It's been waaaay too long!

Ok, it would seem that keeping up with regular blogging lasted less than a year....but I do have a sort of valid excuse: We moved house in July and I had an awful lot to do clearing out 'stuff' from our old house, selling things, doing the conveyancing on behalf of solicitors who, it would seem, get paid a great deal of money to do absolutely nothing unless you constantly phone and email them (!!),  packing and then the mahooosive task of unpacking and cleaning the new house (WHY O WHY do people think it acceptable to move out of a home without properly cleaning it? I know I am slightly, ok quite a lot, OCD about cleanliness but this place was something else...) Anyway, I digress....We are now happily settled in our new home, T has returned to school after a fabulous 6 weeks off for the summer and whilst I have had time to make a few bits and pieces, I've only had time to update my Facebook page, rather than indulge in a whole blog post. 

So, here I am back with a quick update. (It has to be quick because I need to do the school run in about 20 minutes and abandoning my son in favour of blogging wouldn't go down well at the school gates!)  I've added some pics in below of some of the latest creations. Apologies to those who look at my FB page because most of these have already featured on there!

The early summer and spring time saw a bit of a baby boom amongst friends or friends of friends and I seemed to be making endless strings of personalised bunting for new babies. Really loved doing it though and the positive feedback from the recipients was well worth cutting out all those flags and letters!  I also started using some fabulous cotton fabric sheets that you can use in the home printer....these worked really well for printing on birth dates to the bunting to add that extra bit of personalisation.

I also had a request in the summer for some Back-to-School pencil cases. I've mentioned before how clothing and accessories for boys are really tricky unless you go down the branding/licensing route...and the pre-teen market is particularly hard to please.  I sat down with 10 year old Ben and had a chat about the sort of thing he might want...and ta-dah, came up with this design.  The fact that he described it as 'AWESOME' when I presented it too him, was heart-warming and made me want to jump for joy.  He is a lovely boy and might just have been trying to spare my feelings but he did seem to genuinely like it!

Of course, his younger sister, also needed her own pencil case too.  Found this lovely print by Michael Miller with lots of pretty colours for a 7 year old girl.

Since moving in to the new house, I've become slightly obsessed with creating mood-boards on Pinterest as inspiration for our new home decor.  Some of the rooms in the house are just great the way they are, but quite a few (6 to be precise) are in need of attention. Given that our budget is limited and that I am more than capable of a bit of DIY, I will be undertaking the redecoration myself. Although not quite the same as 'making' things, it is still a creative process and therefore I thought it would be an idea to record on here the transformations as they occur....as long as I remember to take the 'before', 'in progress' and 'after' photos of course!  I appreciate this isn't particularly interesting for anyone else and I'm not about to offer my skills as a Painter & Decorator, but it will serve as a nice record for me and give me a sense of satisfaction when I look back at the posts. 

First up, T's Room: Being the selfless mother that I am (??!!), I put any plans to decorate our bedroom on hold in favour of making our son's room look far more fabulous than it was. The huge smile, big hug, kiss and 'Thank You Mummy...I LOVE it! made the hard work all worth while.  I'll do a proper 'interiors' post once each room is finished (this one really does need a new carpet to finish it off and some new bedding, but that's on order and won't arrive until late October) Therefore, in the meantime, here's a few pics of how a 6 year old boys room is looking after about 10 days of sanding and painting!

I found this brilliant wall decal online through amazon..available from lots of sellers. It was a bit of a bugger to apply and I definitely lost a couple of Caribbean islands in the process but really pleased with the end result.

One of the door stops I'd made earlier in the year, fit in perfectly with the World Flags theme and contrasts brilliantly with the green feature walls.

Can't take the credit for the flag bunting...that was supplied by the Cotton Bunting Company. Great quality and vibrant colours.

I wanted to put up some inspirational wall art above T's bed. Love the sentiment on this piece from Lana's Prints via her eBay shop and thank you to her for printing it on the blue background especially for me.

So there we have it...I've broken the silence...back in the blogging game....and only just in time for that school run.....!

Come ON spring...

                                   

This winter seems to be dragging on forever. Motivation and energy have been seriously lacking. The first couple of months of a  new year always feel like a bit of a false start to me.  Christmas is over, the decorations packed away and you're ready for the new year, a new start, new ideas...yay! Then you realise it's still rather cold and dull and dreary and dark, but there is no festive season with it's cheery celebrations to enjoy and chase away the gloom.... Suddenly spring feels like a long way off and the temptation to hibernate  with mugs of hot tea and wedges of chocolate cake takes hold. That said, the first snowdrops are appearing in the garden, and the days are slowly getting longer...so there is hope on the horizon & spring flowers (nearly) in bloom.

Once again this year I have succumbed to moaning and shuffling my way through January, not really getting much done, but I'm determined not to waste February as well. Therefore, in an attempt to focus the mind, I thought a new post featuring some of my latest handcrafted 'makes' might be a good place to start:

First up a gift for a good friend. Another of my zipped pouches, but in a fabric chosen specifically for the Birthday Girl. 

The feature fabric is by textile designer Kate Spain for Moda & as soon as I saw it and it's  peacock feathers-inspired lovliness, I knew it was perfect!

The young daughters of 2 sets of close family friends also celebrated birthdays just recently. It does get difficult to buy gifts when you know they are going to get loads of presents...and we've only just had Christmas. So I decided to make them both name-banner flags to hang in their bedroom/across the end of the bed/along a shelf/on the door/over a window.......

As with many of my gifts for children, I wanted to use fabrics that would last the girls for some years to come and not feel too 'baby-ish'. Hopefully, these flags will do the job!

A new little product I wanted to get going on this year was doorstops. A friend of mine had requested one in the same style as one I already have propping open our kitchen door. It wasn't something I had made, so the challenge was on to make one the same....a bit of tinkering later...and da dah! I didn't just make one however,....I made LOTS:

These make a great gift for yourself or someone else, with fabrics chosen to co-ordinate with the rest of a room. Fab for a child's bedrooms too...to prop that door open at night-time and keep the scary dark at bay!!

So there we have it...proof that I have done SOMETHING in the first few weeks of this year! Next up are another couple of orders for toy bags and then I'm planning on utilising some of my ever-expanding stock of designer fabrics to create some products to (hopefully) sell on my 'yet-to-be-set-up-but-always-on-my-to-do-list' Folksy site.  That's the plan anyway...let's hope for no more snow, or I'll be back moaning about the weather with that hot cup of tea and chocolate cake, achieving very little, other than an greatly increased waistline!

A random 'Dukes of Hazzard' reference (& a couple of cushions!)

 

I'll come back to the bit about The Dukes of Hazzard in a minute...(!) but for now I want to tell you about this cushion I've made for a little girl, Beatrice.

 

It is Beatrice's Christening on Sunday and her Auntie is one of my oldest and bestest friends.  Said Auntie asked me to make a Christening gift...we agreed on a cushion and that it was to be personalised.... a few sketches later & I came up with this design. I didn't want to make anything too 'baby-ish' as I think Christening presents should have a bit of longevity about them. Hopefully this will grace Beatrice's bedroom for many years to come.

 

It uses my favourite natural cotton/linen base fabric and then incorporates lots of lovely Tilda floral, stripes and spotty fabrics for trims and applique, with a bit of ribbon thrown in to finish it all off.

 

 

Having made a girls cushion, I thought I'd better redress the balance and design/make a style for boys...It's quite different from the soft, gentle shades of the girls' version....it is, indeed, a bit bright.....!

 

I do love a bit of orange for boys. It makes a refreshing change from blue, green and brown and is an alternative 'bright' to red, which always feels a bit 'school-uniformy' to me....Plus, it actually looks great as a 'clashing' colour.  I had some orange linen-type fabric and a small piece of this blue star fabric which was a bit 'busy' just on it's own...but with the orange, works much better I think. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So this now brings me to that Dukes of Hazzard reference......whilst making this cushion, I had a nagging thought in the back of my head that it reminded me of something...struggling to place it all morning and then suddenly, of course...'The General Lee', the car from that fantastic (maybe I'm being a bit nostalgic here thinking it was fantastic?!)) 1980s U.S show.

 

 

 

 

See what I mean?...sort of??

...and whilst I was looking for pictures to reassure myself that The General Lee was what I was thinking of, I came across these:

 

 

 

How brilliant!...original Dukes of Hazard lunchboxes. Sort of wished I'd had one of these for my school packed lunch in the early 1980s instead of that pink plastic 'My Little Pony' one!!

 

 

Anyway, I digress...back to cushions.  These make lovely, personal gifts and I can make them to match any colour scheme/theme (including Retro 70s/80s TV Shows, it would seem!), so give me a shout if you fancy one for someone in your life.....xx