Corsets and chocolate :)

 Hi,

Last Friday I managed to finish my corset!!! I was so happy as I though I would just fall short because I had a lot of hand sewing over the eyelets to do but I managed to really get into the flow of it and got it all done :D Here is my finished corset, the mannequin is not quite the right size so you will have to some imagining to think what it would look like on my actual model who it is made to measure for:

 

 

It is fully boned a the front and laces up at the centre back and the straps are off the shoulder.

 

I am so happy my 17th century corset is done :-) It was a lot of work but I am very proud of it and enjoyed making it. Next is onto the wheel farthingale (period skirt supporter) to go with it!

 

I am off on my Easter break now though and my Brothers Birthday is coming up really soon. I wanted to make him something for his birthday but something different to the kind of things I normally make. I also wanted it to be really fun so I came up with the idea for a Domo Pinata!:

 

 

I made it from a cereal box, 4 toilet roll tubes, some red and white card and painted it all.

 

I have filled it with lots of tasty sweets:

 

 

Hehehe :)

I hope my brother likes it and I hope it holds up to a little bit of whacking before it breaks open :P

 

In my final bit of news for this post I finished the first of  the different bridal headbands I have begun designing and making recently. I am really pleased with the finished result:

 

 

I made the little ribbon roses and I put together the middle piece using the lace applique technique onto a fine net/gauze type material. There are little diamante in the centre of the flowers which sparkle in the light (you can just about see them in the photo :). I thought the peacock feather looked pretty and added a bit of interest. It is quite bohemian and vintage in style. I am still working on the others so it will be interesting to see what style/vibe they give off when they are finished.

 

I hope you are all very well and that you are having a good week so far :o) I am very excited for tomorrow as my brother is off school so we are going to the local park to play tennis then he is treating me to a Costa Coffee (my favourite!!!) lunch- sandwich, cake and everything! So generous! I treated him to a cadbury's creme egg mcflurry today- very tasty, I do recommend :P

 

Speak to you all again very soon,

 

Bye XxXxXxX

Wackiness and weddings

Hi everyone :)

Sadly I can't bring you any pictures of the wedding fashion show as it had to be cancelled due to the organiser having a family emergency so my thoughts go out to her. The wedding fair did go ahead though so the lady I applied for work experience with said I could still come for an hour or so to look around etc. The building it was held in was really lovely and historic/period and when I got home I was in a bridal mood! I decided to finally start making some of the bridal headbands I designed ages ago. Here is a work in progress picture:

 

It will be interesting to see them fully done, they are coming along as planned so far :P

 

Hehe, talking about bridal wear and bringing me on to the 'wackiness' section of this post.... me and my brother went to Ripley's believe it or not in London this weekend and they had this exhibition of wedding dresses made from toilet paper!:

 

Hehe they are soo good! My dad said they are alright as long as it doesn't rain, which is very true! :P

 

In ripleys they also had these tiny shoes called lily shoes- they do really weird stuff to your feet but I just thought they looked like cute little pixie shoes:

 

They even seemed to have a pattern for them:

 

I may try it one day but a modified version as I don't want to squeeze up my feet to be all tiny!

 

In other news it is my friends birthday coming up this weekend and we are all going to Wahaca the Mexican restaurant to celebrate. I wanted to make her a little something to go along with the rest of her gifts.

 

(P.S if you are my friend whose birthday it is you should stop reading now to prevent ruining any surprises!!!!)

 

I wasn't sure exactly what but I knew I wanted it to be cute. In the end I decided to go for a panda and then just started making and Little Tall Panda was born:

 

 

He is a brooch. I called him little tall panda as he is small but his body ended up quite long :-)

One of her favourite colours is purple so I added the purple bow and buttons to make him look all snazzy and such-like. I hope she likes him :0)

 

And my last bit of this post is just an update on my corset! This week Wednesday to Thursday is the last 3 days we have to finish our corsets (though we may get a little bit of time later on if we finish our 2nd part of this project early). I am getting there with mine, it does resemble a corset properly now and all the bones are in it:

 

Just some more bias binding, putting the eyelets in and then all the tabs which will be the fiddly and potentially time consuming bits but I hope I will get it all done :-)

 

I am off to bed now to get my beauty sleep, lol :)

 

See you all soon and thanks for reading my lovely friends!

 

Byeeeeeeeeee XxXxXxXxX

Hat happiness :)

Hi,

As I mentioned from Monday till today I was on a millinery course. It was millinery for beginners and we learnt all the steps of how to make a simple straw and felt hat.

 

It was really cool because we all got to choose the shape of our hat crowns and brims from a whole range of blocks (what you shape the hat on) in a big cupboard so we could do our own design rather than just a standard hat.

 

Making the hats involved a lot of hand sewing as all of the sewing of both the hats was done by hand and the thicker materials (rather than just fabric) meant I kept prodding myself, but ahh well I'm sure my hands will toughen up If I keep making more hats :P Quite a lot of effort was also involved in stretching the fabric so making hats literally involves blood, sweat and tears! But it is still super fun though!

 

Here are some shots of my work in progress:

 

 

 

And here are my finished hats! :D:

 

 

I played around with tons of different trimmings on each but in the end I liked the more simple look for each- sometimes simple is best :) I will be wearing the orange straw sun hat on holiday and I will probably wear the felt hat when I get the right occasion- it reminds me of a bugsy Malone/old fashioned gangster style, Hehehe I think it looks quite cool on me if I may say so myself :P

 

As a thank you to the course teacher- as she was so lovely and really great at explaining everything and helping people I made this little hat brooch for her using a little straw hat and some ribbons/decorations I had:

 

She liked it so I was pleased :-)

 

This is her website where she sells her hat and she also does one on one teaching in case anyone is interested: http://chloescrivener.co.uk/

 

I hope you all have a lovely weekend :) See you soon,

 

Bye XoXo Bye XoXo

Fathers day bunting

 Hello,

As I am sure many of you will know this Sunday is Fathers Day :D As my dads handmade gift I wanted to make him something fun and happy. I picked up some cool ice cream/lolly fabric in Rainbows in the Isle Of Wight but I wasn't quite sure of my plan when I bought it but it made me smile. About a week ago I decided on bunting! My dad had to throw away his other bunting as it had faded because it was outside in the sun (and rain) for the last two summers. I found some more fabric and ribbon from my stash and..... here it is all finished:

 

 

I have wrapped it up ready, I hope it likes it :0) I went with Chelsea football club blue (my dads favourite colour because he loves Chelsea! :)

 

On Sunday we are all having yummy banana splits to celebrate Fathers Day too :P mmmmm.... I can't wait.

 

Hehehe, I hope you all have a lovely weekend whatever your plans are!

 

See you all soon,

 

Bye XxXxX

Gift Wrap Giveaway!!!

Hi guys,

 

I thought it was about time for another giveaway- this time I thought I would make it a bit different though :) Usually I give away things you can add to your creations but this time I thought I would giveaway a bundle of items you can wrap your creations with so that you can have fun making them extra pretty for when you give them to people as gifts!

 

Here is the prize package:

 

 

- A packet of butterfly stickers (to decorate labels or notes :-)

- 5 crochet heart danglies (made by me, to tie onto bags etc...)

- 8 large coloured parcel labels

- 8 cute mini white labels

- 8 pink stripe candy gift bags

- And 3 little ladybird clips

 

Here are some close ups:

 

The giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere, any age!

 

All you have to do to enter is:

 

1. Be a follower

2. Leave a comment below

(Make sure to include some way for me to contact you in case you win e.g. a ravelry name or a blog/email address :-)

 

And if you want, just for fun you can mention in your comment your fave ever gift you have made someone :P

 

Giveaway entries are open 1st of June and the winner will be announced on the same day.

 

I hope you like the prizes and gooood luck!

 

See you soon,

 

Byeee

xxx

It's my Brothers birthday! (+Happy easter)

Hey guys,

It is my brothers birthday on the 1st of April (tomorrow!) but as we came on holiday to the isle of wight on Friday my brother got his special cake early! here it is:

It is a domo in the centre of the universe cake! :P

Hehhe it is very yummy and we still have lots left to enjoy so that is good!

My brothers birthday may end up being a bit Domo themed though (but that can't be a bad thing! :0) as for a gift I made him this domo case to fit his new kindle fire HD he got for his birthday (again early because we were going away). I hopes he likes it, it was fun to make though trying to get a good fit was difficult- secretly running into my brothers room and putting it on his kindle to check :P

AND HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE! I hope you are all having a fantastic day, enjoying lots of chocolate eggs :P

 Here as promised I bring you a picture of the secret Easter prize I made for the giveaway:

 

It is an easter egg pin cushion- I gave a try some of the embroidery stitches on my sewing machine to try and make it super cute =:o3

 

I have had a great easter :) Today we went to some little towns to do a bit of shopping and then in the evening my dad did an easter egg hunt for me and my brother so that was super fun! Look at all the yummy stuff I found:

 

Hehehe, I can't wait to eat it all :P My mum bought me the little knitted chick in the middle. I saw it in this craft shop when we were out and thought it was cute so she generously got me one (:<>)

I'm going to call him Darren (Because he looks like a Darren to me:P)

 

I'm off to bed now, ready for all the fun of my brothers birthday tomorrow. I think we are going mini golf and pizza express, yum!

 

See you all soon,

 

Bye my lovely readers xxx

 

 

 

Cookies and cakes :)

 

Hi,

 

As I mentioned the other day was my friends birthday :-) I wanted to make her something special as part of her gifts so I sat down to try and think of ideas. She really likes cute stuff and cookies so I came up with this little happy felt cookie purse:

 

 

I double up on the felt on each side to make it sturdier and added a little popper to close it.

 

It's a COOKIE you can keep your FORTUNE in lol! She liked it so I was pleased :D the little guy has gone to a good home! :0P

 

Hehehe, and now from cookies to cake...

 

Yesterday my nan, grandad and aunty came round to celebrate my nan and grandads 50th anniversary (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!! :). My dad made a delicious vegetarian roast for dinner and then I was in charge of dessert. I made these special 'Red Velvet Cookie Cakes' hehe my own kind of random creation!

 

The cakes weren't traditional red velvet I just made a deep red vanilla sponge and then topped with vanilla butter cream and crumbled white chocolate cookies:

 

 

The went down well and If I do say so myself I thought they were quite nice (I still think my dads cakes are actually perfection though!) :-P I was a bit worried the red would put everyone off but it didn't so that was good.

After all that sugar and sweetness I will give you all a rest now, lol!

See you all soon,

Byeeeeee xxx

A present for my mum (+ advent pics!)

Hello,

 

I hope you are all having a super week :)

 

The other day my nan visited and she brought me a little present, a WHOLE quality street tin FULL of buttons! I was so excited, she said it was her friends but she didin't need it any more as she is almost 100 and doesn't get round to doing much sewing anymore. I had a long look through and therewere so many pretty ones. The more buttons the merrier- it means you can always find the perfect one for the project you are working on... which is exactly what happened today:

 

When me and my mum wwnet to the V and A about a month back now to see the costume and fashion displays when we weree in the  gift shop my mum saw a pretty collar accessory but it was a little bit too much for us to afford! I remebered she had liked them but couldn't find a collar that I thought was her style to buy her for Christmas, Yesterday I thought why not just make her one! So  did, I made up a pattern piece and got started :) Today I finished it and then went through my new (giant) button box and found the perfect centre decoration for my collar:

 

 

My mum said that button was her favourite so that is the one I added, so it was her style :-) She really liked it and when she tried it on it was perfect size so I was super happy! :D as you never quite know until you try it on. 

Hehehe :0) In other news I finally bring you the photo of the gifts for this years crafty advent 

calendar giveaway for any of still curious:

 

See you all soon,

 

Bye :) xxx

Ooops, I forgot!

Hi everyone,

I hope you all are well and having a lovely week :) I was looking through the pictures on my camera the other day and found a picture of a mini project I forgot to blog about, so I thought I would share it with you now (better late than never, lol :P).

For Christmas I got my nan this build a bear teddy:

 

I bought the cooking apron and glove outfit but to give it a bit more of a personal touch I stitched the bow and knitted the little cookie too :) My nan liked it so I was pleased!

 

I also realised I have not yet put up the picture of what was in this years crafty advent calendar so I will try to find the pictures I took and get them to you soon :P Only a month late but just in case some of you were curious :)

 

See you all soon,

 

Byeeeee xxxx

 

Brother's Birthday! :D

Hello everybody,

Tomorrow is my brothers birthday! :D This year he got his cake a bit early as my dad had to work on Saturday so wouldn't of had time to finish it for Sunday then so he started early and presented it to my brother yesterday. My brother loves space and anything to do with it, this is the cake design my dad came up with for him this year:

A to-scale (and factually correct) cake representation of the first footprint on the moon!!! The flag behind the cake is also made of icing and the ridges underneath it are made of chocolate rice cake crispie and the moon rock chunks are made of coloured icing, so everything, as usual is edible :-)



It is super delicious but after two days we have barely made a dent! Hehehe my dad said there was 36 eggs (!!!!) that went in to it so luckily we all have good stamina when it comes to eating cake :P lol!

I didn't quite create anything near that scale for my brother but I did design and make him this little ami Nasa astronaut:

I tried to get it a little bit factually correct by adding the little badges and straps on the space suit, I really hope he likes it :0) I also got him a Domo plush because he keeps admiring my collection and two trading card thingys with real moon and mars rock on them!

In other news I sent of these ten chicks/snowmen I made for a cancer charity's chick knit that some of you may remember I participated in last year:

It took me longer than expected to complete them but I am glad I managed to finish and get them sent off before Easter :)

I'm off to eat some more cake now, hehehe :P

See you all soon,

Bye xXxX

Mothers day bracelet

Hello,

For mothers day I wanted to get my Mum a special piece of jewellery :) I looked on lots of different websites at some very beautiful pieces of handmade jewellery but I didn't know that any of them would be able to arrive in time for Mothers day :( I was talking to my Dad and he said why not just make my mum a special bracelet or necklace? I had a think about it and had a look in all my craft boxes and found some bits and pieces that gave me an idea for a bracelet inspired by the one my dad bought me for Christmas:

After being slightly worried at first about how my jewellery would turn out (especially as it was going to be one of my Mums main gifts) but I am really happy with it :) I hope my Mum likes it!

I was also happy because I learnt a new skill, making felt beads :D I had lots of wool in the needle felting kit I got the Christmas before last so I had a large selection of colours, they are fairly simple to make and there is a great tutorial here! :-)

Now I have go to finish some of the little knitted chicks I am making for charity, like the ones I made last year! :)

See you all soon,

Byeeee xxx

*Happy Christmas!*

Hi guys!

I have had a wonderful day and I hope all of you have too :)

I had and amazing surprise when I came down this morning and my first prezzie was revealed to me... My very own Great white shark (they are my favourite animal) that swims in the air! I called him Bubbles:

 Heehee, he is coming for you! lol :0)

I also got lots of other great presents, look at these cute plushes my brother got me:

Soooo sweet :3

And here some of the other cool gifts my parents got me:

Some more clothes for my monster high doll Frankie

This very cool creepy crochet book that I saw in a shop and thought was great. I really want to make murdering mental Mary from inside the book, she looks very funny!

Some yummy chocolates and this little Berry man :P (well these were from Santa!)

I absolutely love this beautiful crafty themed handmade charm bracelet they got me, I'm never going to take it off!

And look who else came from underneath the wrapping paper... :)

 Hehehe, She fits right in with the gang! (I got the outfits for Christmas too :)

Me, my brother and my dad always watch spongebob as my parents bought me this spongebob hug t-shirt!

Not too many more pictures now, I am just so excited about all my presents!

So sweet :3

I have the hat to match this scarf and lemon chocolate is my favourite! :D

And finally I love these retro tins/boxes, I love everything in fact &lt;3

Thank you to my very generous family and friends!

I am also very happy because everyone liked the gifts I got them too, here is my brothers finished big present, a nacho hamper, can you see Mr Chilli Pepper?

lol :0P

I'm off to bed now, I got up very early so I am quite tried and eating lots of yummy food makes you tired and I have done alot of that today too,

Thank you to my lovely generous family again and also thank you to all you wonderful readers and followers I hope you had a brilliant day as well!

See you all soon,

Lots of love Jordan XXXX &lt;3