA! (It is also waterproof and much cheaper than buying one!) The other two are half this size and are currently furnishing our living room/conservatory! They are so so comfy and but you can’t get out of them! This is my sister enjoying the giant bean bag!!

I have had a brilliant couple of days for furniture buying! Managed to get a bargin table and chairs from ebay, it even extends to seat 10. Dinner parties and mega crafting sessions here we come!! The covers for the chairs were slightly dirty so we decided to dye them green! A bit of a strange choice but we love them!

I also found this table in a charity shop for £3! It does need some work but its solid! My boyfriend has managed to make this look like the most retro table ever by potting my succulents in my green glasses! I think there’s a green theme happening!

On to the crafting!! Jenny has recently reintroduced me to the world of shrinkles!! I have defiantly become addicted to making various things using my pattern designs! Imp so pleased to have something to finally do with my drawings that I could possibly make money from. I have even managed to dome a couple of pieces! There are also a selection of rings at the bottom made using the same material and my pattern designs!

Here I have attached three of my patterns to a chain, very quickly done so not too great but just wanted to see what it looked like. I quite like it but think I need smaller jump rings. I think I will try and repeat the same pattern but smaller and with more pieces.

Finally I have made a cactus pin cushion!!! This was also inspired by jenny and some amazing pictures on flicker!!! I do need a bigger pot and hope to try a more complicated design soon!

More final ruff's!!!

More ruff designs!! I ended up doing so many i'm struggling to choose my favourites!!

Final Ruff Designs!!

Here are just some of the final designs for my year 2 project based around the Edwardian ruff. I thought I should get these up at some point, I'm very pleased with the way they have turned out, and many thanks to my friend for modeling for me!!

Screen printing!!

Well after many months, days and hours of uni work I have finally finished my second year!!!!! As scary as knowing that my third year is just around the corner I am also very excited as I can finally play with my screen printing kit I bought ages ago!!!!!

So after cutting out some stencils, the easiest and best way for beginners, I finally had a go! These are my very first attempts and I’m very happy with them.

I hope to try the more complicated options over the next week so should have more soon!! Will also be attempting to build a clay oven in the garden tomorrow which should be fun, will hopefully post a pic of the finished oven on here if all goes to plan!!

guilding!!!

Well after the success of my cotton linter embossing I thought about guilding the embossed pieces!!

These have turned out really well, even though I did have problems trying to find a polish that wouldn’t get soaked up by the paper!!!

Hope you like them, I’ve just got to find something to do with them!!!
P.S. I will be adding some pictures of my ruffs soon!

Cotton linter experiments

After experimenting with making cotton linter for a while I have been using my drawings to create patterns to emboss on to it. I have been using stencils cut out from foam board to create the shapes I want.

The other pieces have been moulded around antique cake tins to get that great fluted shape. I hope to create some kind of jewellery line from layering these up, but I need to look at strengthening them first!