Feature showcase

Well this is a tad awkward! I'm so busy outside while the weather is so mild that I haven't had a chance to get my crafty on (insert sad face). So what's a girl to do when she has followers that she wants to keep but has no crafty goodness to offer? Should I recycle an old post? Well initially it did sound like a good thought but then that just feels naughty and like I'm making no effort. So instead I am going to showcase some crafty goodies that are floating around the blogosphere at the moment that I think are inspirational or just down right dandy.


First up is Julie from 'belle maison'. Julies blog is full of inspirational DIY & furniture makeovers ranging from some fabulous chic red chairs to an entertainment armour transformed to a home office.
Seriously Julies blog is full of inspiration and with plenty of giveaways thrown into the mix, however if there is one item that I am totally and utterly head over heels for it has to be the headboard and footboard she transformed into a loveseat - this is so not my usual 'thing' but I want this

How gorgeous is that!  Take a trip over to 'belle maison' you will not be disappointed.



Kristen over at 'Farmstyle studio'  describes herself as "completely self taught and constantly striving to implement new techniques and looks to keep with current design trends" and her furniture revivals are completely up my street.
Take a look at this Beechwood dresser

I adore this and this is exactly what I wish I had the imagination to achieve. But basically I don't!



Finally I just had to include 'How to recycle'.
'How to recycle' state that their mission is "to assure safe and sanitary disposal of solid waste in every community and to reduce reusable or renewable wastes from entering landfills."
This is what initially caught my eye 

How cool is that - a wine cork chair! certainly better than going to landfill.
They also have recycled vehicles, paper and egg cartons. Go take a look and be inspired to recycle some weird stuff! 


I promise there will be some crafty goodies of my very own on here soon but for now I hope those were tantalising enough for you guys.


 

Quick & easy Leather luggage tags

ON HOLIDAY UNTIL FEBRUARY 10TH


I had planned to make luggage tags for our upcoming holiday ages ago, I was going to be o so organised - yeah right!
Yesterday I realised I still hadn't made any and it was looking pretty much like I was going to have to suffice with those shop bought cardboard printable tags - not so pretty and/or personalised huh!
So, I had some spare time and figured I'd have a go myself but if they took longer than 15mins each to make or the first one looked naff, I'd give up and go with the crappy cardboard ones.
I've done plenty of research over the last few weeks (that's me all over, loads of research but no doing) so I knew basically what I wanted the finished look to be, the problem was that the look I wanted wasn't going to be quick, so after all that research I just made it up as I went along and here's how they turned out:

Luggage tag

Not too shabby huh!
The best bit is that they took 10 mins to make. If I'd had more time and had been in a better mood (and if my craftroom wasn't such a tip right now) there are things I would have done differently but these will do for this holiday.
Here's how I did it:

Decide on fabric. I had some swatches of leather fabric as our friend is an upholsterer and gives me the leftover or out of date swatches, so I chose Chocolate leather:

Leather swatches

At first I cut 2 rectangles of leather (I didn't measure them) and tried to sew them together wrong side to wrong side but they moved about too much and looked reeeeeeally bad (to thick to get pins through without bending them - I tried!). At that point I could have given up! Yup, 2 mins in and i had had enough -  I hate it when things don't go how I want them to even though it's usually because I haven't thought things through properly or I'm trying to do things quickly instead of properly as was the case here.
To get over the slidey fabric syndrome I got 2 pieces of leather larger than the size of luggage tag I wanted to make, lay them wrong side to wrong side, traced a rectangle on top using white pencil and then sewed the tag from that, leaving one short end open and holding the whole thing together with clips:

Held together and 3 sides sewn.

Next I trimmed the edges as close to the stitch line as I dared on all four sides (I had to guess where the line would be at the un-sewn end as the pencil had worn off and I didn't think to re-draw it).

Cut as close as possible to the sewn line.

The next step was to decide on a tag for the tag (you know what I mean......right?).
To get a better finish next time I would use bias binding but for now I used ribbon folded in half, ironed and then sewn up the edge. Again I didn't measure the length I just cut what I thought would be enough:

Fold ribbon in half.

Once you've sewn the edge of the ribbon simply stuff both ends into the opening of the leather and then stitch the entire opening closed.

For the pocket that will hold the name and address I used laminate sheeting. Most tutorials online suggest vinyl like the stuff blankets are often cased in but I couldn't find any (until I'd finished - typical) so I used laminate sheeting.
I cut a rectangle of laminate to fit the front of the leather and then stitched another piece of folded ribbon  across the top of the laminate where it will be left open on the leather (this is where you will insert card for name):

Sew the ribbon to the laminate

Finally I positioned the laminate onto the leather tag, used clips to hold it in place as it moves easily and then sewed down both sides and the bottom end leaving the top ribbon end of the laminate open.
That's it, that's all I did!

Finished.

Most online luggage tag tutorials suggest that you use a plastic sewing machine foot to sew the vinyl as it glides easier but I didn't have that problem with the laminate, I used the normal metal foot.
Another tip if using vinyl instead of laminate is to place some tissue down the edges of the vinyl and sew through that instead of directly through the vinyl. You can then tear the tissue away once you've finished sewing, I suspect this is to help the foot glide better but also to help control the holes that the machine makes in the vinyl. Again I did neither of those things with the laminate.
I'm going to make better ones in the summer but if you're looking for a quick and easy luggage tag to make in a hurry then this is the one for you.

Shared at:
Dear creatives
Shabby Nest 
Itsahodgepodgelife 
One Artsy Mama 
Craft Junkie too 
French Country Cottage 
Shabby Art Boutique 
Diana Rambles

The laundry room....or at least it will be....eventually!

I am soooooo excited!
Let me explain!
I'm getting a utility/laundry room! I know it doesn't sound much but to me it's huge. When we renovated this place the original plans included a kitchen/diner and a big utility/laundry room but during the build the layout changed slightly as I decided I wanted a separate Kitchen and Dining room (yes! yes, I do regret that decision now).
Anyway we now have the seperate rooms I wanted and have since passed planning permission to build an extension to the kitchen to create a Utility/Laundry room and a mud/dog room. The problem is that I now don't want the extension as I feel 1) the house is big enough as it is and 2) I don't want to lose side garden space. we do have plenty of acreage but the back garden that is 'my' area isn't very big - I'm not giving anymore of it up.
But what about a utility/laundry room? At the moment the washing machine and dryer are in the kitchen but I prefer a separate area so yesterday I had an Aha moment and ran some plans by hubby.
We have an area downstairs that leads to a downstairs loo, a storage cupboard and is waiting for a door to lead to the outside garden, but I don't need the door to the outside garden because the kitchen already leads to that area soooooooooo
Instead of a door we're installing a window and this teeny tiny space is literally just enough to put the washer and dryer side by side and then install storage above a worktop and around the new window.
I'm gonna have a utility room! It's tiny but doable and I'll be posting every single update and before and afters on here for all to see.
In the meantime I've been doing my research for laundry room ideas and design:-


This is literally the space I will have but look how much has been packed in.

Southern living

Definitely taking the opportunity for some wall art

Indulgy.com

I love this. Everything HAS a place and everything In it's place. Bliss! Shame I won't have this amount of space without building the extension

Houzz

I have to have one of these, though I suspect mine would have to hold a few more odd socks

Indulgy

This drying rack is a brilliant idea. Check Centsational girls blog out for the tutorial.

Centsational girl

How about this for lighting. Maybe it's not quite right for a laundry room but it's given me some ideas of how to make something unique myself - wow this one laundry room makeover is going to turn into many other craft projects

Etsy

I have heaps of inspiration pictures for the laundry room. In fact I have so many I'm probably going to struggle on a final decision for colour schemes etc but hey, what a fix to be in eh!

My favourite DIY projects 2012

Hello peeps. For my first 2013 post I thought I'd share some of  my favourite DIY projects of 2012.
So let's go, just click on the description and you'll go straight to the postt.
Enjoy!



Scrap wood tealight holder.
 


 Scrap wood table lamp.
 





Scrap wood sewing table.
 

Home Blocks.

  

Compost tumbler from old plastic drum.
 

 Shared with:-
Nifty thrifty things.

Crafty highlights.

I haven't been able to craft much recently. I'm not sure why though as I've had the time to do at least a small something. I think maybe inspiration and motivation has been lacking and maybe this is due to the time of year and the weather.
I'm an outdoorsy gal and while it's nice to find the odd day where I can hit the craft room and make something it gets really meh when I'm doing it because I can't do anything else.
So I seem to have spent spare moments reading gardening and crafting blogs trying to make plans for 2013 and I thought I'd share some of what I found with you guys.

Leaf castings:- Fairegarden has an amazing tutorial on making leaf castings. I'm going to try this with Hosta and Gunnera leaves next year.

I came across Believe&Inspire while looking for hair ideas for my upcoming holiday. I love the tutorials and I now have some fabulous ideas for my long hair that would otherwise look limp and boring.

Weekend designer has a fantastic free pattern on her blog for this fabulous large tote bag. we can never have too many shopping bags and this one is certainly sturdy enough to be very useable.

 

There! Plenty to be getting on with.
Enjoy!

A bit o xmas ruffle

With no real projects even remotely finished I thought maybe I would recycle some old ones. This is a mas tree ruffle skirt I made last year and looks just as awesome this year :)


Well I've been absent from the blog for a wee while due to a stinkin cold and a cough, lucky for me though I have a caring hubby that happily made sure I was warm, cooked meals and helped with the housework. Hmmmmm or maybe he did all that out of guilt because it was him that passed the bug on to me! Whatever the reason I was veeery grateful lol.

So, I'm all better now and to make myself feel better about not managing to make quite as many xmas cards as I'd hoped I decided to have a go at one of those gorgeous ruffle xmas tree skirts that are all over blogland at the moment.

This is what the finished project looks like:

Ruffles, ruffles everywhere.

Although there are a few mistakes in the skirt overall it looks quite pretty and I'm chuffed with it.

To cheat and make life easier for me (we're all for that huh!) I used our original tree skirt and just attached the ruffles to it.

Erm......what was I thinking?

Cute when we bought it many moons ago but a bit out dated and gruesome now isn't it!
I'd been looking for a new skirt for the last couple of years but couldn't find anything I liked. I know, I know pretty much anything would have to better than the monstrosity above but still.......

I have quite a bit of fabric stashed away that's come from many places including charity shops, giveaways of old showroom fabric, fabric sample books, old curtains and quite a bit from my mum.
I decided to use some quite thick cream fabric and had intended to use the glue gun to attach the ruffles but as usual I changed my plans!
I didn't want the frayed edge look to my ruffles cos I'd just be at them all the time with scissors to neaten them so once I'd cut enough strips for ruffles I hemmed the bottoms and the edges.
Then I figured that as I had the sewing machine out anyways I may as well just sew the ruffles on as well. I may have worked briefly as an overlock machinist and a bar tack machinist but I am no seamstress. I hate pinning stuff and measuring things just isn't in my vocabulary.
So I pleated the ruffles to the skirt base as I went - not something I would recommend. The end result was OK on the bottom layers because that's where the base is widest but once I got to the shorter areas at the neck of the skirt base I made some real whopper mistakes.
Once I'd readjusted though I just added some ties and that was it. In all it took me about 4 hours, it may have been quicker with a glue gun but I suspect I would now be nursing burnt fingers!

Easy Peasy tree skirt.

Thanks for taking a looksee, pop by again soon.

 

FMM

Friend Makin Mondays

I'm not sure why I haven't noticed FMM before on 'Missus.and.sausage' blog before but today I checked it out and thought it was a fabulous way for us bloggers to make new friends in common.
The idea is to answer the questions via a blog post, share the post with MissusMege and then check out the other linkers and make new friends :)

So here are my answers to this weeks topic 'Uniquely You'.

1) Do you prefer to talk or text? - Hmmmm, I'm gonna have to say text cos it's easier but if it's my mum, family or close friends that live hundreds of miles away then a text just seems too impersonal so I prefer to talk.
2) How often do you make your bed? - Daily. Every morning and quite often when I'm actually in it. I hate getting into an unmade bed and I think a nicely made bed is so much more appealing.
3) What sounds do you hear right now? - The TV! as usual! We're watching a documentary about the Tornado that hit Joplin in America - so so sad! I live in the Scottish Highlands so the only sound outside would be our birds of prey.
4) List 3 things you always carry with you - My phone (but not always with credit), gloves (it's cold all the time here) & a pen (haven't a clue why cos I never have paper to go with it).
5)What are your favourite TV shows? - Dallas 2012, The vampire diaries & The real housewives of pretty much anywhere (love to be reminded how money does not necessarily give you class, loyalty or happiness. Though it will buy you a plastic, wax work body job!)
6) Is there a hobby you'd like to devote more time to? - Sewing, cardmaking, scrapbooking, furniture revival and pretty much every hobby I already have.
7) What is your favourite drink? - Water, water and more water.
8) Share a couple of cool facts about your family - Seriously? Cool? Well what constitutes cool? Erm..........yeeeeeeeah...........hmmmmmmm..........we're obviously NOT a cool family cos I have nothing! Though no doubt I'll think of loads once I've posted our uncoolness.
9)List one thing you will do for yourself today - INSANITY!  It's a workout BTW.
10) Share something that you're thankful for today - The love of my husband and daughters.

Happy Anniversary

I went through a faze earlier this year determined to make birthday and anniversary cards myself rather than buying them, after all I do love making them.  I get a bit cheesed off that I don't have the fancy fandangled machines that produce the perfect edges and shapes (even my straight cutter is dodgy now and I have to resort to a craft knife for cutting) but I've discovered ways of achieving the look I want with the few tools I have.
One day I will replace my broken Cricut and I'll purchase some nice card & paper and some of those lovely accessories plastered over Create & Craft tv, but for now I'll cope.

This is a card I made in July for my Sister & her husbands 25th wedding anniversary

 

These things never turn out quite how I imagined simply because I never know what card and paper I'm gonna use till I get going - I never plan ahead!

The stamp is from LOTV and I coloured it using my Promarkers.
The paper with the heartswas basically shoved through my sewing machine for that effect.
The flowers are the best part for me. I basically cut 3 flower shapes from Mulberry paper and followed an online tutorial to make the bigger ones and then cut strips of Mulberry paper and turned it as i rolled it to make the smaller ones.
The hat pins are simply glass bead sewing pins with jewellery findings glued on with my trusty 'Fixsall' glue.
The squirly wire is just that - thin craft wire wrapped round a pen for the shape and then glued on with 'fixsall'.

I made this wishing well a couple of years ago on a whim. I literally decided one day to make it with whatever scrap wood I could round up, but because I had absolutely no plan to work with I had to make it up as I went along using whatever wood I had managed to find.
The shape of the base probably caused me the most angst because I didn't want a bog standard square or round one. I'm not sure what this shape would be called but cutting all those little pieces to the exact right size and then nailing em all together was not as easy as I thought - 6" nails are not the easiest to hammer in, and back then I was too lazy to re-drill.
Once the base was made I then found scrap ply to line the inside and then the sides and the wood structure to the roof was made up bit by bit with whatever size wood I had enough of that I thought would be strong enough to hold a slated roof.
I used an old broom handle to make the rope pulley and created a fake handle out of wood scraps. Then I made a square bucket from wood scraps and pinched hubbys tow rope to wind round the pulley.
I am proud to say that every inch of this was cut, nailed, screwed and designed by myself. The only part that hubby had was to slate it and attach a lead ridge tile to it.
The final part was cut some diamonds out of ply, nail em to the base and then attach some little Lead Tudor Roses that hubby had had laying around for years.


Lead Tudor Rose:

Wishing well:

Bucket with rope pulley:

The only problem we have found with the well so far is that it was supposed to be moveable - it's not!
We had to move it 50 yards or so and literally had to take it apart and re-roof it - it weighs a freaking tonne.
Since moving it I have decided that I'm not keen on the base now and am thinking about creating a stone one around it!

Linked to:
Delightful Order 
Bear rabbit Bear Crafts

Tealight holder - simple & easy

I've wantedto make a tealight holder or two for a while now but with so many projects on the go I felt real bad about starting something else. Soon got over the guilt though and tackled the tealight holder - mainly because I wanted to do something that I could finish in a quick time.

Here's the finished holder

Pretty cute huh?
So easy to make too. I just found an old lump of wood ( even wood with splits will work because it adds to the character), gave it a good sand down ( a very good sand down because this wood was actually an old fence post) and then I sectioned it off into quarters, found the middle point of each of the four sections and drilled a hole for the tealight.
I used a 40mm Forstner bit for the tealight holes but you could also use a 40mm flat drill bit.
Once that was done I gave it another light sand - including the tealight holes - and then gave it 2 coats of medium Oak wood dye and 1 coat of Satin finish varnish.

Looks lovely all lit up and burns my Yankee candle tealights brilliantly.

My next post will be abother holder I made only this one is upright and looks amazing too.

Linked to these partays

Joy 2 Journey
Funky Junk Interiors 
It's a Hodgepodge Life 
My 1929 charmer 
The Southern Insitute 
I should be mopping the floor 
Under the table and dreaming