pistachio and honey frozen yoghurt

finally!!!! i have an ice cream maker that works : D it is sooooo happy making, and just the thing to celebrate the end of exams with. i thought i'd start with a frozen yoghurt as i'm trying to be a little healthier this summer (not like proper healthy, but a tiny tiny bit healthier than before), here's the result:

this one is really easy, i made some alterations to a different nut recipe, it's just a big pot of low fat yoghurt, half a pot of clear honey and a small bag of crushed pistachios, mix, put in machine, wait, eat, mmmmmm.

also, i've no clue as to who the cup belongs to, it's just part of the house, which is quite nice i think.

eurovision in 41 minutes!!!!

i am soooooo excited! i've not got much planned, but some folk are coming over so i've made my eurovision score sheets and mini flag bunting (i had to look up lots of the flags so feel as though i've learnt something today).

there's a reason people don't embroider tea bags

i'm thinking i'm going to sell out this summer and as such have created an etsy shop. i was going to embroider tea bags - they're cheap, and small so the embroideries wouldn't take much time and i figured they might be just twee enough to be really successful. here's my first trial run:

you might be noticing the flecks of tea all over the blue card? yep, sticking needles in tea bags makes the tea fall out, who'd have guessed? i'm so gutted though! i was going to sell pairs of these heart tea bags as 'tea for two' and charge way too much for them.....time for plan b.

mustache glasses

so there i was, trying not to panic about tomorrows exam, and then it hit me - i could be using this time productively; i could be making something cool out of my flatmates graze box cardboard. and i did:

glasses with mustache attached! cardboard+black pen+gold chain=awesome. all i did was cut out the shapes, make little holes with a pin where ever chain was being attached (i used single bits of open chain to hinge the sides on) and spent 5 minutes with my pliers fitting it all together. it does look great on....but like i said - exam tomorrow, why would i have left my pyjamas today? so a pretty tin is sporting them for you instead

dress 4 of 7: charming dip dye dress

i'm still 'learning' egyptian hieroglyphics, and i wanted to try my hand at dip dying one of the h&m dresses so i combined the two : ) i dyed the dress purple and sewed a green patch to the back which says to charm in hieroglyphs- here's the result:

dip dying was more tricky than i thought it would be....my carpet got a little splashed! in essence all you need a plastic bag with no holes in and some string (plus dye and the thing you want to dye, obviously) and you protect the bit you don't want to get dye on, in my case the bottom, inside the bag which you've fastened by tying string around it. to dip die you dye a bit, then protect a section with the plastic, and then dye the remainder, then tie a bit more off inside the plastic, and repeat until you're happy. i only got to do two levels as i got a phone call mid way through (telling me i got the job at hobbycraft! yay!!!) which meant that i was super happy but also that my dress had been in the dye too long and wasn't going to get any darker....so more layers was out of the question. but it still looks goooood! to finish i added the patch on the back and a belt from the 60's : )

problem; we've run out of bread

solution; bake bread!!

i just followed the easy white bread recipe on bbc good food and added my flatmates unwanted graze box of seeds to it : ) sunday morning well spent me thinks. though as usual i was impatient and took it out at the earliest possible moment, so it's a bit doughy in the middle, bit still very nice.

tiny make up bag sewing kit

oooooh i don't think my 101 things will take quite so long as 1001 days...thing number two - i've made myself a little sewing kit to have in my make up bag in case of emergencies:

i'll confess i copied the pattern from a wedding favour you can buy on etsy - lovely idea though it is i'm pretty sure i'd never spend that much on wedding favours....anyways, i had some felt left over from a christmas project, sewing bits i cannibalised from previous, now incomplete travel sewing kits, some card and some pretty papers i was given as a gift. 10 minutes of cutting, sewing and glueing later and voilà  - a sewing kit.

first attempt at macrame

as per my list i'm learning new stuff! today i went for a macrame bracelet in leather thong with wooden beads:

it was really easy, i found a tutorial that had pretty good pictures and just followed them: macrame tutorial. the beads were a christmas present from my dad (dad; "what do you want for christmas?" me; "beads!" dad; "um, ok...") next time i think i'll use silk cord rather than leather as the leather is pretty hard to tie off and tuck in, and the inner cord was so thick i had to glue rather than tie the beads on the ends, but otherwise i'm quite happy with how it all went.

bee themed patchwork quilt

i've always liked the idea of patch working but never seem to get past the smaller projects, but no more! i've started, and am determined to finish, a hexagon-tiled bee-themed blanket. fabric with bees on is actually quite rare so i foresee much painting and embroidering in the near future : ) here's what i have so far:

i'm being a bit lazy, though i am sewing it all byhand, i haven't bothered with tacking them to paper. instead i've been drawing around my template on the reverse of the fabric, matching up the lines and sewing them straight out. these 5 took me an episode of miss marple to get through....yes, i have become an old lady prematurely....no, i don't mind!

potentially lucky bird charm bracelet

sunday before last i posted 'bird earrings!' explaining that due to a bird themed charm bracelet in progress i had lots of birdy left-overs...at long last i think the bracelet is finally worthy of wearing:

.there are beads and a feather, beads shaped like feathers, bits of kinder egg toy and a bell - all charm bracelets need a bell. i think i shall wear it to my hobbycraft interview tomorrow to discover whether or not it's lucky : )

the paper mache pig that was not

so i've been to two caleighs in the last week - at some point i ended up taking a balloon home...obviously it got paper mached! it was to be a piggy bank, a beautiful work of art with loo roll tube feet and nose and a plucky, optimistic expression. it went badly wrong when i realised that i had run out of white paint - i thought that perhaps if i paper mached a white layer and then painted very watery red it would come out pink. i was wrong, not about the pink bit - the colour was fine, but i had to make the red so watery that i had to do many layers, i was impatient, it got soggy, it fell apart, i was sad.

so i made a very quick homage to that piggy bank in the form of a cardboard box covered in ripped up origami paper, paper covered bottle top nose and pokey up card ears. he still has quite an optimistic expression and he holds money, so it could be worse : )

strangers with drink-carton wallets

it was my last day of work last saturday. one of the customers during my last shift took out her wallet to pay and i went "o! that's an interesting wallet, i think i was drinking the juice that comes in that carton last night!" i think she was rather amused at my reaction to her purse as she gave me a spare that she had on her, one she made form a soya milk carton. it was very sweet of her : ) and following her pattern i made my own:

there are a few different examples online of carton wallets (there's even one with instructions by the people at disney which made me smile) but this one looks like it is simpler than all the rest - simply flatten a carton, letting the sides fold inwards, cut a flap at the top and fold the rest in half. then all you need to do is use two paper clips to hold the two halves together, puch a hole in the flap and attach something stretchy to it - the lady used an elastic band, i used gold strechy thread. i modified her patttern slightly as i noticed that the cardboard bunches when it folds at the bottom as the card is quite thick and there are essentially 8 bits being folded together - so i cut out a strip of card on the inside of the major bottom fold, a sort of drastic kind of scoring a fold if you get what i mean. it made it a bit neater anyway, though it will no doubt only last a week or so i am very much looking forward to using it and having shop people comment on it like i did.