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

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

It's my birthday!!!

Hello,

Yes, today is officially my Birthday! :D I have had a fabulous day with my lovely family :-)

 

My Dad as usual amazed me with the birthday cake he made for me- it was so lovely to look at and to eat! (though my eyes were too big for my belly and I ate a bit too much :P)

 

Here it is in all its lovely leopard print and cute little mouse/bunny glory :D:

 

 

Isn't he adorable :3

 

Also as usual I was blown away by my family's generosity and thoughtfulness in the presents they got me because having them is a gift enough- and all the lovely stuff they got me ready for uni too- I seriously thought I might wake up and have stuff taken off me instead of getting more gifts as it seems like I have had more than my lot already!

 

Here are some pictures of my wonderful gifts- Thank you to all my lovely family and friends for all of them:

 

 

I am soo excited about reading all of these books :) I have already gained inspiration for my Halloween costume from the fashion book my friend got me :P

 

Hehe, two Kawaii fuzzy Llamas and a fluffy jacket to match- what more could a girl ask for? ;)

 

My mum got me the two little craft kits and my wonderful, lovely, brilliant brother got me the Hamtaro Bijou plush (he also got me a very cool Domo poster which I will post a picture of when it is up and the words he wrote inside my card he made for me were so lovely that they made me cry! And on top of all of that he offered to buy me a film and a Mcflurry- because I love them so much!)

 

I can now top up my chocolate stash thanks to my friends and dad (my friends also got me a pretty picture frame with a picture in it of all of us at my Halloween party dressed up- haha, it is coming to uni with to make me smile each day)

 

Some lunchboxes and luxurious bath stuff courtesy of my dad, I love the cat lunchbox as it reminds me of the Lucky Chinese cats!

 

And last but by far not least some cool Dvds and Cds. I have been wanting to watch the films for ages- mainly for all the amazing costumes in them and who doesn't love a bit of Andre Rieu? :P

 

Thank you again to my family and friends as my day would not have been so  special without you to share it with xxx

 

Hahaha, I hope all of you have had a wonderful day as well, see you all soon with more Innocent hat knitting news!

 

See you all soon,

 

Bye xxx 

A special post

Hi everyone,

Today I have a bit of a different post for you all. My brother has asked me to do a special post today to help him with his PSHCE project about animal rights. Part of his project is to raise awareness so he wondered if I could mention it to all you lovely people :)

 

Some of the issues involved in animal rights are:

 

- Testing on animals

- Using animals for entertainment (In a badly treated forced kind of way)

- Using animal skins and furs for fashion

- Animals being treated badly as part of the food industry e.g. in intensive/battery farming

 

As many of you will know I sponsered a rescue turkey (called Lord Gobble Gooble :) and I have looked into some of the apalling conditions innocent animals have to survive in around the world. I am genuinely concerned about the issues above.

 

Many companies do try to avoid profiting to the detriment of animals by avoiding animal testing and treating any animals used in their processes well. For example; Lush, The Body Shop, The Co-op and many others are some of the well know producers of animal friendly toiletaries and cosmetics.

Yeo valley the Yoghurt manufacturers even provided comfy matresses in the cow sheds for their dairy cows to lay on! Now that is how it should be done! :P And there are soo many other fabulous companies that are also dedicated to animal rights- look out for them and please try to support them where you can :) Also try not to support any kind of animal entertainment which doesn't seem to be quite right.

 

PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) have a lot more information about all of the issues above and more and also have many different ideas on how you can get involved in supporting animal rights: http://www.peta.org.uk/ and on many company websites you can find thier ethical policies too to check what they are doing to ensure animal rights.

 

Thank you very much for reading this special post, I have enjoyed posting about this important issue and my brother is very thankful to you all too, he has been working hard and really wanted to spread the issue further than just our school. He has also made a youtube video and would be very grateful if you could watch it: It is here! :)

See you all soon,

Bye :) xxxXxxxXxxX

Cooking and crafting

Hi friends,

Since I got home I had really been craving those 'Maxibon Cookie' ice creams, I had a check in my local supermarkets but none of them sold them :/ But then I thought what do I normally do when I can't find what I would like? I try to make it :0) So that is what I did, me and my brother bought some cookies, ice cream and chocolate and attempted to re-create the deliciousness! We had to work really fast as you could feel the ice cream melting. They weren't very neat but they were tasty :P:

Another thing that was very tasty was the chocolate bunny me and my dad made together today!:

I bought my dad the mould and chocolate as a birthday gift as he really likes cooking and today we gave it a go, it was very fun. The chocolate came out very thick as I bought my dad a 1kg bar of Cadbury's and we ended up using it all :-P We didn't eat it all this evening though, promise!

In amongst all the chocolate and ice cream eating/making I have been doing some crafting though, Here is the little sign I made as a present for my mum and dad:

It is made out of scrabble tiles and I made up the little rhyme myself :o) A while ago my mum gave me a bag of scrabble tiles that she found in my brothers games cupboard, I kept thinking what to do with them and finally came up with the sign idea, my parents really liked so I was happy. I might try making a little door plaque for myself out of some of the remaining tiles.

I'm off to bed now as I am quite tired after spending the afternoon chocolate making :P Also I have got to get up my energy too as tomorrow me and my brother are making another batch of the cookie ice creams for when my nan and grandad come round in the afternoon!

See you all soon,

Byeeeeeeeee XXX

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