Wednesday 30 March 2011

Coming Soon.....

Free doughnut plushie pincushion tutorial hopefully will be up sometime over this weekend!!!

What you will need

1 square of brown or doughnut coloured felt (approx 9"x9")
1 square of icing coloured felt of your choice (approx 5"x5")
2mm seed beads or bugles of your choice (approx 10g)
2-3 good handfulls of toy stuffing
1 beading needle, 1 sewing needle
Cotton thread to match the colours of your felt (or you can use a contrasting colour)
Fabric pen or pencil
Scissors
Printer and 1 sheet of A4 paper to print out template

(not suitable for small children)
Can't wait!!!!!
xxx

Saturday 26 March 2011

London adventures and other news

We arrived safely back from London! It was so exhausting fitting all of it in, and missed a couple of places, but we can easily see them again. We arrived at Victoria bus station on Monday afternoon and headed for the Tate Modern, took a look at the surreal exhibit as well as some photography and pop art. Called into their cafe and had something quick to eat, we also ordered cola which arrived in these beautiful bottles:

How neat are they? very Victorian chemist! We then made our way to the hotel and grabbed a bite to eat at Pizza Hut! Tuesday was an early start with a tube to Oxford street and the a pop into Carnaby street. Its the first time I've been there and seen the Irregular Choice shop! Oh, the shoes are amazing there, but couldn't justify buying a new pair of shoes so instead, picked up these cute earrings from the store:

Itty, bitty teapots! They had some lovely accessories! Very kitsch! All the Fun of the Fair was on the list to visit so we headed there, and I picked up a little mother's day gift (Can't show it here yet) and a couple of little somethings for me:


I love amigurumi, as you all know, and couldn't resist the carrot rattle. I also bought myself this pin badge with an applique cup cake, I love the style of it, quite similar to Quentin Blake. It now lives on my boyfriend jacket. On the way from here we saw this cool cake shop selling Candy Cakes:




They're so colourful and fun! Didn't get to try one though! :(. A quick stop in Hamleys led to these pics:


I have a love for life sized stuffed animals, they just make me happy. One day, I'd like to have a stuffed farm.

We then spent the rest of the day in Camden and went to the show we'd booked to see called Ghost Stories. I love horror and scary stuff, but this really scared me, to the point where I didn't want to go to the loo by myself afterwards. But still, it was excellent, and I would highly recommend. Wednesday I asked Mr Catherine to take a picture of the delightful cakes in the bakery window in Covent Garden:



How stunning are these? They just make me want to sew, sew, sew!!! And the glossiness is gorgeous! We popped into the Artbox where I got these cute notepads:

And then we headed back to Victoria, and then on the coach home.....after a bite to eat...of course!


In other news, I have a picture of the Arctic Roll I've recently made:

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, I think the colours and textures were spot on. I also had a delivery this morning from Fred Aldous, Can you guess what I'm going to make from it?:

Lots of things on the go at the moment, but it's all top secret! I'll show you when the suprise is done!!!

Friday 18 March 2011

Finally Friday

Finally it's Friday, I've only been in work 3 days this week but it has really dragged! Hope you've all had a good week?

Yesterday I discovered Toffee magazine , whilst reading Twinkie Chan's blog. Its a PDF Indie craft magazine from Australia and looked awesome, so I bought a copy for the equivalent of £1.87 (excellent price) and downloaded it to the ipad for a good read on the sofa!

It comes with a craft section for printout (this issue had craft papers and projects to use them in), as well as other tutorials on different indie crafts, interviews and features. I really enjoyed it, especially the eco friendly projects and suggestions, it is definitely a turning point in modern crafts. The interviews were also inspiring from people who have turned their crafts into a business and how. Check it out people!

In other news, Mr and I are off to London for a couple of nights next week and I'm really looking forward to it. On the agenda is:

A visit to All the Fun of the Fair craft shop in Soho.

Coffee at this cool looking place: Prufrock Cafe, so steampunk, I might die of delight!

A visit to the Tate Modern, I love the surrealist exhibit there!

An evening of Ghost Stories at the Duke of York theatre. I love scary stuff!!

Possibly a visit to Camden, a toy museum and the National Gallery

And whatever else takes our fancy! But can we squeeze it all into two days? We'll see. I will try to take as many pics as possible of any cool stuff we find and inspiration!
P.S. I just finished sewing two slices of Arctic roll last night, and am so pleased with the way it turned out, will post pics over wkend to show you!
oh, nearly forgot, I'm going to start putting the odd tutorial up on here for some felt foods and stuff, anything in particular you'd like to see?
ok, I really am going now,
Bye!

Monday 14 March 2011

More stuff!

OK, am back from Post Office, then the supermarket. I have a shepherds pie half done and some sleepy kitties just waking up and stumbling about after attention. Here's some of the other stuff I've managed to get done:



The Ice cream cone is my favourite amigurumi so far! I felt I'd learned a lot about freestyle crochet and decided to go ahead with the shapes to construct him. He looks so cheeky! lol! My mushroom is made from a pattern from the book Amigurumi Two, he's so cute! Then I have my second cupcake bear, I thought I'd use mixed mediums with him, and added a felt strawberry to the blob of cream on his head.

After selling a couple of the toast badges I made recently, I thought I'd try out a battenberg badge. I liked the results, so will be putting these in my shop by tomorrow:

well, I'm gonna leave this there for today and make another dash out to pick up my Mr from work, I miss having a car each, but its so much cheaper and eco friendly sharing one!!!

Popular crafts and bakery delight


Ohh, a couple of days off work for me, lovely! Haven't had enough time to blog or list anything properly. I had my work pictured in the Easter issue of Popular Crafts magazine:



Its always nice to see my work printed or featured somewhere, it makes me all giggly and proud!

I have also been making more amigurumis which I'll blog about later, and have made an old bakey favourite, the custard slice. My sister has kept mentioning I should try this for some time now, so I though I'd give it a whirl between orders, here it is:





It was quite simple to do with straight lines, but took me a little while to get the custard part the right height. I haven't actually eaten one in years and Mr Catherine pointed out that there was too much custard in my first attempt, so this one was born!

I've had an order in for some fish and meat products I've not tried before, but am looking forward to sewing, so I'll put some pics up when they're all done. Must dash now and get some biccies sent out in the post, will be back wih another blog later hopefully! TTFN.

Friday 11 March 2011

Kawaii cool!!!

This week I was looking for some kawaii stickers to use on my packaging for Pipinopolis. I did an internet search for kawaii stickers in the UK and found this fabulous site!!! Tofu Cute is my idea of heaven! So, I picked up these sets :




I would definatley recommend Tofu Cute to anyone loving Kawaii, they prices are excellent and they delivered the next day! Check out some of their other items:



Sweet Lolota fabric candy embellishments, Yum yum bento box - Japanese meal book , Kawaii popsicle plush phone charm

Can't wait to get more orders out to use these stickers!!!


Oh, one more thing, I'm sporting this super cute wallpaper on my PC from Bukubuku:


So much to look at (I love the milk carton!!! ).