Blogs I love

I have 221 blogs in my blog reader so I often have lots and lots of blogs waiting to be read but there are always some that I scroll through to read first. You know the ones - lovely images, great words, the life you want to lead, etc :) Here are just some of my favourite blogs* and you might find some new ones to browse or some old favourites too.

Linda Should be Painting

My Cardboard Life

Meet Me at Mikes

A Life in Lists

A Thrifty Mrs

Ric Rac

Kootoyoo

Owlet

Dropstitch

Dottie Angel

CurlyPops

My Paper Crane

Nikkishell

Punky and Me

Soule Mama

And my favourite blog at the moment is

Foxs Lane

*In no order of preference at all - just which ones I happened to click on first! Do tell me in the comments if there are other blogs you think I should check out!

Nothing goes to waste in this house :)

Tara got some Playmobil for her birthday from us (we are big fans) and of course it came in a box. Tara was instructed to open it carefully so that the box could be used by Mummy :) Here's what I made with it!

 2 sets of cute gift tags. If you are so inclined they can be found in the usual places!

Giveaway winner!

Morning! I've been up since 5.30am but lets not dwell on that :) The giveaway winner is revealed below*.

It's number 11 Oh Sew Beautiful. I'll try and get in touch with you to get your address :)

*I included the time and date at the bottom so you could see that there is no cheating!

Dear Special K lady

Actually I quite like the taste of Special K but I thought this was very funny. Seen over at Linda's.

Lots of Liberty loveliness!

I usually go to Lancaster to get my fix of Liberty gorgeousness from the factory shop next to where the fabric is printed but it is at least an hours drive away from me. Imagine my delight when Chrissie from Hat Therapy told me there was a shop only 15/20 minutes from me which sold it and for a cheaper price too :) I'm going to let the photographs do the talking now!

All of this is destined to be used in the 'Grand Liberty Quilt' but firstly I need to finish the binding on the teddy quilts and then make a start on the girls quilts as they are destined to be Christmas gifts.

As an aside - if I could get more of this and make the fabric 'thicker' using interfacing (providing it worked well) do you think the fabrics would work as chicken pincushions/paperweights? Only some of the designs obviously and more importantly, do you think they would sell?

A rosette for a birthday girl

Tara is 5 today (how did that happen??) and I re-purposed this rosette to give to her as a gift to wear at school and her party.

I turned it into this :)

She likes it which is the main thing and will be wearing it to school.

Updated with Photo's of the birthday girl wearing her rosette :)

My Creative space

I will be spending some time today playing with these vintage ties that, despite the look of them, have been ironed :) I will be making a complete collection with these (sounds posh I know!) so I will keep you updated. I won't have all day to play with these though as I am going cake hunting for a certain little girls birthday tomorrow.

More creative spaces over here.

Giveaway!

Some cute sewing instruction cards :)

It includes things like how to re cover chairs, wash crocheted items (you should never wring it apparently), certain stitches and these fab ones below.

You can make these fabulous pop group rag dolls - check out the sideburns on the one on the left :)

Funky kids play mats

Or this funky flared skirt.

All you need to do is leave me a comment and maybe tell me what you would make from these cards. The giveaway will close on Sunday 26th June in the evening!

P.S. There are more cards than shown here and I will post anywhere in the world :)

I'm self taught :)

With the sewing machine and so often have to refer to my friend google or the handy piece of paper below that came with Janine (the Janome)

It's the trouble shooting part of the manual. It's taught me about tension a,d how important it is to keep your machine free of fluff. I defluffed Janine the other day when I found some paintbrushes in the big tidy up - she (not surprisingly to some) works much better now :)

Are you self taught at anything? Do you resort to google (or Twitter) for handy hints? Any tips you think I might need about sewing machines?

Picture diary of the new (nearly) sorted craft room!

Finally!

The before picture of that side of the room - a never used desk piled with crap.

The cleared desk which now has a home in Anya's room.

All gone! Note the crap on the back of the door is still there!

Crap from door gone - white chest of drawers in it's place :) I got these drawers at Ikea in the bargain corner as the top drawer is missing. Not a problem as it is now filled with small boxes full of pens, paper etc. This is where the drawers were going to be but we shuffled furniture around a lot of Friday and Saturday!

I'm pleased that the bottom drawer is large enough to hold my flowery wallpaper samples that will one day become a patchwork wall in our bedroom :D

Then my thin drawers were going to move home (due to the stock boxes moving up from the dining room) However, in the end they don't end up there!

The 'missing drawer' drawers are on wheels so they are perfect to go in front of the door leading to the eaves storage. We rarely go in there so extra space is always good for me! The stock boxes are in their new home on the right behind the cushion.

Ta da! The new shelves :) They may look wonky but they aren't as I checked and double checked each one with a spirit level as it went in. It's probably the floor that is wonky knowing this house :)

I have been sorting everything in the craft room (and there is still quite a bit to go through) but can you see that gap on the fabric shelves?? I can't quite believe how much fabric I have got rid of! I even went through my scrap basket and two large boxes and got rid of a whole load more that is just the wrong kind of fabric for my business cards.

The shelves full! This is the top of the shelves.

This is the middle (note gaps on some shelves!)

And this is the bottom. The stuff on the white drawers to the right isn't staying there and I'm not sure if I am keeping both cushions. But apart from a bit of tidying, that end of the room is done*

We'll say nothing about the other end of the room shall we? :D

*and apart from a few bags and boxes of stuff to sort and a few things to move up from downstairs, the craft room is done! I am pleased to have done it so quickly and hopefully in a day or two I can show you more pictures (there may even be a video of the room too!)