maxi dress

I’m attempting to make some summer clothes for my sister, so we went to buy some stretchy fabric and found some really lovely stuff. I made this one by making a case and putting elastic through the top and then a thinned piece of elastic near the waist so that some fabric would sort of go over the top, still need to hem it but this is how it looks 

another book clutch bag

I made this one a little differently, by taking all of the pages out completely and glueing fabric in instead. But i didn’t make the fabric wide enough so it doesn’t open up really, its wide enough to fit a phone, money and keys in though for a night out 

 

Book clutch bag

I had a go at making a couple of book bags in a few different ways, some working better than others…heres one of them where i cut the pages out and glued the edge, and then glued a clasp in, however I used a hot glue gun that doesn’t appear to work on metal because it just peeled off one side, think i need some super glue or something. 

crafting fail

Spent the night crafting….I’ve literally failed at everything I’ve tried tonight! In fact, this picture sums up my night, can’t even remember what I was trying to achieve.

I should have stopped two hours ago!

New Bargain Necklace!

I went to antiques fair today! It wasn’t quite what I expected it, I thought it would be a little more of a car boot style, piles of rubbish type of thing, bur it was lots of stalls all set up very nicely. Found a couple of bargains though…

I found a little lace covered bag with a chain on it

and this lovely necklace:

For Wait for it….For a pound!!!!!

BARGAIN!

Little book hide away

I have seen loads of these online so I thought I would have a go at making one myself. To be honest I thought that it looked a lot easier than what it was!

I bought the book from an antiques shop for 75p!!

I brushed on some watered down PVA around the edges and let it sink in and dry off, i made the mistake of thinking that using the hair dryer would speed up the process but instead just made it go sticky and made the pages go wavy…

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was getting really frustrated that it would stay open so I grabbed a peg and put it on the pages that I didn’t want to cut out or glue.

 

 

 

Anyway after that I made lines with a straight edge and got a box cutter and started to go over them, which was pretty easy, until I realised that I had only cut through about 5 pages!

 

So I continued that for a while…..and a while longer.

Some how I managed to snap off half of the knife and cut my finger in the process, but eventually I got about half way through.

The pages shredded a little but I neatened it up as best I could and then put a a layer of the watered down glue all over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished project, now to find something top secret to put in there!

The C Word

Yeah so the C word keeps coming up…Bonfire night is all finished so its time to start thinking about christmas presents!!! Yayy! I love christmas, but I’m not christmassy yet. I’m just thinking about getting christmassy, and now that I have to admit that I am a bit of an adult; I have to start thinking of the cost of christmas and getting ahead. 

AND I get to start crafting christmas things too! I enjoyed making home made presents last year so will do some this year too, going alongside usual presents of course. 

I think that people appreciate hand made presents a bit more too!

These are my ideas so far (a mix between baking and sewing mainly):

Hand warmers

Oil pillow sleeping pockets

Ginderbread men

brownies

Chocolates

sweet bouquets

cushions

oven mitt

personalised tote bag

Jewelerry

Ginger bread house

Mini cheesecakes

Make up bags

button bracelet

button frame

apron

coconut macaroons

phone sock

Any other ideas??? I’m sure I won’t do all of this stuff, just the best ones!

Thanks

Maxi dress Re fashion

My younger Sister gave me a bag of dresses at the weekend that I could do whatever I wanted with! How exciting! One of them was this maxi dress

So I decided that I would make a skirt out of, like this one from River Island

 

So I pinned the skirt and underskirt together before I cut it. Then I made a pattern from paper so that I could cut the skirt and make sure it was symmetrical.

Then I hemmed the bottom and put elastic on the top as well, this is how it turned out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I st need to clean the floor! And start taking pictures of the in-between steps

 

 

Charity shop re fashion

Inspired by other blogs, I went to a few of the local charity shops to have a look for some things that i could re-fashion, and this is one of the things i came out with

So i got the scissors straight out and decided to make it into a dress. For some reason everything i seem to make seems to have a summer theme, and it’s way too cold to actually wear outside! But oh well! I quite simply cut the bottom off and made that into a belt and a strap, and then hemmed it, it came out like this

The Birthday Bar!

Because I am such a fantastic girlfriend, i decided to make a bar for my boyfriend for his birthday! But I didn’t really want to spend a fortune on a big one that I might not even like! So, i went to IKEA and bought 3 billy book cases, and put two of them together and one to the side (see photos).  Then I went to B&Q and bought some strips of wood and a big piece of wood for the top, and i bought some no more nails and stuck it all together! 

I had already told my mum about it, and she rang me one day and told me that she was at a car boot sale where someone was selling loads of bar stuff, which is where i got the drip trays and mats! Bargain! 

Then i bought some touch lights from pound land and stuck them underneath. Plus the optics and a load of glasses from IKEA, then I stuck the bottle tops on (which I was meant to make some kind of sign from, but was too lazy as I had to hammer them out so they were flat!).

Then I bought all the alcohol for it…which is the expensive bit that i don’t want to talk about!

And Finally, no bar would be complete without crisps/snacks!