*Paste*: a friendly little monster :o)

It's been a busy old week with lots going on. I've been celebrating Shakespeare's birthday in Stratford this weekend and taking in two of the new productions, which has been fantastic. Rupert Goold's Romeo and Juliet is rather brilliant, definitely worth booking that one when it comes to London!

In the spaces between the busyness, I have been been enjoying sewing something bright and cheerful. I don't know if you've ever seen these Donna Wilson kits:

This one is a bit depleted, because by the time I took this photo, I had already sewed quite a lot of it! You get lots of random felt pieces, a huge skein of thread, a needle, and no instructions - they are 'make something with me' kits and they are all different. Perfect, you get to totally make it up as you go along. There are a couple of examples if you're totally stumped, but I disregarded them and was mostly inspired by the mis-shapen knitted creatures Donna Wilson is also known for (See here). Now, my sewing skills are not quite up to that level(!), so by the end of the week, I had made this little cutie:

I added the green and pink thread from my embroidery thread box, but otherwise stuck to the kit and basically practised my rather shambolic hand-sewing. He wasn't going to be a friendly little monster when I started (I thought I was making scrapbook embellishments, but then I decided it looked quite like an eye, so I made another...) He makes me smile. He doesn't have a name yet, but suggestions are welcome. :o)

Very serendipitously, it so happens that Copy and Paste,  one of my favourite inspiration blogs, is having a party to celebrate their first birthday and recently posted two inspiration points for their followers to get stuck into in advance. I nearly fell off my seat when I saw how nearly the colours of the Charlie and Lola book in this post matched my little creature-in-progress! So that was an extra incentive to get him finished before tomorrow, and possibly explains why he looks like he's cheering. He's a very 'just because' sort of creation, but those are mostly my favourite kind.

Happy Birthday, Copy and Paste!

Party at Shimelle's

Even with my sporadic home internet connection, I have been following Shimelle's cyber party this weekend (what a great incentive to go into the office on Saturday!) and so far, I have made this.

Now, I think this actually ticks two of the challenge boxes (if that's allowed) - it is a scraplift of Shimelle's lovely 'Anderson Creek' layout, using some leftover Girl Friday Cosmo Cricket bits. And a fair bit of Sassafras too. But because pretty much all of the photos I chose featured flags of some sort, I replaced the bottom strip of pattern paper with a line of pretty new sassafras rainbow banner, as per Friday evening's challenge to use bunting!

Above you can see the new (blue) AC ribbon of joy. :o)

I have been meaning to do something with these photos for ages and am pretty pleased with how it turned out. I'd watched this festival on tv for years, sitting up long into the night, so finally getting to go was brilliant. Yes, it rained, yes, there was mud, but there was also this glorious sunset, a solar powered cinema playing old films and a wonderful tent somewhere near the Greenfields which had cauldrons of fire and cushions, where they gave you tea in china cups and featured random and unknown bands. It was here I discovered The Mountain Firework Company, who are Brighton-based and fantastic - I heard On Your Own From Here and fell head over heels for them. Happy days.

The second thing I made was this:

Using this sketch. I tend to get immensely side-tracked when trying to use sketches, but actually stuck pretty close to this one. I used a bit of something old (the paper), a bit of something new (that ribbon again!) and even have something blue - the sky in my photo. I borrowed my title from a favourite Lush bubble bath bar, just because it fit so well.

I loved choosing the embellishments to pretty it up, can you tell I like stickers?

I made this because we have a similarly beautiful sky outside today, but instead of being out in the sun I am stuck indoors feeling ill (boo), so I thought I would be outside in spirit instead.

I don't think I would ever have made a page like this without a sketch - I am not a white space kind of girl - and I did have to fight an urge to add more of everything, but I am glad I managed to resist.

If you haven't been around to scrap this weekend, there is now a considerable number of inspiring posts on Shimelle's blog, so it is well worth hopping over there to see.

A weekend in the city of light

Thank the stars for BT Openzone, for that is how I am online at home and writing this. I do not enjoy my forays to the cyber cafe at the end of the road, it is much better to sit here with a cup of tea/glass of wine (depending on the time of day). Tea, at the moment, on a lazy Saturday morning.

This is my weekend at home where I finally get to find a place for the random odds and ends after the move. I'm not complaining it has taken nearly 3 weeks to get this far, life has intervened very joyfully in the meantime!

So last weekend, I was here:

My mum and I had a long weekend in Paris. It was beautiful, my favourite bits were Montmartre (it is still possible to turn a corner and escape the hoardes of tourists, and it's a lovely place to watch the sun go down), and the Jardin du Luxembourg (which is full of random statues and astonishing splashes of colour, like this):

There is also a brilliant footbridge, one bridge away from the Pont Neuf, which we noticed had loads of padlocks attached to the edges, each one with little massages of love and life - a very novel method of leaving your mark.  Walking over it at night, it is full of groups of students, some with guitars, and it has a lovely atmosphere, rather like the saner reaches of the Greenfields at Glastonbury after sunset.

We also went to VersionScrap, a fantastic scrapbooking show! Yes I know Ally Pally was the same weekend, but I went to this last year and it was brilliant, so this year I took my mum and made a weekend of it. We bought many pretty things, this was me being restrained (oh dear):

And I was very delighted to find the new Sassafras lines, the colours are just gorgeous in real life, I especially love Cherry Delicious.

Alas, no new October Afternoon though.

I will have to post this before my time runs out! Will scrap things with all this soon, it will be my reward for having sorted out the remains of the odds and ends in my flat. :o)

In transit

Another bank holiday train journey today, and I am actually blogging this from the train! It has been a real mixed bag of weather this weekend while I've been up visiting my family, Saturday morning found us in Keswick in the pouring rain. This did not deter me from taking my usual Derwent Water pics, I love how they mostly came out looking like black and white shots.

Unbelievably, there were people out in a rowing boat defying the weather!

But the by same afternoon, the weather had turned on a sixpence, and Spring finally made an appearance.

Heading home to London today, let's hope this week brings more of the latter weather than the former! I certainly have some fab pics to scrap, which should hopefully take my mind off my temporary lack of internet connection when I get there.

Bye for now, here's to enjoying what's left of the bank holiday!

Moving and Making

Well, it has been a busy week, what with moving house and then proceeding to be out every night of the following week. The good part is that I haven't been in my new flat long enough to miss my lack of internet connection - yet. I'm sure that's going to wear off quickly.

Want to see? This was the blank canvas I had to start with. Yes, I have a bright red sofa. And look at all that light coming in! Oh yes, that is good.

This was the part where I began to wonder how I ever managed to accumulate so much stuff:

As you can see, at this point all I had managed to unpack was the books in that bookshelf. This is always a satisfying first thing to unpack - empties many large boxes and instantly makes it feel more like home. I was planning to reorganise them into rainbow bookshelves, but alas, time did not permit at this stage of proceedings so that will have to wait for a rainy day. I still haven't totally finished unpacking if truth be told, but two days later, I'd got as far as celebrating the nearly there-ness of it with my erstwhile flatmate.

Words cannot describe how brilliant it is to find that Expedit unit in a rented flat. We were clearly meant to be!

I also went here this week, to learn how to make a tote bag. So far my learning to sew has consisted of buying lots of pretty fabric but not actually sewing with it, so this was an excellent kick-start. It went pretty well, in that I managed not to accidently sew up either the top of the bag or myself to the bag, and I am pleased to unveil the result!

I think this is definitely a scrapbookers fabric - pretty birds, butterflies, flowers and spots! There was a fantastic choice of fabric in the shop, choosing one was pretty much the hardest part of the class. Perhaps white thread would have been a better choice than teal (especially given the line of stitching is apt to go off at tangents in places), but I quite like it anyway! I have hung it up on my door hooks, ready to go out with me.

That's all for now - Happy Easter!

Spring Shopping

It's beginning to feel a lot like Springtime in London - today was the first day this year the Spring jacket came out of the wardrobe. Time for a Spring clean - or rather, wholesale clean out! I'm supposed to have been packing stuff up for moving day this week, which is now scarily close, but instead I've been taking the 'before' photos of what it looks like before I start. I've never loved this flat, but now I'm leaving it, I'm really noticing the good things about it. Is that normal?

 This is what it looked like early this morning, with the sun coming in:

I should really take a picture later this week from the same place - I think the only thing still in view will be the daffodils!

So, to distract me from starting to pack, I went out to Stitch and Craft at Olympia.

I had very good intentions, having been on an economy drive for the past month, but given that payday was Friday, that idea went awry very quickly as soon as I saw Shimelle's little shop. But, oh look:

I have been coveting those AC Abode stickers ever since I found out I was moving! And yes, Dear Lizzy is even more pretty in real life than it looks online, so those ribbons just slipped into my basket at the very last minute. Stalking this collection online, I was sure I liked one of the other ribbon collections better, but seeing them in person, that lacy blue one in the middle won me over completely. So I may not be at all organised for moving, but I'll be able to scrapbook it when I do. ;o)

Meanwhile, I have decided to make cushion covers to replace some of my old falling to bits ones (and to stop me going too mad in John Lewis' home department), so I also bought some fabric to get started with. I'll have to show you that another day though, I haven't photographed it yet! However, I did buy one new cushion yesterday in a beautiful little Covent Garden shop. But oh look, how could I not?

Motto of the weekend: you only regret the pretty things you didn't buy. :o)

Sewing stash

I come from a very creative family. My nanna has made pretty things to sell at craft fairs for as long as I can remember, and a lot of her work when I was younger involved fabric and sewing. So when I got a sewing machine for Christmas, she was more than happy for me to raid her stash cupboard.

What I didn't realise was that as well as the (very full) cupboard, there was also a drawer under the bed and a box in the garage, all full of beautiful vintage fabric, lace, and threads!

It transpires that my nanna's eldest sister (auntie Hilda) used to make quilts. I never knew about this. When she died, my nanna inherited her sewing box. Among the treasures in that box is lots of pre-cut and basted little hexagons of fifties and sixties style fabrics in matching patterns. Some are sewn together, and the hand-stitching is beautifully neat and detailed. I would like to finish some of the things she started, but think I will need a considerable amount of experience to do them justice. Really inspired to get there though.

I literally couldn't carry all of the stuff I picked out, so will be fetching it back home to London in batches. I have no good photos of the fabric yet, so will share some pics of it in later posts.

Small steps first though - I'm off to the Make Lounge at the end of the month to learn the basics. And I'm moving house in 3 weeks time, so perhaps that will inspire me to make a cushion cover or two. ;o)