Not-quite-a-wheat-wheat-bag

So when I made my Kindle covers I had plenty more jumper left over to play with so I decided to make some wheat bags out of the arms; they were super easy, just chop the arm off, sew one end closed and attach some ribbons to the open end so that it fastens and creates a little pouch for a separate wheat bag to slide in.

I decided to make the separate wheat bag as it would then be replaceable should anything go wrong and I didn't really like the idea of throwing the cashmere in the microwave over and over again. It was just made from some white sheeting, stuffed then sewn closed.

I didn't really know what exactly I needed for the filling, 'wheat' seemed a little amiguous so I had a little Google and found that normal rice does the same job (and doesn't go manky like pearl barley does after a while) so my not-quite-a-wheat-wheat bag is actually stuffed with white rice and a crushed up cinnamon stick for a nice smell (I hate lavender!).



Pop the inside bag in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, pop it in the cashmere pocket and snuggle! I made 2 as Christmas presents and I wish I had a 3-arm jumper so I could have made another one for myself! 

Winter Wedding Wonders Part 2

I decided that I wanted to make a card and gift to match my brother's wedding colour scheme, I had the card and loads of leftover snowflakes after all!

The snowflakes and hearts are cut using my Sizzix. 

The matt in the frame is to fit a 5x7 photo so the super shiny-ness of the gold card will be toned down majorly once the photo is covering it.

I'm looking forward to going round and seeing this with a photo of the gorgeous bride and groom to complete it!

Winter Wedding Wonders Part 1

My Big Brother got married on Thursday 1st December, I can't quite believe that after 4 years of being engaged he actually said, 'I do', and it was just wonderful; I may have had a little weep.

The wedding was all gold, ivory and snowflakes, I helped made the invitations back in August, and cut out so many snowflakes I thought that winter had come already, in fact when it started to try to snow yesterday I got flashbacks!

The invitations are little petal-fold wallets with 3 cards inside.

Apparently the guests all loved them and couldn't believe that they were home-made which I always think is a good thing to hear! 

Melting Music

I've been wanting to make record bowls for ages and with Christmas looming I decided that they'd make fun presents so actually got my hands on some old records and went for it!

The beauty of these is that they don't have to be perfect, and each bowl is different. They're also embarrassingly easy to make, just pop the oven on a low heat, get a glass bowl, place the record on top with the label in the centre and leave to melt, it only takes about 10 minutes, and it can be moulded slightly when you take it out if you want to make it more 'wibbly'. If you don't like how it sets, stick it back in the oven and have another play.



I love how these turned out, and I also love that they're another no-spend Christmas present to give out! Of course, I proudly showed The Husband and the first thing he said was, 'There's a hole in the bottom'... 'Well they're for trinkets not cereal!' Tch.

Cosy Kindles!

Whoah... I can't believe how long it's been since my last post! Ooops! I blame my broken camera, where's the fun in showing off what I've been making if I can't post photos?! Luckily I seem to have acquired my Mum's camera for a short period so I've been snap happy!

One of my goals for this year was to make at least half of my Christmas presents and I'm pleased to say that I'm well on my way to achieving that, although it may not work out as quite half, it's still plenty!

So my first present is a cosy Kindle pouch for my Mum... and another for me! I haven't actually got a Kindle yet but I've asked for one for Christmas so I thought I'd be prepared!

They have been made out of an old cashmere jumper that's been lying around for a couple of years waiting to be used for something since The Husband stuck it on a hot wash so it shrunk and went a bit felty, which has been great for cutting and sewing!

I'm absolutely not a seamstress and I'm generally pretty scared of sewing machines so I had help from my Mother-in-Law who helped me make little envelope style pouches with some white sheeting as a lining to give it some structure, I did actually do all of the sewing myself which is very obvious when they're inspected as it's all a little wobbly, I just like to think that it shows they've been made with love if not technique!

I got the idea of making little flowers from watching this video, she does waffle on a bit but I got the gist after a couple of minutes so made it up as I went! 

This one is made using the neck of the jumper so it's really thick and gone quite wiggly, which I really like, I like how the ribbing on the flower matches the ribbing on the pouch (which is from the bottom of the jumper!)

This one is just a scrap of leftover fabric which had been cut with pinking shears which has given it a 'ruffled' edge and a little sparkly jewel I had lying around has been sewn in the middle to hide the mess I made when I tried to sew it all nice and tightly together!



 

And to top it off I've even sewn on little snaps to keep them securely closed!

I'm quite impressed with my little Kindle covers, now all I need is a Kindle to go in mine! Hope my Mum likes hers!



Wedding Scrapbook

I've finally pulled my finger out and started work on my wedding scrapbook, my poor printer doesn't know what's hit it!

This isn't what I'd call a 'real' scrapbook; there's no journalling and few titles, I'm just letting the photos tell the story... I like to say that it's a photo album with embellishments.

This is an ongoing project, I've still got about two thirds of the day left to do but here are a few of my finished pages so far.

I should explain that we got married in the Dominican Republic so I've gone quite OTT with the bright colours in the album!

The Boys before the ceremony:

My parents and me in the hotel room just before we left, the only 2 photos from the room where I'm actually squeezing out a bit of a smile! I was a bit stressed and overwhelmed at this point and the photographer was the last person I wanted to see! I'm not photogenic at the best of times!

 

Here we are saying our vows, the registrar read The Art of Marriage in Spanish and the wedding co-ordinator translated. The page has the Spanish version and the English is on the little pull-out bit. I started to blub the minute I saw my Rich and luckily the best man was prepared with tissues. I did manage to break the scary blubbling bride moment by saying 'Si!' in answer to the 'Do you...' questions!

And here we are signing the register, I managed to pull myself together by this point!

And that's it for now, more to follow!



Getting Organised!

Well I don't quite know what's happened but after months of being somewhat crafty-lazy this week I've exploded into a papercraft machine! It never rains but it pours, eh?! More evidence of this to follow but first thing's first....

I can't remember where I first got the idea for this, but I saw on some clever lady's blog that she'd used a photo frame as a 'white board' style meal planner... so I shamelessly went with the idea and created a weekly planner with a 'Don't Forget' list... which is much needed when you've got a 3 second memory like mine!

This was such an easy peasy project. An A4 frame from a cheapy shop, some messing around in Word and a white board marker... et voila, a personalised planner just for us!



Brownies with a twist... or a swirl!

Wow I've been terrible at updating! Not had much to update though, I've been fairly uncrafty recently sadly. My darling Husband bought me a printer for my birthday in May so now I have no excuse to not print out photos and journalling so I can crack on with my wedding scrapbook, I have bought a load of papers and embellishments, I have an album to put everything in yet... nothing! Ah well, inspiration will hit soon I'm sure!

So whilst I procrastinate on the scrap front I've been focussing on baking, tastes good but may explain my expanding waistline!

A lovely lady (CinnyLoves :-) ) pointed me in the direction of the Carnation website yesterday and my eye immediately picked out the words 'Caramel Swirl Chocolate Brownies' and I proclaimed that 'I am making those tonight!' And I did. And they were gooooood!

I was very proud of the step I took when deciding to make these as the last time I made brownies a few years ago it went terribly wrong and I've been wary ever since. How was I to that the big unmarked tub of white granules was salt rather than sugar?! My word they tasted gross, I couldn't even look at a brownie for a long time after that!

Ingredients:



150g (5½oz) butter
200g (7oz) dark chocolate
2 eggs, beaten
175g (6oz) soft light brown sugar
55g (2oz) plain flour
1tsp baking powder
55g (2oz) walnut pieces (I didn't put these in as Hubby is a bit anti-nuts, the weirdo!)
4-6tbsp Carnation Caramel (Just stick the whole tin in!)

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Grease and line a 20cm (8in) square baking tin.
2. Melt the butter with 55g (2oz) of the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of hot water.
3. Beat the eggs with the sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy, then sift in the flour, and baking powder. Stir in the melted chocolate mixture, and beat together until well blended.
4. Chop the remaining chocolate into rough chunks and stir into the brownie mixture, with the walnuts. Spoon into the tin and spread evenly.
5. Beat the caramel in a small bowl and swirl into the mix. Bake for about 30 minutes, the cake should begin to shrink slightly from the sides of the tin.
6. When cool cut the brownie cake into squares.

These are all kinds of awesome, chewy and gooey and soft and fattening... all you need in a brownie!

Oh, and by the way, I've never encountered the joy of Carnation caramel in a tin before! I could have happily sat and just eaten the whole tin rather than use it as a boring ingredient... but I didn't! Must be growing up... 

Wedding Photo Frame

I thought I'd never finish this... it seems to have taken ages from the initial 'Ahhh this will be a good gift' thought to trekking around trying to find a shadow box frame that doesn't cost the earth (thank you Home Bargains!) to actually sitting in front of this huge 14x14 blank 'canvas' and not knowing how to actually fill it!

Luckily I managed to muddle something together just in time, the wedding is tomorrow!

Hmmm... I didn't realise how wonky it was until I photographed it! Oh well, it looks quaint!

The wedding colours are green and pink so I went a bit crazy with the colour scheme, and the lacy bits are a nod to the wedding dress which is a fabulous lacy number.

The flowers are from Primark, I couldn't believe that I never thought to look there for crafty bits before! I got the 3 flowers for £2 (would have been twice that in a craft shop) and the little 'Love' charm was only £1 too!

The reading on the scroll is part of an Apache/Indian Wedding Blessing which I found out is being read at the wedding, I hope that my super sleuth detective skills are appreciated!

Obviously the big blank green square is a mount for a 5x7 wedding photo to be stuck to, I just hope that they're careful when they're doing it as I'm afraid bits will start falling off!





Crown Crunch Cake

I know I'm a bit late with my round-up of the Royal Wedding, but I haven't really had much time to blog about it over the long weekend... now I'm back at work I can catch up! ;)

Anyhoo... I got a little over-excited on Thursday night and made a biscuit cake which I topped with a crown for the occasion. I was thinking about a Union Jack but I got confused about the best way to create it in chocolate treats, and it's been done (I told myself so I wouldn't feel like a failure) so a crown it was!

I got a little carried away on Friday and dressed up... even The Husband looked slightly smarter than normal... it really did feel like a day to make an effort even if we were just going to watch it in his Aunty's living room!

Even though this is a primarily baking post I've got to gush about how much I loved the wedding! The dress was stunningly beautiful, as was the Bride. I shed a tear as they said their vows; it's so nice to see a couple very much in love and making little jokes during the ceremony despite the fact that billions of eyes are watching and waiting for the slightest mishap. Pippa and her mother looked gorgeous, Harry was comically nervous, poor Camilla didn't know where to put herself when they entered... how does one walk in front of the Queen without turning their back on her?! Plenty of dodgy hats to entertain us during the waffly bits... all in all a good do!

The Husband was upset that Elton didn't sing for them... he said, 'But he's a very Royal character isn't he?'... 'Yes darling, but he's a Queen, not a Royal!'

Back to my crown cake: this has got to be the easiest cake to make, ever! And so so tasty! I just tried not to think about all the butter in it as I was jamming it into my mouth...

I used Sainsbury's basics for the chocolate and biscuits since it was being crushed and melted together; we couldn't tell that I'd used the 'cheap' stuff at all. The only thing that was branded were the Maltesers and they're blinkin' pricey when you think about the fact that you can get the rest of the ingredients for the same price more or less as a pack of fun-size bags of those little balls of yum. Do any supermarkets make own brand versions of these?

Recipe
For the Milk Chocolate bottom:
400g Milk Chocolate
250g crushed Digestive Biscuits
200g Unsalted Butter
4 tbsp Golden Syrup
175g crushed Maltesers

For the White Chocolate top:
250g white chocolate
50g Unsalted butter
1 tbsp Golden Syrup
50g (ish? Whatever's left from the multi-pack of fun-size bags!) crushed Maltesers

Melt the milk chocolate and butter together, add the syrup, biscuits and maltesers then squish into a cake tin and pop in the fridge. It should be a swiss roll tin, but I don't have one so I just stuck it in my trusty round tin. There was a little too much so I had to eat the leftovers whilst it was still warm and gooey...

Clean the bowl and start again with the white chocolate, syrup and butter. I had planned on doing it properly using just the chocolate but I had 3 fun-size bags of Maltesers left and couldn't sprinkle them on top since I needed a clean slate for my decoration, so I crushed them up, chucked them in and hoped for the best. It turned the beautiful white chocolate an odd pale brown. Ah. That's why we don't add milk chocolate to white, duh! It did actually work out well though as I'd stupidly bought white chocolate buttons to decorate, not thinking that white against white wouldn't show up... so I meant it to turn that odd pale brown colour! Yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Add this to the top of the milk chocolate layer... eat whatever won't fit... pop in the fridge for a bit to cool slightly.

Whilst the cake is still a little warm add the chocolate buttons so they melt ever so slightly and stick to the cake. If you're like me and have a scary obsession with silver balls, throw on as many as you can get away with in the name of decoration. Back into the fridge and wait impatiently until you can eat it!

Here's a close up of the finished product- see what I mean about the silver ball obsession?! I think it makes it look more regal... I don't think Aunty-in-law was too pleased when they ended up all over her kitchen floor though! Teehee.

I had intended on getting a photo of it once we'd cut into it to show the lovely layers but by the time I'd thought, 'Ooh I'll take a photo' it was gone, so it must have been good!

I am definitely making this again; maybe for my birthday to bring to work. What to put on the top though? Suggestions?

Anyone for a desktop tea-party?

Following on from my pretty calendar to brighten up my desk I was truly bitten by the making-stuff bug last week and made 3 more desk brighten-upperers!

(See what I mean about the grey in the background?!)

The first is a cupcake pen-holder. It was really easy to make, I made a simple box without a lid from chipboard card and covered it in pretty paper (downloaded for free from Papercraft Inspirations) and lined it with white card, both for extra strength and to give it a nice finish.

To make the cupcake I used my build-a-bun stencil from Craftwork Cards (I didn't actually pay £3.50 for this! It came in a goody bag with lots of other lovely bits!), both parts were cut out of chipboard card for sturdiness. The bottom was covered in more PI paper and pink ribbon on the front and the same paper lined the back so the exposed part that can be seen from behind looks as good as the front.

I used the stencil as a rough guide for the top of the cupcake but made it look a little more swirly. I covered the front in white card and used crayon for the detail and pink chalk to colour it in, using shading around the detail. A few pretty brads made the sprinkles and a button with a sparkly brad stuck on made the 'cherry on top'. To cover the 'legs' of the brads I covered the back with more PI spotty paper.

My pens sit quite happily in here and it looks a 'treat'!

To make my desktop tea party a little more complete I added a 'slice of cake' post-it holder. This was much more fiddly as it involved making a pretty tricky box, using 2 layers of chipboard card for strength, which was then covered in (more!) PI paper. The white spotty paper is the sponge, the pink check is the icing and the pale brown and pink ribbon are the filling. Some little flowers and brads make pretty cake decorations.

The final addition (so far!) is just... pretty (pointless?!) I was given some awful black plastic file holders to go on my desk and since I just couldn't stand the thought of yet more black cluttering up my desk I drew around the end of the file holder (onto more chipboard card, I love that stuff!) and quite simply used more PI papers cut into strips along with some pink ribbon to create a bit of a sunburst shape, with another of my lovely flowers in the corner to hide where all of the paper and ribbon meets. It just blu-tacks onto the file holder so I can't get told off for damaging company property!

I'm starting to like sitting at my desk much more now that it's a little more me, I wonder what I should make next?!

I love my Calendar Girl...

I have a dull desk at work. So dull it makes me feel about as gloomy as my surroundings, all grey, beige and black. I haven't been here long- only about 6 weeks- so I haven't yet covered my desk in the usual junk that you acquire over the years, little teddy bears, donkeys, corporate freebies... I'm trying to refrain from cluttering my space with junk just for the sake of hiding the grey. I've decided to take a craftier approach so this will be the first of several work-related projects. 

One of my colleagues gave me a calendar 2 weeks ago to stick up on the little partition between my desk and another but guess what colour it was! That's right, grey! Well, I'm not having that. I refuse to add yet more grey into the mix.

Canon Creative Park is a fantastic resource for free printables, they have all sorts from scrapbooking papers to ridiculously intricate looking 3D paper models (seriously, how maddening would these be to make?!). They also do a big range of calendars which is where I downloaded mine from. Each month is either pale pink, green, yellow or blue which ties in nicely with the papers I had picked out. I didn't notice until I'd finished that along the bottom of each month there was a bright red Canon logo, not really what I wanted! So I took a centimetre and a half off the bottom of each month, dug out the pack of co-ordinating stickers that came with the papers and chose the least cheesy saying to stick over the logo on the bottom of December since I'd had this marvellous idea of sticking the last month onto the backing card. I quite like the sentiment though, I've been feeling a little out of my depth at work as everyone seems a little robotic here and not terribly friendly, I like looking at that and remembering to just be myself!   

I'm not a hugely flowery person but I love the big pink and purple flowers on here, and the snazzy green brads. I'm fairly sure everything is by Papermania, I hope it is because I want more of the flowers and the spangly brads in different colours and I'll be gutted if I can't find them!

I love my new calendar, it makes me smile when I see something so pretty that I made, a shock of colour in the gloom. I've got at least two more ideas for fabulous things to make for my desk now... it isn't going to know what's hit it!

My first real craft project in a year!

Last year I had a bit of a craft hiatus, I just seemed to lose my mojo and it made me sad. I tried, I planned projects, dug out the materials... stared at it all then put it away again! The only crafting I did last year was wedding related, and it felt more like a job than a pleasure; I'm so glad to finally have all that wedding madness behind me and to use craft as an escape once more.

One of the things that has been festering in my drawers for far too long is a wonky cardboard heart that I bought from a craft fair about 4 or 5 years ago. I'm sure it was from Art From The Heart but I can't find it on their website, no surprises really since it was bought so long ago! AFTH by the way is a fab shop for papercraft supplies that have a bit of an edge. I miss their little shop in Harrogate but I know that they've got a workshop so I'm really going to have to go one day for a class and a bit of shopping.

Anyway, back to the heart! Last night something struck, I think it was inspiration. I used a Fiskars edger to get the ever-so-slightly wobbly torn strips of paper (because I don't actually believe that I can free-hand tear anything without just plain ripping it into shreds!) and pretty much just dug about in my pots of 'stuff' to decorate it.

And of course, even though the back will more than likely be to the wall and won't actually see the light of day... I still had to decorate it!

It might not be perfect, but it stands for something beautiful, which is that my Crafting Groove is back Baby!

So I've finally joined the 21st Century...

Hello! Welcome! Bienvenue! Bienvenido!

All the cool kids seem to be blogging nowadays so I've decided that whilst I'm definitely not cool, I'd give it a go anyway, I always seem to be the last one to cotton onto the latest trend (Twitter still astounds me... maybe I'll bite that bullet too!) but I really have drag myself into the 21st Century and stop moaning about when 'I were a lass people didn't talk about themselves on that there internet'... I'm only 25, I have no excuse!

I'm not entirely sure what this will become... a diary, a crafty show-off spot, a place to gush about beauty products, bags and shoes? Who knows, certainly not me!