Christmas Hampers

 So I know I've totally missed the boat for sharing christmas things at an appropriate time but I thought I'd share them anyway. To save a bit of money this past christmas as we were saving to buy a house we decided to make most of our christmas presents and turn them into a hamper.

 Some homemade limoncello that sat brewing for weeks making our kitchen smell amazing!

Homemade coconut ice, had to make a spare batch for us to taste test of course!

 

 Snowmen and christmas pudding 3d cards for everyone.

 One bagged and tagged hamper ready to go. 

It contained:

• Homemade limoncello
• Homemade coconut ice
• Homemade rosemary shortbread
• Homemade chocolate honeycomb truffles

Apparently next year I need to include a christmas pudding in each hamper as we didn't this year but our family tried one I made and it went down a treat!

Weddings, weddings, weddings

 I've had a spree of wedding card orders recently so I've been trying out new designs to try and find one that suits as many colourschemes as possible... and here's my new design...

 Simple yet elegant and versatile that it lends itself well to all the colours I needed to incorporate to it.

A colourful bit of ribbon and some funky shaped buttons are all the card needs to help it pop and make it different from the others.

 Even a subtle bit of personalisation with the couples names up the side just to make it that little bit different and special for the recipients.

Now to come up with a new design before the next bunch of wedding card orders come in!

Sewing Box Renovation

So I'm back again now that we are all moved and settled in to the new house, finally a house of our own. Thought I'd share a project that I 'had' to finish before we moved otherwise my OH was going to throw it away as I hadn't got round to finishing it. 

 

It's an old sewing box given to me by a friend... it was a little sad looking, old battered dark stain and a few broken bits... shame I never took a photo of the before state, didn't realise till I had sanded half of the box down :(

 After fixing the broken runners for the drawers I removed the metalwork and cleaned them up a bit. The inside of the drawer and the inside of the main section looked rubbish after removing the old tatty fabric, after much sanding down it was finally ready for spraying in an awesome colour called heirloom white.

 I thought the base deserved a nice bright, bold piece of fabric to make the inside pop. Love this tulip print fabric, never found a good use for it so this is the perfect start for it!

 So after a week of renovation this lovely bit of furniture deserved its place in the removal van and now it lives in my craft room where you see it as soon as you walk in :)

More friends getting married...

This seems to be the year everyone is getting married, been to more weddings and receptions this year than in my life up till now!

 This time it was the wedding of a couple of my OH's school friends.

The idea for the alphabet photography surname presents actually came about when we got invited to this wedding early this year... we just happened to go to another friends wedding before this one and thought the surname frame was an awesome unique present that we made for them ourselves...

 

This wedding is the reason I'm now hooked on hunting out letters everywhere we go. Got quite a little collection of letters now so hopefully I can start taking orders on them soon... if only I could find some Cs, Ds, Gs and Ps!

Wedding gifts for our friends

 Back in August 2 of our friends got married so I took to making them a personalised card and gifts to match their colourscheme. The wedding colourscheme was sage green so I took the green as the main colour for the card and added sage ribbon to the flags.

 I'm in love with my SLR camera it's still a pretty new toy to me so I loved playing with it to make this present! Inspired by the alphabet photography we bought ourselves earlier in the year I decided to give it a go myself to make really personal presents.

All of the 'letter' photos have been taken on our travels. Our friend's surname is OAK, k really is not an easy letter to find! The O was taken in Amsterdam, the A in Puerto Banus and the K in Sabinillas, Spain.

Last but not least I made them a pair of celebration flags. Just married on the front with a sage green bow, their names and the date on the back. Love how versatile these flags are, I think I'd have them as part of the guest favours should I ever need them :)

Plenty of Purses

 There's been lots of purse orders over the last few months, certainly kept me busy!

 Black lace with hot pink cotton lining

Midnight blue lace with silver satin lining and hot pink lace with silver satin lining

These cute ones are doubling up as prayer pouches too.

In July I completed a Hen Do order where everyone got a purse with a personalised hen night label inside. The wedding colourscheme was midnight blue and ivory so I used that for the purses. This is the Bride's purse, she got the full size purse with scissor zipper pull as she's a hairdresser.

The rest of the hens got the smaller size purses which still fit in a pair of reading glasses or credit cards, keys and lippy.

Ivory lace with midnight blue satin lining

Smaller version of the brides purse, midnight blue lace with ivory satin lining

And here's the completed Hen Do order all together

Card Orders

 Been a long time again since I last posted but it means I have a lot of things to share... So I'll start with all the custom cards I've made in recent months.. some as orders and some we gave to our friends and family.

40th birthday for a friend

 

1st birthday for an order, colourful with bob the builder layered up

Order for a little boys christening card

Wedding card order for a couple mad on the London Irish rugby team

50th birthday order, hand drawn Harley Davidson with a butterfly incorporated into the paintwork

Daisy birthday card for our friend daisy

Nautical theme birthday card for my Grandad

30th birthday card for a friend who wanted to forget his age

Tuxedo wedding card for an order

30th birthday card for an order, dj decks with a Jamaican colourscheme

Dino birthday card for my boyfriend's birthday

MIL's birthday card

18th birthday card order for a judo mad lad

Wedding card for some of our friends whose colourscheme was midnight blue

Gift Exchange Time Again

So once again I've been a terrible blogger I know but finishing my degree kinda took over life... but now..... IT'S OVER !!!!!!! Back to blogging and crafting freely once again :)
To get myself back into the swing of things I signed up for the Gift Exchange over at Craftaholics Annonymous which I've done before, but this time there's a twist the person I'm making for doesn't make something for me, somebody totally different does so it's a bit more of a surprise for everyone!   My partner told me she liked bold prints, buttons and vintage things, with purses bags and scarves being on her list of loves.... so I've made her a zipper pouch using vintage butterfly print fabric with black satin lining and a flower brooch made with some vintage trim... all from a vintage retro fair last summer. fingers crossed she likes them and they arrive safely soon :) 

    

Ladies Night Stall

So a few weeks ago I did a stall at a Ladies Pamper Night at a local preschool fundraising event. Thought I'd share a few photos of how my stall looked.

 

  Managed to get myself quite a few useful props as well to make the table a little more interesting... the glass top jewellery box and the vinyl record display stands I used for the sweets.

 

 The sign made by the guys at work came back out again and I even whipped up a quick 'find me on facebook' poster to hang from the front of the stand as my business cards were made before I started the facebook page.

 The most popular item by far had to be the homemade chocolate truffles and coconut ice.. they went down a storm and the display stands got quite a few compliments too... well impressed that my £3 make was so well received... not bad for some charity shop vinyl records and end of line candle holders!