Lavender Fragranced Flower Brooches

Hi - I've had a little break from blogging as I haven't been up to too much.  August was a terrible month weatherwise, which, after the lovely hot July we had here in the UK was very disapointing!  We've had alot of rain and wind and most days you just couldn't plan anything as the weather was so changeable.  Lots of summer events were cancelled as well which was a shame. 

Anyway - it's been alittle warmer and is supposed to be 'hotting' up over the next week so this will improve my mood for sure!

I've realised we are getting closer to Christmas and I will need to start making things ready for the Christmas Market that I am organising with a friend!  I really don't know where this year has gone, it's just flown by!

I've been making some felt flower brooches and decided that I wanted them to have a fragrance to them so the middles are stuffed with lovely freshly dried lavender from my garden.  A quick squeeze to the middle of the flower releases a gorgeous lavender smell.   These will be great to put onto winter coats as they are nice and bright and the lavender will keep the moths away!!

These are available to buy over on my Facebook page for £4 each plus postage.

I think I am alittle obsessed with lavender this year!!  I bought a tray of 10 lavender plants last week as they were on special offer at Lidl for only £3 so a bargain 30p a plant!!  I've potted them all up now so just hope they grow into nice, healthy bushes.

More Leather Flowers

Hi - just a quick one from me today.  I have made a couple more leather flowers using the same tutorial that I posted a few days back.  This time I made a petal template that was much shorter than the die cut one that I made previously.  This gave a smaller flower but looked very nice as well.  The finished flower was approx 10cm in diameter.

Here are the 2 latest ones

I've placed a £1 coin next to them to give you an idea of the size.

These are very addicitive and I need to source some more leather scraps now to make more of them!!

You could make these out of card and shape the petals using an embossing tool rather than burning the edges!  I may try this next!!  They would look great on shabby chic items and you could adjust the size of the petal to suit your project.

Lunch at Brick Lane and Leather Flowers

Well we've had a lovely couple of days weatherwise in the South West of England. I caught the coach up to London on Saturday and spent the afternoon with a friend of mine who was over from India.  It was so nice to be able to roam around in the sunshine without a coat.  We did alot of walking and went to Brick Lane for a very tasty lunch in a Bangladeshi restaurant called Aladin!  For non UK readers, Brick Lane was the title of a book set in this area of London written by Monica Ali.  It was also made into a movie and is about a Bangladeshi woman who comes to England after an arranged marriage.  If you haven't read it, it is a nice read and the movie was also good.

Onto crafting now!!!  I have a bag of leather offcuts and they have been doing nothing for quite a while!  I decided to make some flowers using some new Sizzix dies that I recently purchased.

I made some quick and simple ones to start with which will be good to sell at fairs I think.  The one die was used to cut all the layers on the flowers.  I made a few different colour combos and turned them into brooches.

I have another Sizzix die that cuts out 2 different sized petals to make large flowers and I saw a fab video on YouTube which I followed.  My petals are bigger and a different shape but I am really pleased with how the flower came out.  It is very large and a gorgeous vibrant pink colour.  I also made this into a brooch!  I have put a £1 coin next to the flower just to show how big it is!

Hope you like them!

NEC Hobbycrafts Show (November 2013)

Brrrr it is getting very cold.  I've recently bought a pair of those thick thermal socks with a 2.3 tog rating!!  They are lovely and warm and I think I will be investing in a few more pairs for the winter especially with the rise in prices that the power companies have just announced!!

Last Saturday I caught the train up to Birmingham for the Hobbycrafts Show at the NEC.  I went to this show earlier in the year and had a great time.  This time although I enjoyed it, I did feel that there were nowhere near as many demos going on and all the stalls were abit samey.  I particularily wanted some nice Christmas stamps but didn't see any that I liked.  I picked up a few things that I saw bring demo'd.  The first was a Personal Touch Shredder.  This was demo'd by the fabulous Roy who did a great job and made a beautiful flower out of floristry ribbon for me!

This is the shredder device (pic from Create With Ribbon website)

You can buy a cd with lots of different flowers to make but I just bought the shredder for now as I didn't have the money to spend on the cd as well!!  You can buy the shredder here and there are a few videos showing you how to make the flower above and also daisy's.  There is also a fab video showing you how to make beautiful roses from floristry ribbon - you don't need the shredder for that one!  It's worth checking to see what shows Roy will be attending as he demonstrates the shredder very well.  I'm going to make some flowwers to decorate presents with!!

The other thing I saw being demo'd was using the Wow Embossing glitter powders and Wow Melt It as resin in a silicone mould.  I already had a shabby rose mould with 4 different sizes so picked up some powders to try it out.  You can make rings, brooches etc in minutes and the results were really nice.

I found the crowds were alittle too much for me at this show and I don't think I would go to this Christmas show again if I am honest!  I will go to the one earlier in the year though as there was a much better choice of products and some great things demo'd.

Anyway - wrap up warm and invest in some thermal socks!!

Chiffon Shabby Flowers

Just a quick post to show you some gorgeous shabby flowers that I made using some polka dot chiffon fabric.  I have bought a few similar to this but smaller in yard strips but they are not particularily cheap and sometimes not very big.  I had a look at them and thought it would be easy to do my own in patterned chiffon.  I am really pleased with them and they are easy to make!!

I made a few more of them, they all came out alittle different as it depends on how much of the middle you make before doing the outer edges!

I've taken some photos of each step as I was making them and I plan on doing a photo tutorial soon for anyone that is interested!!

**UPDATE**
Shabby flower tutorial can be found here

Spring is in the air!

Time certainly flies, can't believe it has been a couple of weeks since I last bogged!!  It seems Spring is starting to make an appearance and I for one cannot wait for some improved weather and some colour in the garden!!

I've been busy making some things for Mother's Day that people have ordered.

The first was a hedgehog bag charm for a nannie for Mother's Day, in the UK Mother's Day is this coming Sunday.  I've always thought it strange though that it's not mother's Day on the same day around the world!

Anyway - here is the hedgehog bag charm

I've also been making more felt hearts which seem to be popular for Mother's Day as well!!

They look nice all ready in my box to pack up and deliver!!

I have also been playing at making some leather flowers.  I got some scraps of coloured leather the other day and cut out some flowers using a Sizzix Framelits.  I have not stuck any of it together yet but this is how it looks so far!

I'm pretty happy with how this is looking so hopefully once I stick it together and add something in the centre of it and a brooch pin on the back, I will still like it!!

Thanks for stopping by!!  Have a great weekend xx

Jute Twine Flowers

Hope everyone has had a great weekend.  I had a nice day out yesterday at a Vintage Texile Fair.  It's not a huge fair but nice with some interesting bits and bobs there.

I was looking through Pinterest today for the first times in ages and came across this fab tutorial from The Bug Bytes for a flower made from twine.  You could make this flower with any kind of thread so long as it wasn't too soft.  I made mine using thick jute twine.  The tutorial gives a step by step guide with photos, so easy to follow.  You don't need much in the way of supplies, just some card and pins to make your loom and your choice of twine and a large eyes needle to stitch the back at the end.

Here is the one that I made

 

I am happy with how it came out but I may try it with a larger circle next as the twine I used is pretty thick!! You can use any size circle, it's really up to you!!  If you were using thinner twine then you could wrap it around the loom more than 2 times - the choice is yours.  I'm not going to post a tutorial as the one that I used here is great so pointless to do another.  Go and have play and see what you come up with!!

Scarves, Holidays and More!!!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.  We actually had some sun today in Bristol although it was very windy.  I started clearing out some of the huge amount of rubbish that we have in our garage. If we do it abit at a time it won't seem so tedious!!!  We had an old style electric sewing machine which I managed to re-home on Freecycle so that was good.  It's always nice to try and find something that still has some life left in it a new home rather than taking it to the tip!!

I wanted to share with you a couple of new scarves that I have bought recently.  I love scarves and have a large collection of them in all different colours, textures and sizes!  The first one I want to show you was purchased from Tesco, they just had the one and I spotted it by chance!!  It's a lovely turquoise colour with a vintage style rose tapestry print on it.  It goes with lots of outfits as there are many colours it besides the turquoise - red, pink, green and yellow.

The other scarf I bought from Sainsbury, it was £8 and I didn't really want to spend that on a scarf that day!!  Anyway, the next day I saw an advert on tv saying that there was 25% off at Sainsbury so off I trotted to get the scarf for £6!!!  It's a huge scarf, big enough to wear as a sarong if I wanted to!!  It is a lovely maroon/red and has the most adorable swallows/bluebirds on it.

The photos don't show the colours to their best as I've taken the photos at night!!  I'm sure they give you a general idea though!!  For any followers not in the UK these were both bought in supermarkets in the clothing department!

I'm off on holiday in 2 weeks to Malaysia.  We fly to Kuala Lumpur and spend a night there and then fly to Penang the next day for 8 nights and then back to Kuala Lumpur for 4 nights.  I've been to KL 3 times before, it's a great city with lots to do and see and fantastic shopping malls!!  I'm hoping to find some craft/haberdashery shops there, I believe there are alot in Chinatown so I will be having a good look!!

I've been making lots of fabric flowers and have some lovely cotton prints to use.

 I am making them into brooches and hair clips at the moment!!

You can find them over on my Facebook page - Bumble Bees Craft Den.

Well that's it for now, enjoy your Sunday whatever you are doing!!

Birthday Tea!!

It was my birthday on Saturday and I had a lovely day.  I received some nice gifts from my family and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers from a friend which were delivered on the day.

Here are the flowers - they were gorgeous

My 2 nieces made me a card each - I think the 3 year old had a little help though!!  Here are their cards

This is from Issy who is nearly 10 - she has got really good at making cards, I think it's brilliant!

and this is from Lily aged 3

I also received a lovely card and a Survival Kit from Caroline over at Caroline's Crafty Corner. I was really touched to receive it and the survival kit is brilliant and alot of thought went into it.  Thank you Caroline - hope you got my email!!!

Here is Caroline's card

and the lovely Survival Kit which was wrapped up in red tissue paper  

 with a lovely worded tag on it

Isn't it fab!!!!

I decided to have a little teaparty in the late afternoon so I got up and baked some fresh scones

and my sister made a lovely Victoria Sandwich with buttercream and strawberries on the top to finish it off

and some cupcakes with homemade lemon curd piped inside of them and lemon icing drizzled over them

I made the little flags to decorate each cake!!

Here was my little table of food

I also made up some Pimms to wash it all down!

I was really pleased with how it all come out and my family seemed to enjoy it as well which made it worthwhile.  We were able to take our plates out to sit in the garden even though it was a little overcast!!!

Later in the evening - my friend Rhian picked me up and we went to her house and cracked open a bottle of champagne!  What a perfect ending to my birthday!!!!