***Spring Giveaway winner***

Hello,

Entries for the spring giveaway are now closed and I am here to announce the winner :)

The lucky prize winner, as chosen by  random number generator is....

MEL MAKES!!!

I have put a comment on your blog asking for your address so I can get your prize on its way to you ASAP :-)

I hope you are all well, and as I always say don't be down of you were not the winner this time as I always have more fun stuff planned and coming up just around the corner :D

Congratulations again to Mel!

Speak to you all again very soon,

BYE XXX

Happy Easter

Hillooo!

 

I hope all of you had a lovely long Easter weekend :)

 

I had a really great time with my family xxx As usual my dad did a fun Easter egg hunt for me and my brother, he really outdid himself and found tons of great stuff for it, here are all my goodies!!!:

 

 

I have finished one of the chocolate bunnies and lots of the little eggs already :p My mum got me an Easter egg too so I am well and truly spoiled with goodies! Thank you Mum and Dad!

 

This year I organised an egg hunt each for my parents too for a bit of fun :0) and to repay them for the years and years of fab Easter goodies :-)

Hehe, here is my dads pile of goodies (the Mars Easter egg is my dads from my mum :):

 

 

My pile makes my dads look tiny! but he and my mum said they  had a lot of fun doing my Easter egg hunt for them, my brother helped me hide all the stuff- he came up with tons of great hiding places!

 

For lunch we didn't have the usual Easter roast we had Pizza from Pizza GoGo instead, at my request as they have started doing a whole range of vegetarian Quorn pizzas!!! Which were delicious :P All the sides were tasty too, mmmm mozzarella sticks :) I definitely recommend it, in fact I think it has jumped to the top of  list as my favourite takeaway pizza (it was less greasy and salty- and very veggie friendly now!)

 

In other news this Easter Weekend I also finished my Kameez!:

 

 

 

 

I still may iron on a couple of flower motifs I picked  up at the creative stitches and hobbycrafts show down the centre back at the back neckline but I want to do some testing first to check it wont ruin  the fabric etc... But the sewing is all done :-) I am really pleased with how it came out- now I just have  to find the perfect occasion to wear it!

 

And my final  bit of news for this post- I have now begun my Elizabethan foundation garments in college (to go with my Elizabethan corset).

 

Here I my Wheel farthingale toile (tester), I also have a bum roll underneath this to support it:

 

 

And here was some test fabric draped over it so we could see the effect a skirt of the period would have on my foundation- so I could make any alterations to my foundations to get the right look:

 

 

I am reealllyy enjoying this module (as I do all of the really, but I do love me some Elizabethan costume!)

 

Hehe, I am off to get to bed now ready to wrestle with my 6m petticoat I am also making again tomorrow!

 

See you all soon, and don't forget to enter the spring giveaway which closes this Friday if you haven't already,

 

Thanks for reading :o)

 

Bye XxXxXxxXxX

Symposium! (and stuff :)

Hi,

 

Last week was a really good week for me as it was 'Symposium week' at my college. What this means is basically a week off of timetabled lectures with loads of fun and interesting workshops, talks and performances going on instead :D

 

I booked myself onto loads of the workshops including zumba (which was really enjoyable), dream catcher making, sword fighting (super fun!!!!!) and I did quite a few costume related ones, including 3 morning workshops about Kimonos :0)

The lady was really nice and knowledgeable and bought in tons of the kimonos from her collection from martial arts related ones to bridal.

 

Here are a couple of her most extravagant kimono over-robes:

 

 

And here is me (from behind so you can see my freestyle- tied

 obi which hangs down) dressed as a Geisha :) It was cool being dressed up- I learnt a lot about how it actually feels to wear the kimono as well as how to put it on properly:

 

The obi is done up so much more tightly than I imagined it was and there is a lot more padding than I thought there was underneath too :P Brian who is next to me was dressed up like a shogun (military warrior). The lady who ran the workshops also rents out her kimonos etc... and has a website- where there are more pictures of all the kimonos we all tried on at symposium: here!

 

Another workshop I did was trauma makeup. Hahaha, a lot of fake blood was used! and some cornflakes mixed with coffee, golden syrup and red food colouring to make stuff that resembled blood clots.

 

I warn all those who are faint hearted to LOOK AWAY NOW!

 

As the following picture of my work I did in the workshop although FAKE (of course! :) is very gory:

 

 

I think I actually did get it quite realistic looking thanks to the techniques of the tutor :-)

 

Another thing that made my week really good apart from symposium was finding out that I was the special winner of a free Royal School of Needlework day course from the draw I entered at the creative stitches and Hobbycrafts show at the excel :D I am soo excited and have chosen to do a course on 17th century design inspired metal/gold work button brooches- It sounds so interesting- that is in November so kind of like a great early Christmas present!

 

And if all that wasn't enough for one week me and my mum went to the John Paul Gaultier fashion exhibition at the Barbican Arts centre/Theatre in London which was fabulous.

 

It was really different to other exhibitions I have been to as they gave some of the mannequins faces using digital projection- they even talked! I thought this really brought the whole exhibition and the clothes to life a bit more.

 

Look at the amazingness of these dresses!:

 

 

Another thing that was cool and different was that they actually had a moving catwalk! All these mannequins were dressed and on stands that moved around the catwalk, again this brought so much more life and excitement to the clothes making them look even more spectacular than they already are:

 

Well, that's just about it for the catch up of my week...

 

.....No.... Wait! I have one more fabulous thing to tell you about :P The Chocolate festival I went to on Sunday with a friend from college at the London Business and Design centre  (I really did have a crazy fun week :oD)

 

There were quite a few different samples of yummy chocolate to try and lots of baked goods on sale. As a treat I went for this brownie:

 

 

It was sooooo delicious, it was called a 'buckeye' brownie. It was a normal chocolate brownie topped with Oreo cookie frosting and a layer of milk chocolate ganache mmmm... I want another one!

 

My brownie was from Batch bakery: http://batchbakery.co.uk/

 

My friend had a peanut butter brownie which she said was amazing from the Brownie Bar: http://www.browniebar.co.uk/

 

They do a really good price online delivery of brownies so I think I may have to get some of those sent to me in the near future as they looked good too but I couldn't fit a second brownies in after my Oreo- sugar overload one :P

 

I hope you are all well, and now I promise my post is officially finished :)

 

Don't forget to enter my Spring/Easter giveaway if you haven't already as as I found out last week you never know your luck!

 

Speak to you all again very soon,

 

Bye XxXxXxX

***Spring Giveaway!!!*** :D

Hi everyone,

 

Yes, the time has rolled around for another giveaway! :D

 

I have made this one spring/Easter themed, here is what you could win

 

 

- A sweet floral cotton reel shaped pincushion

A reel of ribbon with little chicks on it :3

- A pack of strawberry stickers

- 3 cute, pink, iron on flower appliques in different designs

- And a lindt chocolate carrot umbrella stick!

 

------*-----*-----*------*------

 

As usual the giveaway is open to anyone, any age, anywhere.

 

All you have to do to enter is:

 

1. Be a follower

and

2. Leave a comment below (make sure to include some way to contact you in case you win :P e.g. a ravelry name, email or blog address)

 

 

Entries close on the 25th of April and the winner will be announced on the same day.

 

------*-----*-----*------*------

 

I hope you like the prizes :oD

 

Goooood luckkk!

 

See you again soon,

 

Byeeee XxXxXxXxX

 

Brothers birthday + creative stitches show

Hello,

I mentioned a few posts ago that my Brothers birthday was coming up- it was this Tuesday (He loved his Domo pinata so I was pleased. It took a while to brake into so I didn't do too badly at making it! :) As usual my dad pulled an amazing cake(s!) out of the hat, this time I got to help though as I was at home and my dad said he couldn't achieve it all in the time without me :0) It was sooo fun and here are the results....

... A whole pizza dinner with drinks, sides and desserts- all made from cake!!!!

here is the mushroom (chopped dried banana  pieces) and olive (black royal icing) pizza:

The spaghetti (royal icing) and meatball (cake, chocolate and biscuit balls- I made these :P) cake:

Margherita pizza. We made the cheese look cooked by pinching the icing circles and putting little blobs of brown caramel biscuit spread on it to look liked the browned bubbles of cheese:

Onion rings (dried apple rings dipped in chocolate and biscuit crumbs), garlic bread (brioche with white chocolate on it sprinkled with grated dessicated coconut dyed green for herbs :P) and dough balls (brioche again!):

Garlic pizza bread cake:

the coke glasses were done by melting chocolate to coat the inside of the glass then filling with crumbled cake before topping with chocolate spread and inserting a stripy straw:

 

Chocolate cake chocolate gateau 1:

Chocolate cake chocolate gateau 2 (I made this one :-):

Safe to say we are still eating it all now, despite giving lots away to people! It is sooo tasty though and so cool to help make- we spent a long time thinking if what sweet items we could use to create the most realistic savoury look :P

Hahaha, In between cake eating I did manage to get to the Creative stitches and Hobbycrafts show at the Excel centre London on Thursday. It was really good and I got onto 4 workshops! (Tomorrow is the last day so get yourself down there if you can :0)

This was one of the workshops I did, ruffled ribbon petunias, so pretty :):

I got to practise my french knots for the centre which was good as now I can do them perfectly, I also learnt the little tufty  (turkey work) in the second flower which was cool as I had never done that before. Lorna Bateman was the lady who ran the workshop and she has an esty/folksy shop where she sells the kits if you like what you see above :P

This was the second workshop- making a creative textiles book cover from this material called spunbound made by Vilene. It was so cool- you put on this 3D paint through a stencil then heated it all with a heat gun and the £D paint bubbled a grew while the unpainted spunbound shrivelled and disappeared leaving holes. Then you paint it to make it look all colourful:

Then finally, I also did two embroidery workshops run by the Royal School of needlework, they were only £5 each which I think was pretty good value even though the other workshops were free (which is even more amazing value :P).

Here is my first finished piece from the Jacobean Crewelwork workshop:

Again, I learnt some new stitches and got to practice my french knots so that was all good. I will show you my silk shading sampler I started in the other workshop when I have finished it :)

Haha, after all that learning I got round to doing some shopping, well quite a bit of shopping actually.

I got these two Paddington Bear cross stitch kits, only £2.00 each! 

I am going to make something for my dad with them as he loves football, Paddington bear and he teaches maths so I thought they were perfect :P

Then I got all this:

All of the items cost me £1 or less each- what bargains :D

I better go now, got to get to bed to get my beauty sleep before my cake filled breakfast :P

See you all soon- when I may have another giveaway up my sleeve for you all.... so keep your eyes peeled :0)

Bye XxXxXxX