A day out at Portabello Market

I've been doing a few little days out recently and as a friend of mine was over from India I caught the coach up to meet her.

We had decided that we would spend the day at Portabello Road Market so hopped on the tube to get there.  Nice and easy and not too many people until we hit Portabello and then it was packed!!

There are some lovely properties as you walk away from the underground station towards Portabello.

We met this fella along the roadside and he was so colourful that we got photos taken with him!!  This is me with the Mad Hatter!  Very nice happy chappy.

There are some lovely stalls at Portabello Market with some interesting old objects.  I don't think you will get much of a bargain price wise but you will be sure to pick up something unusual there!

These people were also on the pavement!!  It looked very strange as their heads are inside of their coat giving the impression that they are headless.  It looked very real!!

There were lots of lovely food stalls

Look at the different varieties of mushrooms on this stall!  Who knew there were so many!!

We were exhausted from walking so much on an extremely hot day!  My feet felt ready to fall off!  I made my way back to Victoria ready to catch the coach home after a very enjoyable day in London.

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!

Cake International - London Excel

Hi Everyone

My post today is about my trip on Saturday to Cake International at the Excel in London.  I went with my sister who is the cakemaker, you can see some of her cakes on her Facebook page - The Sugar Plum Fairy.  We caught the coach up in the morning from Bristol and then took the underground and the Docklands Light Railway to get to the Excel.  Pretty straightforward and easy to get to!

The show was packed and there was a real variety of ages, both male and female.  I was quite surprised at the amount of men there and not all of them were there to just carry their partner's shopping either!!

Some stalls were 3 or 4 people deep and you either had to nudge your way in or come back to that one later!!

There was a good selection of cake making/decorating items available with some nice offers.  We caught a glimpse of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood and did try later to go and watch their live demo but it was packed and unfortunately the sound quality on the mike was awful and the camera pointed onto them rather than on what they were doing so the TV screens were abit pointless!!  We watched the start of the demo then decided we were wasting our time!!

There were some fantastic cakes and sugar crafting on display there and the cakes that were entered into the competion were excellent.  I've taken lots of photos of the cakes in case you are interested to see them!  If you aren't, then don't scroll down any further haha!!!I tooko the photos with my phone so they are not the best quality but not too bad considering!!

Do you recognise who the one below is???

Well that's the last photo - there were many more cakes but these were the ones that caught my eye!!