Back again this week with a super awesome ring I finished making the other day. I started out by tea staining piece of paper; Very exciting I know. Then I got to use my favorite ever boot sale purchase: My vintage type writer.
I picked this beauty up for only £15 and it was the best decision I ever made. A new ribbon and it works as good as new, and it's so pretty. After typing out a few choice phrases I picked a few and got stuck in with some small blank jewellery charms.
Now, this was a complete experiment for me so the first one I thought I would glue the paper and trim it when it dries to get a nice neat edge.This was a mistake. So the next one I trimmed first. This was also my first time using shimmer Mod Podge and my pictures don't do it any justice, it's so glimmery! Like a fairy pooped in my glue! Unfortunately where I faffed with the un-trimmed one so much the ink smudged a bit. So I decided to take the experiment up another notch and and threw some diamonds, pearls and glitter into the mix to see what would happen.
Them time for the magic; The Mod Podge 3D magic that is. This stuff is so clever, you can add dimension to all sorts of crafts in exactly where you want it with this stuff. Then it's even more exciting waiting to see the end result.
I was so happy with how these turned out. The glitter one turned out even better than I expected, you can still see the words underneath pretty clearly and I think it looks great.
For the other one I decided to trim off the end hoop, rub it down with a bit of wet and dry paper, and simply glue in to a black ring back. TA-DA!
This was a really fun and satisfying project. And really quick, apart from all the drying time. And I think I'm lucky enough to have a real typewriter to create these with. If you want to request a custom ring/bracelet/necklace message me and I can price something up for you.
Today we're looking at tasty tasty pizza dough. Now this recipe is one I got from James Morton's amazing bread book. You may recognize his from The Great British Bake-Off, which is where I fell in love with him but he's not just a pretty face; He's also a very talented baker.
Now, obviously I'm not gonna share his exact recipe, but it's very simply 500g flour, a 7g sachet of yeast, 325g of water, 40g of oil, and a little bit of salt. And that just gets mixed all together. The recipe does say regular olive oil which I didn't have so I had to improvise and mix my own:
It looks pretty gross when you start to mix it but keep the faith, it will come together. There's a little saying James introduces in his book which is "Wetter is better" and don't worry, I've made this recipe a couple of times before with my old (inaccurate) scales pictured and it's come out fine. After it starts to come together you can get your hands in there and start to knead it until it's nice and smooth.
Then you just have to wait for it double in size and you're good to go. Obviously how long this bit takes depends on how warm your room is but don't put it somewhere too hot as it'll taste bad if it rises too fast. Then you should be able to see all those tasty gluten strands like in the top of the header. The recipe says this makes 3/4 pizzas but I can only stretch it to 2. This almost definitely has something to do with my pizza base shaping skills but this freezes really well so just divide it up and pop it in the freezer for later.
This always turns out tasty for me, and when I get better at shaping the pizza I'll share the next stage with you all.
My boyfriends amazing sister made him these wonderful book ends for Christmas.
Over on her blog here you can see how she did something similar with smaller ornaments to make Christmas tree decorations. I have seen this done before and eve had a little go on a unicorn that ended up on a friends birthday present.
I absolutely adore these book ends. From what it looks like, she's cut one of those old fashioned and heavy toys in half and glued felt both to its newly cut sides and its feet. This is absolutely genius and looks absolutely amazing (even in my boyfriends messy room)
It really makes me think why aren't we covering everything in gold paint? or glitter? I can be the only one who swoons over Paperchase decorations of glittery stags. Craft shops even sell flocking powered so you really could easily create an amazing display piece out of an unloved toy. Watch this space and if I stop anything in a charity shop I like the look of I'll try out a couple of the techniques I just described.
And If you followers can think of any other ways to prettify stuff (my mind is reeling; paper, fabric, the list is endless) or have already tried a project like this yourselves I would love to hear from you!
I was experimenting with using from pizza dough I made and some oven roast garlic to make a quick garlic bread. Unfortunately I put my pizza stone in the oven on max to pre-heat and forgot to turn the oven down when the dough went in so it was a bit dark on the outside and doughy on the inside.
Maybe next time I'll remember to not be so silly and then I'll share it with you lovely lot.
Excuse the terrible background, but I couldn't wait to show you this embroidery I did for my boyfriend with a few spare hours I had. We are both huge fans of Parks and Recreation and I decided to make him something nice for his very plain room.
After a rummage in my fabric create I came across this bit of material i bough from IKEA going on two years ago and ended up not using for previous project. I adore this material and as I only have a little bit I was at a loss for what to do with it but then a stroke of genius struck:
Embroider a mustache on to the moose!
It seems so simple now. I've never really done much to incorporate the material pattern into my work so this was a fun little test. And after that is had to be a Swanson quote.
I regretted after about half an hour the decision to change thread colour every word but I had made a statement and I had to stick to it. I also tried to mix up a few different stitches on this as well, just to make it more visually interesting (and i got lazy towards the end and did it in the biggest straight stitch ever).
As I only knocked this out quickly I did a bit of a messy glue job on the back but this is how I generally finish most of my embroideries. In a later post I'll go through this a bit more but I cover the back with another contrasting fabric and the just trim and glue down the edges. I have been meaning to try a few other teqniques so stay tuned and I'll try some out in future posts.
Overall I was pretty happy with this as I did it on a whim and didn't plan too much but I think one thing I need to work on is my font always looks like my handwriting. Any followers have any tips on how to overcome this?
Hello fellow Crafters, Makers and Procurers of Stuff
Welcome to this new shiny blog of mine where I'll be showing off things I'm making, things I like, and hopefully getting you inspired.
As this is a brand new venture for me I don't have a lot of progress pictures for things I've previously made but I'll be sure to add any tutorials I've used and be as descriptive as possible but expect more thoroughly photographed content in the future.
To start things off I though I would share with you some things I've baked and decorated.
I took the inspiration from CakeSpy and have done a couple different variations of flavor but this always turns out yummy!
This Hello Kitty cake is one I made for my best friend for her birthday. I simply carved the shape into it and used fondant icing for the decoration. The icing was over worked and dried out a bit so it has a few cracks but I was pretty chuffed with this one.
My little sister is a huge Paramore fan so I made this birthday cake of their album art for her.It took ages to hand pipe and I had the biggest hand cramp afterwards!
Well that's the first post all done and dusted. I'll be back soon with more exciting posts!
