Another Knitting Bag

Making Mothers Day presents is not easy when your Mother is also a bit of crafter...but she's not really one for making things with a sewing machine so making her a bag is a good choice. She's into her knitting at the moment and apparently stashes her knitting in a carrier bag when she's done for the day...can't have her doing that.

For Mothers Day I made her a knitting bag to stash her unfinished projects in, using the tutorial over at Emmaline. I've used this tutorial previously to make my Nan a knitting bag for her christmas present, here's the post if you want to see it again.

This time I used a pair of circle handles rather than twisted rope effect, just means the bag will look totally different to my Nan's bag. The fabric is different too but I wanted to experiment and see how it would look using different handles as it changes the shape of the top of the bag.

Once again there's a pocket inside with one of my handmade labels sewn to it.

Hopefully Mum likes her new knitting bag and it shall keep her knitting safe in a more stylish manner than a plastic carrier bag.

 

Mothers Day Cards

 Here's this years Mothers Day card design in a 3 different colourschemes. 

Each card uses:

• Pistachio Pudding ink
• Gumball Green ink
• Stippled Blossoms stamp set
• Sweet Laughter stamp set

This card used:

• Coastal Cabana cardstock
• Coastal Cabana ink
• Bermuda Bay ink
• Basic Rhinestone Jewels

This card used:

• Strawberry Slush cardstock
• Strawberry Slush ink
• Pink Pirouette ink
• Basic Pearl Jewels

 This card used:

• Blackberry Bliss cardstock
• Blackberry Bliss ink
• Wisteria Wonder ink
• Basic Rhinestone Jewels

Hopefully everyone liked their Mothers Day cards too.

Vintage Plane Cushions

 Last October I bought this gorgeous vintage aircraft print fabric from a craft show and I was going to make cushions from it straight away.... 6 months later I've actually got round to making the cushion cover I planned to do...well in the end I made 3 as the new cover made me hate 2 more old covers on our sofa cushions.

I used the tutorial over at Craftaholics Anonymous to make my cushion covers, you can get to it by clicking here.

This cushion used to be a plain coffee colour with a couple of applique birds I added to it years ago, safe to say it looked a little lifeless and sorry for itself so I whipped the cover off and measured it up ready for it's new fabric.

 The tutorial is easy to follow and they really are quick and dead easy to make...well as long as you're paying attention when you pin it all together and don't sew it together with a right side facing a wrong side, then not realising the mistake till you turn it out... Had to unpick it all and start again but that will teach me to pay more attention when I'm pinning... 

Please say I'm not the only one who has those days were you sew the wrong sides together?

After putting the new aircraft cover on the cushion then throwing it onto our cuddle chair I realised the 2 cushions on the main sofa also looked awful, the brown and red leaf pattern just seemed so out of place. So I ran off to my fabric stash and cut some more pieces out to whip up 2 more covers.

20minutes later this is how our cushions looked....much better..and I still have more of this fabric to play with but I think it may become a handbag for me as I've just bought an ace set of handles that need a purpose.

I'm thinking cushion covers could feature in 2015's presents for friends and family..simple, stylish and personal...something they won't be able to buy and that most of them don't know how to make themselves.

March Card Club

 Here's the cards we made at March's card club. This month it was all about the stamp set Flower Shop.

Card #1

We used:

• Lost Lagoon cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Lost Lagoon ink
• Pumpkin Pie ink
• Hello Honey ink
• Gorgeous Grunge stamp set
• Flower Shop stamp set
• Petite Petals stamp set
• Pansy Punch
• Petite Petals punch
• Basic Rhinestone Jewels
• Petite Pairs stamp set

 Card #2

We used:

• Blackberry Bliss cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Mossy Meadow cardstock
• Blackberry Bliss ink
• Smoky Slate ink
• I Love Lace stamp
• Flower Shop stamp set
• Bird punch
• Pansy punch
• Basic Rhinestone Jewels
• Scallop Oval punch
• Petite Pairs stamp set

 Card #3

We used:

• Hello Honey cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Hello Honey ink
• Tangelo Twist ink
• Gorgeous Grunge stamp set
• Petite Petals stamp set
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Flower Shop stamp set
• Basic Rhinestone Jewels
• Pansy punch
• Petite Petals punch

 Card #4

 We used:

• Whisper White cardstock
• Mossy Meadow cardstock
• Mossy Meadow ink
• Pumpkin Pie ink
• I Love Lace stamp
• Petite Pairs stamp set
• Flower Shop stamp set
• Petite Petals stamp set
• Pansy punch
• Petite Petals punch
• Basic Rhinestones Jewels

Next m onth it's all about the Happy Hour stamp set!

 

February Card Club

 Just realised I never shared February's card club pictures... We used the Celebrate Today photopolymer bundle so we had the stamp set and the matching dies to play with.

 Card #1

We used:

• Whisper White cardstock
• Pistachio Pudding cardstock
• Pistachio Pudding ink
• Baked Brown Sugar ink
• Glimmer Paper
• Celebrate Today bundle
• Stylish Stripes embossing folder
• Itty Bitty Star punch

 Card #2

We used:

• Crisp Canteloupe cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Crisp Canteloupe ink
• Glimmer paper
• Celebrate Today bundle

 Card #3

We used:

• Coastal Cabana cardstock
• Coastal Cabana ink
• Smoky Slate ink
• Glimmer paper
• Whisper White cardstock
• Celebrate Today bundle

Card #4

 

 We used:

• Strawberry Slush cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Strawberry Slush ink
• Sweetheart punch
• Glimmer paper
• Celebrate Today bundle
• Hearts embossing folder
• Confetti Heart border punch
• Happy Hearts embossing folder
• Itty Bitty Heart punch

 I'd best get writing the post for March's card club now too!

February Birthday Cards

 There's a few birthdays in the family during February, I already had the women's cards covered as I have plenty of girly birthday cards made up ready to send...it's just men's cards that are awkward. Why are cards for men so difficult to make??

My Dad's birthday rolls up first so I thought I'd have a play with my new stamp set from February's card club. Really like the set and it's easy to make it look like a masculine card too.

I've used:

• Celebrate Today stamp set
• Balloon Framelits dies
• Real Red ink
• Marina Mist ink
• Pacific Point ink
• Daffodil Delight ink
• Baked Brown Sugar ink
• Early Espresso ink
• Dimensionals
• White cardstock
• Yellow cardstock

  Then it was Baz's so I thought I'd use a humourous set from last years SU Sale-a-bration goodies.

 I've used:

• Real Red cardstock
• Baked Brown Sugar cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Real Red ink
• Memento black ink
• Baked Brown Sugar ink
• See Ya Later stamp set
• Decorative Dots embossing folder

 That's it for birthday cards this month but there'll be more Celebrate Today cards from this month's card club being shared soon.

White Chocolate Cashew Cookies

I've never tried a recipe from Lidl before but they shared a recipe the other week for white chocolate cashew cookies and they looked too good to not try. Really easy to make and they taste really good.

 

Here's how to make them yourself if you fancy a go too:

  

Ingredients (for approx. 25 cookies)

• 200g butter
• 125g sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 200g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100g cashew nuts
• 150g white chocolate

 Method

Whisk the butter, sugar and salt until creamy. Add the egg, flour and baking powder to the mix. Coarsely chop the cashew nuts and the chocolate, and add two thirds to the dough. Mix the ingredients together and use a tablespoon to make small circles of dough on baking paper on a tray. Cover with remaining nuts and chocolate then bake in a pre-heated oven at 175°C for approx. 15mins. Let them cool on a grid.

Decopatch Penguin

 I said there would be more decopatch to come, low and behold there was a penguin that had to be done to join the many penguins in my study. The MDF Man wasn't at the latest craft show so I didn't manage to get any new things to decopatch, only left me this little penguin to work on.

 This penguin is made of papiermache, rather than mdf like all the recent projects have been, it was on sale in hobbycraft so had to be purchased. The paper was a bargain too, a giant roll for only £1 and there's loads left over so I will have to find myself something else to decopatch with it.

 I'm going to take a little break from decopatch for now to work on all the knitting projects I've got going/really want to get started on....oh and studying for the aircraft type course I'm on till the end of March.

Decopatch GHD box

Another decopatch project...this time I took the box from my new GHD's and decopatched it with a roll of turquoise flower print paper. The paper was only £1 from Hobbycraft and it covered the whole box and lid withn a teeny bit left over.

It's now my work in progress box beside my desk for cards I've started working on or stamped images that haven't yet found themself a card to go onto. Quick, simple and a great reuse of something that would have only been thrown into the recycling.

Learning To Arm Knit

 Last weekend Mum and I went to the Creative Crafts Show at Sandown Park and we came across a lady at a wool stall demoing arm knitting. We had both seen videos of it before but never seen somebody doing it for real so we were very intrigued to watch her do it. After watching in amazement for 5 minutes at how quick and easy it was to do I decided to get myself some wool and have a go for myself.

Here's a photo of me just getting started...I realised it was a little too loose after this photo so quickly undid it all and started again, only took a couple minutes to get back to this stage so it's really not hard to correct mistakes. I started with 2x 200g skeins of chunky wool and double knitted them, the chunkier the wool or more strands you use the better the scarf/cowl will look at the end.

I used the tutorial video here for quick reference to remind me how to arm knit.

About 45minutes later I had a fully finished cowl that I could wear with pride. I originally planned to make a scarf but the video showed how easy a cowl would be so I changed my mind.

 Really is quite a long, perhaps a little too long?

 Here's me looking a totally proud idiot wearing my new chunky cowl... I even wore it out that evening when we went to the cinema to show it off!

I even have enough wool leftover that I could probably make a snood/single loop cowl for a gift for someone else.

Learning To Knit

 The other month at a craft show I decided it was time that I needed to learn to knit...everyone else can knit and makes me lovely knitted gifts yet I've never ventured beyond knitting the ribbon scarves.

So it took me quite a while to actually start knitting, I tried looking up how to cast on but failed epicly every time I tried so I had to wait till the next time Mum came over, which was a couple of weekends ago...although it wasn't an easy lesson to learn as she's left handed and I'm right handed so it was a tad confusing to start with...Finally we got me going on a friday night with a G&T.

This is how my scarf looked by the end of Saturday evening, not bad for a few hours knitting and a few mistakes I had to take apart and correct without it all unravelling.

An hour or so a night and a spot of diy in the house later... by the Wednesday night my scarf was finished and ready to wear.

It may be just plain, simple Garter stitch but for my first crack at knitting properly with wool I'm very impressed.

Check back over the next week or so as I'll have more knitting projects to share.

January Card Club Pt 2

 January card club part 2 was all about using Serene Silhouettes and trying out some new techniques.

This card needed a lot of drying time before we could put it together so we started the workshop by doing the background. The background was made by inking up an acrylic block with 4 different colour inks, spritzing the block with water then pressing it onto cardstock.

 We used:

• Very Vanilla cardstock
• Real Red cardstock
• Real Red ink
• Tangelo Twist ink
• So Saffron ink
• Lost Lagoon ink
• Decorative Dots embossing folder
• Memento black ink

 The next card we tried out the emboss resist technique.

We used:

• Marina Mist cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Soft Sky cardstock
• Colour Collections DSP
• Pearl Basic Jewels
• White Stampin' Emboss Powder
• Marina Mist ink
• Petite Petals stamp set
• Petite Petals punch
• Stylish Stripes embossing folder
• Sponge Daubers
• Modern Label punmch
• Word Window punch

 Then we did another messy background technique using daubers and vellum.

We used:

• Very Vanilla cardstock
• Memento black ink
• Night Of Navy ink
• So Saffron ink
• Marina Mist ink
• Wild Wasabi ink
• White vellum cardstock
• Blooming With Kindness stamp set
• Sponge Daubers

The last card wasn't difficult as such, just fiddly to get the unched holes to align with the embossed stamps.

 We used:

• Very Vanilla cardstock 
• Word Window punch
• Modern Label punch
• 1 3/4 circle punch
• Bitty Butterfly punch
• Gold Stampin' Emboss Powder
• Pearl Basic Jewels
• Gold Foil Sheets
• Project Life Corner Punch

Next month's card club is all about Celebrate Today and the Balloon Framelits dies.

January Card Club Pt 1

The first card club of 2015 turned out to be a crafternoon just the 2 of us as I was the only one who wanted to do the daytime class, gotta love shift patterns where you get odd weekdays off to make the most of everywhere being quiet.

Suriya had a couple of gifts for me to play with. With one of them I made the cards below.

I used:

• Washi Tape Note Cards Kit
• Elegant Butterfly punch
• Bitty Butterfly punch
• Strawberry Slush ink
• Good Greetings stamp set

I also helped her whip up some desktop calenders to post out to her customers wanting catalogues... I even got a calender to take home too.

Now onto the cards and things we made.

I used:

• Sheltering Tree stamp set
• Strawberry Slush ink
• Daffodil Delight ink
• Wild Wasabi ink
• Early Espresso ink
• Whisper White cardstock
• Itty Bitty Accents punch
• Dazzling Diamonds glimmer paper

Then a simple card to practice some Blendabilities colouring skills.

I used:

• From The Herd stamp set
• Baked Brown sugar cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Memento black ink
• Coastal Cabana Blendabilities
• Old Olive Blendabilities
• Daffodil Delight Blendabilities
• Smoky Slate Blendabilities
• Skin Tone Assortment Blendabilities

Then we played with a stamp set and framelits that I'm getting as part of one of February's card clubs.

I used:

• Celebrate Today stamp set
• Balloon Framelits Dies
• Bow Builder punch
• Itty Bitty Accents pounch
• Hello Honey ink
• Rhinestone Basic Jewels
• Cherry Cobbler ink
• Tempting Turquoise ink
• Tempting Turquoise cardstock
• Whisper White cardstock
• Basic Black ink
• Dazzling Diamonds glimmer paper

Then we made a gift bag to use up some retired designer papers and embellishments that had been lying around forgotten about.

I used:

• Linen Thread
• Cherry Cobbler ink
• Sheltering Tree stamp set

Every card club at Suriya's comes with a challenge card to do, this month is was to make a card using the Lotus Blossom stamp set from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. I do love a challenge card and I really love this stamp set, can't wait for mine to arrive! Here's my challenge card.

I used:

• Whisper White cardstock
• Hello Honey ink
• Pumpkin Pie ink
• Basic Black ink
• Mossy Meadow marker
• Wild Wasabi marker
• Sheltering Tree stamp set
• Bow Builder punch

January Card Club Pt 2 is next week and I'll be collecting my February card club kit to have a play with early too.