home appropriate earrings

i'm going home in a couple of days and cannot wait! however, there is a small problem in that my mother doesn't like that i wear miss-matching earrings...i thought that maybe if i made some small and marginally ladylike odd earrings she might not mind quite so much:

they're quite small and understated - the flowers are tiny charms from a new range of jewellery making stuff at work (a la mode), which i added some silvery/pearly beads to and attached to ear wires. i'm thinking that if i team one with a little pearl stud or a tiny enamel butterfly i might get away with it : ) 

clothkits skirt : )

i had my eye on these kits at work for a while, they're a tad pricey but it was pay day and i had staff discount and all so i got one. it took a grand total of an hour to make which was ace, the only problem was the sizing- i cut out the 10 to pin and try on, thinking that i could maybe take it in a bit at the waist, only to have to take it in by about 3 inches all the way around! i thought maybe it was an american thing but no, they're just very generous with there sizing. anyways it has a cool print and was easy to do so yay:

crochet octopus fascinator headband

no doubt my workmates will think me rather silly tomorrow - but i've got a 7am start, and i'll be damned if i'm doing it not wearing something silly on my head to cheer myself up! i finally found a good, free crochet pattern for an octopus and i had a spare blank headband...so naturally i put the two together with some dark blue netting, grey recycled wool, two black beads and some toy stuffing : ) oh i hope i get to go to ascot one day!

third time lucky - patchwork quilt

i've had a few goes at getting a patchwork quilt done over the years, so far all have failed. but this one, this one is going to get finished...honest:

the squares are only 11cm by 11cm and i want all of them to be different, and i want the blanket to be large : s this could be a challenge! i also don't want to buy fabric especially for it as that's totally not the point of a patchwork quilt. wish me luck/give me cool fabric squares!

awesome customised-with-hermes-wings shoes!!!

a very wonderful friend of mine cooked for me last night, let me stay on her sofa, and gave me a pair of shoes. the shoes now have tacky padded lycra gold wings on them:

i happened to have a gold bandeau bra that cost me a pound from primark (it was worn once as part of a fancy dress thing) i did not foresee it ever coming in useful but am very glad i forgot to throw it away as the fabric and the padding are what the wings are made from : ) i simply sewed them to look like wings and glue gunned them to the shoes- taking care to make them even.

finally doing something with some old embroideries of philosophers

way, way, way back i got it into my head that i'd make a huge patchwork blanket with alternating squares of pretty fabrics and embroideries of philosophers....i did 4 embroideries, 1 of which was descartes (naturally he got binned). but now they've got pride of place on a blank patch of wall : ) i glued them to card and stuck a felt frame on top:

mint chocolate monocles!

i have the best new cook book ever!!!! ok, the actual 'cook' bit of it is a bit underwhelming, but everything is so pretty! and awesome!

.....my first rather sleepy post-work attempt at biscuits without any of the right tools didn't all go quite totally to plan - but i now know that you can melt sweets (in this case mints) in the oven to make 'glass'! oh the possibilities!

anyways, here are my rather rugged chocolate biscuit monocles with peppermint glass and strawberry laces rope:

next time i shall make sure to put enough smashed mints in each one - the 'glass' in some of them was a bit holey.

getting ideas from mollie makes freebies

i got the make-your-own luggage tag freebie in the last mollie makes magazine, and it got me thinking; there is stuff you can do with tiny amounts of scrap fabric! you see the kit contained two small squares of fabric along with a thin long bit and a small piece of acetate. that's all! and it made this:

now i have an overflowing bag of fabric remnants left over from old projects that just keeps increasing in overflow, and i keep seeing cool remnants going really cheap on ebay....so i think i may do some little sewing posts some time sooooon : )

felt sugar skull garland

so there i was, browsing the felt sugar skull garlands on etsy and when i thought that i could do better/not spend £15+ on something someone else made which i could easily make myself.... here's the ressult:

they took a whole lot longer than i anticipated, but they're so cute! i simply cut out skull and flower shapes in felt, embroidered the skulls and attached the felt eye-flowers with beads and stuff, made them pretty, backed them on yet more felt and attached them to a ribbon. they're presently making a corner of my room a lot less dull : )

pretty mini notecards for a friend

it's finally happened - i now have more cards than people to write to. arg! but it's ok, i have a cunning plan (i was watching black adder while making these), anyway, the idea is that i palm them off on people who might have a use for them. here's some i'm sending to a very tasteful friend from back home:

holmes cameos

so anyone who's been in my room will know that one half of it is ace and looks very much lived in, and the other half is imposingly blank. it's the blank half that i see when i sit on my bed, so i eat, sleep, work, make things and watch iplayer with hideously uniform blankness starring me in the face. here's my first attempt to rid myself of this plague:

they're paper covered canvases with cameos of my 4 favourite sherlock holmes actors on : D

i actually was trying something i was taught at work; i got some £1-something-before-staff-discount-canvases, and covered then with really pretty paper, and then stuck my cameos on top. to do the cameos i turned the brightness on my laptop right up and traced photos straight from the screen (i had a friend over who showed me how to do this - it seems totally obvious now that i know you can do it!)

after all that i just stapled them to a thick piece of ribbon and hung it from my wardrobe door.



tardis ukulele!

it was my friends birthday a couple of days ago, at first she said "get me a ukulele!", but then she text to say "forget the ukulele, make me something." but i'd already decided to give her my old ukulele.....so i painted it a bit like a tardis:

i gave my self like 20 minutes to get this done - there was a lot of panicking and hair-drying paint to speed up the whole process, but it's actually ok. more 'arty' than 'accurate' but i can live with that, and hopefully the birthday girl will learn to play the ukulele now - because that would be ace!

harry potter and star wars felt finger puppets

oooooh i'm such a big kid! i made these by gluing bits of felt together, and then sewing the fronts to the backs : ) i hope my kid-siblings appreciate the effort! here are the harry potter ones for my sister:

and these are the star wars ones for my brother:

r2d2 is by far my favourite!

distressed little notecards

yes, that's right, i've been making more cards....but to my credit i've managed to send most of them off to people now so it's not like i have a back log or anything! anyways, here are some of the little ones i made using stamps and old book pages and stuff: