My Etsy Buys

Having never bought anything from Etsy, I took the plunge last week and bought these Japanese craft books. I bought them both from the same seller who sells lots of different Japanese craft books and I was really impressed with the delivery time. They only took a week to arrive from Japan - delivery of items from within the UK usually takes longer than that.

The first book that I bought features crochet items to use in the home, mainly cleaning cloths but also covers for household items such as air freshers, spray cleaning bottles etc.

I was actually drawn to this book because of this little blue octopus. I thought it might make a cute wash cloth for Little L.

I also like the idea of these keyboard brushes. They might even encourage the older children to give their laptops a brush.

I don't even know what the name of the craft in the second book is, or if it has a name. The book is filled with lots of little characters made by winding wool in to tight balls and tightly around wire. I bought this book as I have seen key rings with figures on made by this method and wanted to give it a try myself.

At the moment I am trying to reduce my stash of wool so I think that both these books will come in handy as the projects don't take up large amounts.

Mr & Mrs

After suffering with tonsillitis on and off for years my niece has finally had her tonsils removed. She went in to hospital on Monday and came home on Tuesday and now has to stay in for two weeks. I haven't seen my lovely niece yet but hopefully will when she is on her next school hols.By the sound of things she won't be getting the chance to be bored as her lovely brother is going round to her classes and picking her school work up ( she is leaving school this year so can't afford to slip behind ).At the moment she is in to anything scary and creepy like horror films, zombies, etc. I made these bride and groom skeletons for her - I just hope shes still in to cute stuff as well.

Baking And Buttons

Today I did a little baking again using a recipe which I found on the Attic24 blog .. Thank you Lucy :). I've made these Oaty Cookies a few times now and usually use dried apricots as my dried fruit ingredient.

After baking I decided to try and sort out my buttons. I have been saving up my 'posh' jam jars to put store them in but they are not big enough to put some colours in. Plus while it has sorted a few buttons out, I now don't have the space anywhere to put these jam jars. Oh well, at least I have made a start and really it was just an excuse for me and Little L to play with them for a while.

Recycled Calendar

Anyone who knows me knows that I loathe to throw anything away if I think I may find a use for it so I hung onto my last years calendar trying to think what to do with it. The pictures on the calendar were these William Morris designs and I thought they would be ideal to cover something with.

Having nothing to cover, they ended up being made into a paper garland instead. I used spray adhesives to glue two pieces together so that there was now a different design on each side of the paper, instead of a nice design on one side and my scribbled appointments on the other. I cut out circles, rectangles and squares then using my sewing machine I sewed them into a string.

I apologise for lack of colour in this photo - we have an extremely dark hall way.

Free As A Bird

I wanted something quick to make last night and had seen these lovely birdcages some time ago on the little dear tracks blog so set about making them. The blue one is to hang on Little L's door and no doubt someone will lay claim to the pink one. I have been following the little dear tracks blog for a while and I love the cute embroidery and little felty animals. There are many free projects and how to tutorials on the blog .. Thank you Aimee :)

I'm lucky enough to have received both of Aimee Ray's Doodle stitching books as gifts and this little pink bird is a design from this book which I stitched on to a pillowcase for Little L's dolls.

Anyway, I had better go for now as my two boys will be in from school soon .. no doubt hungry as always. Bye

  

Little L's Owl

Little L is always wanting me to make her something, anything will do usually but recently she told me she wanted some pictures in her room ( not that she spends much time in there ). She asked for pictures of an owl, a panda and a teddy bear. Here's the owl picture that I finished last night.

For this I used a 7in embroidery, felt and threads in matching colours, cotton fabric for background. Where I have used printed cotton on the face and belly, I ironed on some light weight interfacing as the fabric was quite flimsy. When positioning the felt pieces I always put a stop of fabric glue on them to prevent them moving about ( its safer than using pins round Little L as she can't help touching things even when she knows she shouldn't ). I then sewed the pieces on using tiny straight stitches.

Pieces used the owl



Soot Sprites

When the boys finish school for the Christmas Holidays I try to catch a few films with them but this year too be honest we were all a bit disappointed with the Christmassy TV offerings. The only film they wanted to watch and had not seen before was Spirited Away. It was an excellent film, ideal for all ages. Little L even sat through it without her usual cries 'No good, no good'. One of the boys was really taken with the soot sprites in the film and asked me to make him a picture so I came up with this.

The bodies and eyes are made of felt and I did some random straight stitches to try and make them look fluffy.