Bargain du jour!

We went to see some friends today over in a nearby town and on the way back I stopped at a charity shop to drop some stuff off that we had in the boot. That charity shop wasn't open but the one down the hill was so we dropped it off there.

These beauties were in the window and at 20p a pop for the adults and 10p for the children I had to buy them all :) So for the grand sum of £2.90 the girls have some new playmobil figures!

And these ones are my favourites l-r Pegleg Phil, Sid 'The Zombie' Skeleton and Pirate Jack :)

Sunday Snippets (on Monday!)

It's half term here - I don't need to say any more!

Playmobil school set up by the girls

I ordered myself a darning mushroom - went for the pretty one!

First alcohol of 2013 and it's a goodie!

Manky dodgy walls - most of it is already off though :)

Ironing actual clothes!!

That horrid moment when you realise you've just chopped though the skirt you've spent the last hour and a half taking up! Luckily it's fixed now and I'm wearing it!

Banana and cranberry bread :) Yum!

New product photographs

I was cursing the snow here this morning (it's 2.45pm and it's been snowing constantly since 7am) but it turns out that with a bit of brightening in Aviary, snow lit skies are great for taking product photographs! I hadn't changed the product photographs of some of my early gift tags since I started selling them so it was high time for a change!

The ever popular chickens :)

And their cousins, the brightly coloured chickens! My original photographs of these were taken in my homemade light box which was actually quite rubbish and gave off lots of weird shadows!

I love how these new photographs of the security envelope tags really 'pop' - the last ones were really wishy washy.

The wool gift tag pictures were fine but I needed to take new ones as I have reduced the number of gift tags available in a set and needed new photographs to show this. I have gone from 10 tags per pack down to 6. I've done this for a number of reasons but the main reason is that most of the tags I make are hand drawn and they do take a long time to make - I just wasn't making enough money for the amount of time I was putting in.

Do let me know if you like the new pictures :)

Holy chicken Batman!

This is a pincushion/paperweight chicken.

This is a doorstop size.

And this is a giant doorstop!

I made two of these as a custom order and they are twice the size of my normal doorstops. To give you another idea of size, here he is sitting on my laptop.

And to give another sense of the different sizes, here they are all lined up.

If you would like your own custom size chicken then give me a shout. The beauty of handmade you know :)

Thirfty bargain

I had a trip to Hebden Bridge today to see some lovely crafty people and of course while I was there I went into a couple of charity shop! This plate just begged to come home with me!

Getting organised!

This is a scribbled together list of things I have to do/find out/think about and make for BCTF in April. I am spending today going through all of the material available and making it into cohesive sets of lists - oh as well as firing off emails to various people as I couldn't remember my stand number*! Yes I lost the piece of paper it was written down on!

*N53 :)

Introducing* Quilty!

Although he has been introduced before :) Just not with a voice and actions to match!



Tara thought it would be good for Quilty to have a voice and say hello and who am I to argue! She also thought it was funny when I mentioned that even though he is small, he might still qualify as a lap quilt.

Erm, maybe not! Quilty has grown ever so slightly since then and his wobbled bits from the video have been nipped and tucked. I'm slowly making more hexipuffs to be added to quilty but I need a sustained sewing session to get them all sewn on and it's not just happening. Good job it's a long term project hey!

Mending Monday :)

I actually did some mending and adjusting on Friday but it's Monday now so I'm going with Mending Monday as my title :)  When I put the Christmas decorations away I found another bag of clothes that needed altering (some have been there for a couple of years!) So I decided to get busy and redo some of them.

I bought this skirt at a jumble sale two years ago and all it needed doing to it was the hem taking up. By 15cm but still, it was only a hem!

I decided to go fancy with the hem and did a triple hem :) I went very carefully and slowly so that it wouldn't wobble too much.

And here it is modelled - not a great photo but you get the gist!

This dress only needed the buttons changing on it - done in 5 minutes!

This dress was more of a problem. The patch you see in the photograph is a result of a previous Mending Monday but I'd developed two holes under the arms that were a cross shape. The dress is made of a light cotton so tears easily if a hole develops and that is what happened here. I LOVE this dress and have had it for about six years so I don't want it to break just yet. I mended the holes by lining them up as best I could, pinned a similar fabric behind the hole (right side out) and sewed like hell over the top of it with my machine! It has worked so far but I've already seen another small hole - better get to it before it develops into a much larger hole!

I also covered up a corporate label on a thick canvas bag that Matt got from a conference in December with some pretty fabric but I haven't taken a photo yet. It needs some pretty buttons and trim adding first.

Do you mend clothes? Do you alter clothes? Is your mending pile as large as mine?

Sunday Snippets

I made some robot garlands.

I tidied my craft room - the desk really is tidy, honest!

I turned 35 and my sister sent me this cool card she made :)

I contemplated stealing these pillowcases from my mother in law but I think she might notice they are missing!

I modelled my newly shortened skirt - more on it tomorrow :)

52 books in 52 weeks - part one

I'm giving myself another challenge this year and it is to read 52 books in 52 weeks. I do read a lot so it is something I think I can achieve. I do have weeks where I don't read anything at all and weeks where I will read a book a day (I'm a fast reader!) March and April will be slow book reading months as I will be panicking about attending BCTF and hopefully the weeks afterwards I will be busy with orders :) I still think I can read 52 within the year though - fingers crossed!

I will probably end up at the start of each month listing the books I have read in the previous month but I may do this once a quarter instead - depends on how I am feeling! I do have a board set up on Pinterest that will be updated as soon as I have finished a book so you can see how I am getting on with the challenge on a book by book basis! I'm not very good at reviewing books (although I have to write a review of the book I'm reading at the moment for Waterstones!) so I will probably only say a few words about each book and leave it at that.

The first three books of 2013 are my favourite books ever. I first read them when I was in my first year at university (a friends dad was an English teacher and was reading them with his kids) and I have read them every year since* I love them and no matter how many times I read them I still find I love them. The first one can be hard to get into but read 100 pages and you will be hooked!

Again, 1984 is one of my favourite books although when I read it this time it didn't seem quite as harrowing as the first few times I read it. It could be that as I was reading it, our current government and it's leaders sprung to mind a few times! We are not quite at Big Brother ruling us yet but some things really struck a cord with what is going on now in the UK!

I saw this book when it first came out but didn't buy it until Matt saw it in a charity shop recently :) It's another young adults/older kids book and I loved it! Very well written with a good plot line that draws you in - the main character is fully believable too which sometimes doesn't happen in this kind of book.

I buy a lot of books from my local Post Office as they sell books for a local charity for 50p (paperbacks) or £1 (hardbacks) and it's great to browse the shelves as you are standing in the queue! I like thrillers and say that they make up about 50% of the books on our shelves. This one was good, easy to read and the plot was very twisty turny. When you thought you'd got a grip on the plot something would happen and you'd realise you'd got it wrong! It didn't happen enough though to put you off finding out what happens at the end as can happen in some thrillers.

So, they are the books I've read in January and I'm already halfway through my next book :) I found this challenge over on The Sewing Directory so if you too want to join in then leave a comment over there!

6/52 - only 46 more books to read! Do you have any book recommendations? I have thousands of books (literally!) but I am always looking for more!


*except for last year when I was only allowed to read books that I hadn't read before. I missed reading them though so that is why they were the first books of 2013!