Baking and icing....

Amongst the many other wonderful birthday presents I received this year, the one that took me most by surprise was the present I received from my Dad, it was a set of beautiful icing flower cutters, but with plungers attached at the top, which means you can cut even the tiniest of flowers perfectly and pop them out with ease!

No sticking to the surface or the cutter, and the best part is if you press the flower onto your palm whilst depressing the plunger it gives you a lovely dimple in the middle which makes it perfect for placing a dragee (shiny edible bauble) in the middle, although they also look very pretty without.


Here is a cake that I made and decorated the other day, I covered the top with raspberries and lots of different sized icing flowers....



I think these would also look great on cupcakes or even cookies, and I have lots more ideas about how to use them, they are so simple to make but look so pretty and carefully crafted, a definite bonus in my opinion!

Love gingerbread....

I cant get enough of gingerbread at the moment, I whipped these up yesterday morning, quick and very satisfying!

Boy Sweater....

I really want to cut off a grey sweatshirt and wear it as a baggy T-shirt, I have been meaning to do this for AGES but haven't yet got it done...

However when I watched THIS beautiful film the other day it inspired me to get on with it!

This is a still from the film of the main character 'Boy' and his grey cut off sweater!

The film is called 'BOY' and is set in 1980's New Zealand and is such a sweet story, I strongly recommend it if you can get your hands on it, the little boys in the film are adorable :-)

Superior frosting....

I have always wanted to make a huge cake with lots of layers and a perfectly finished cream frosting on the outside, however - I have never managed it and just made a lot of mess in the process...

If you have the same problem as me, do not fear, help is at hand!


This beautiful cake was made and frosted by The Whisk Kid and she has very kindly written a very comprehensive step-by-step tutorial so that you too can try and make a towering cake of frosted perfection :-)

Find the link to the tutorial : HERE

Have fun frosting!

Round and round....

I think I have found a new craft to get into....

Circular weaving!

Image by Nothing is New

I have been inspired by THIS post by Tricia of Bits and Bobbins, she discovered a brilliant book called Weaving without a loom by Sarita R. Rainey via THIS post on the Nothing is New blog.

I am ordering my copy now HERE on Amazon! I can think of so many different and lovely things to do with this concept, art, jewellery, accessories, endless possibilities....

BOOM! 1 hr Snood/cowl....

Last night I made a Snood / Cowl for a colleague at work as a thank-you for all her help during Men's fashion week, without her support our job would have been so much harder last week and would have meant me travelling on a grueling two day trip to Milan, which I really didn't want to do!

The design for this snood was really easy and only took me 1 hour, so gratifying :)

It was inspired by *THIS* design, the Around the way Cowl from *Pickles.no* and is just garter stitch on 12mm needles, knit using Lion Brand Thick & Quick yarn (which I bought in March last year in NYC!) and I just kept knitting until it was wide enough to go around the neck, plus a bit more, and then seamed the ends together, I'm calling it the 'BOOM! - 1hr snood/cowl'.

This year I am trying to make more effort with wrapping and presenting gifts for people, so my new favourite thing to do is to use textures from a Jpeg library that my friends and I have built up over the last year, which I then alter or resize in Photoshop and then print out and use as gift-wrap, above is how I wrapped Giulia's snood to present to her today.... I hope she likes it!

Wishlist....

Current faves, all reasonably priced I think (click on the prices to link to the websites).

Matroyshka measuring spoons - £5.50

Glass bell jars - Small £16, large £22

Love birds cushion (although I could definitely make this one myself for a lot less) - £69.95

Mini Patchwork pouffe (another one I could make if I put my mind to it) - £35

2011 inspiration.....Crochet

These pics are my idea of colour and crochet heaven.... this year I intend to :

Make a blanket of many colours...inspired by this beautiful work by Lucy of Attic24

Finish my hexagon cushion, which was also inspired by Lucy of Attic24

Make a crochet covered Ikea stool like this one by block a day blog

Make a Crochet bag like this one from the Japanese book 'Pretty colour crochet & knit goods'

Lucky Cranes

I'm enjoying an origami revival at the moment, when I was younger I was really keen on paper folding and origami, and I had a great book that had pre-printed fold lines which made it much easier!

However, now that I'm older and a little braver I thought I would to challenge myself a bit and try to do more complicated shapes, but one that I had wanted to do for a while was the Crane, because they are so delicate and I can think of so many creative applications in which they could be used, but also because they are supposed to be lucky, as the legend below describes (although I really cant see myself doing 1000)....

"An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy creatures (others include the dragon and the tortoise), and is said to live for a thousand years. In Japan, it is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person's wish come true."

found via Wikipedia : HERE

Darn good....

Last night I darned my first ever sock, it is not a tidy job, in fact it is a bit of a monster, but the socks are the first pair I ever knitted and are full of mistakes too!

Despite this fact they hold a fair amount of sentimental value and I wore them around the house and in bed for a few years before they developed holes in their soles!

Bizarrely I found the process of darning the holes very therapeutic and can once again wear my monstrous socks with pride :-)

I found the tutorial on how to do THIS via the Craft:zine website, it is a collaboration with the Martha Stewart Living editors and has lots of good tips for fixing and embellishing.

Lava necklace....

A while ago I wrote THIS post about The Ultimate DIY contest, and my proposed entry into it....

Now - obviously I did not organize myself well enough to actually send my entry in, but I did make it and have worn it several times since, so thought I might as well show the final product to justify my efforts!

Its amazing what you can do with an extra long shoe-lace, some seed beads and a needle and thread!

Cowling....

The latest addition to the Lucy Knits and crochet collection....

A military style extra chunky crochet snood!

It was so easy to make, I just bought some extra chunky yarn (106 yards / 97 metres / 170g) , a 20mm crochet hook (monster size!) and just crocheted around in a circle through the back loop until the yarn ran out (or until desired length) to achieve a reversible textured snood, one side is ribbed, the other is a nice nubbled texture (as in the pics above).

Coral wristwarmers...

This is a semi-tutorial for a pair of wrist-warmers from an old sweater / cardigan, I was given a beautiful Coral pink cardigan for my birthday a couple of years ago, and it was the victim of an ink stain last xmas whilst printing my gocco cards....

Anyway - I loved the colour of it and it is the softest angora merino mix so I didn't want it to go to waste, and as it was freezing on Friday night it spurred me into action!

So - I cut 2 pieces out of one of the sleeves :


Then I turned them inside out and then flattened them out and stitched down the vertical center of each :


Then turned them right side out so that one side fits into the other and there is a double layer as below :


Et Voila!


Roasty Toasty Wrist-warmers for no extra cost!

felt tipped fabric...

Photo by Valentina Frugiuele, via Ben Trovato.

Today I saw THIS post on the fabulous Outsapop blog, and it has inspired me to have a go at altering some of the plain t-shirts in my wardrobe, it also reminded me of the Ikat design I did on one of my t-shirts last summer, very easy to do!

Weekend stitching - part 2, the packable shopper...

This is a little project I whipped up at the weekend, using THIS excellent tutorial from Craftster.

The beauty of it is that it folds up neatly into the little pouch that I made and fits easily into your handbag without taking up too much space, so should you come across any unexpected goodies to purchase you have the perfect bag with you for such an occasion!

I made mine out of a very strong nylon which is water-proof as well as being relatively kind to your hands, unlike the bog standard supermarket plastic version.

I would definitely recommend making one or two for yourself, I can see these being good gifts or stocking fillers....

Dainty bird feeder....

This is a lovely idea and a very clever tutorial from Cap Creations which uses a teacup and saucer to create a bird feeder for your garden, the saucer acts as the bird-seed holder and the cup as the water holder - the tutorial can be found HERE.

Weekend stitching - part 1, the iPhone case...

Last night I decided to have a go at using the leather awl tool I bought in the U.S earlier this year to make an iPhone cover (mine is shamefully bashing around uncovered in the bottom of my bag or pocket most days).

So - it was very simple to make, I measured around my iPhone, and doubled it length-wise, leaving about 3mm all the way around for seam allowance, drew the lines in pencil on the suede side and cut it out.

Then I folded it in half (end to end) and starting at the top, used the leather awl to punch holes through both thicknesses of leather at a time, about 4mm apart all the way down one side, this makes it much easier to sew through the leather as it can sometimes be very tough on your fingers and very time consuming.

Then I got some thick waxed cotton thread (top-stitching thread would do) and used a medium sized needle to start off stitching it together along the sides (I am not sure of the exact technique I used, I pretty much just made it up as I went along but the correct one to use is Saddle-stitch, which is described very well HERE).

Then I just repeated the same process on the other side, punching the holes and then stitching the sides together and thankfully it came out a perfect fit for the iPhone :)

I realised that I really love hand stitching something together like that (despite its crude artisan appearance), it took me way longer than it should but I enjoyed every minute!

Tutorial : Basic T-shirt overhaul....

Recently I was asked to think on the spot about what I could do to update a plain old grey t-shirt, one that clearly had life left in it but little lasting appeal, and how to make it interesting again.

The following post is my answer, and although it is a very basic solution to a problem that many others would have come up with, it seems to work nonetheless (and i havent seen anyone else do it yet, if there are others out there then please forgive me) this is just meant to be a quick and easy fix, and I thought it would be worth posting up here to show what else I thought could also be added to it to give different looks.

So - here is the very basic tutorial :

Now you have the basic new shape you can do lots of other things to it to snazz it up a bit, like add some military buttons and epaulettes..... here's a little how-to I knocked up for that:

and here is a close up pic

So, there it is, no points for originality but it does answer the question that was put to me and I would find it more interesting to wear than the original, especially as the military theme is so current!