Too much time out...... argggggggggggggh!!

Hello peeps, well I can't believe its been so long.  I have been super busy organising our street party, with meetings, paperwork, sourcing resources and of course making things to decorate the front our house and also things for the party, which I am going to start posting here very shortly, I hope it gives you some inspiration if your holding your own party.

I have also been busy making my make for Julie at  kcscourt for the Diamond Jubilee Swap and am happy to say that after a few weeks that is now nicely wrapped along with some other goodies and ready to be sent.  I hope she likes it!! Pics will follow once Julie has unwrapped them - oooh, so exciting.

On top of all that I have volunteered my services to our local Scout group and am now a trainee leader.  It is positively one of the best things I have ever done, I love it.  I am organising some silly Olympic games for the scouts to carry out on summer camp in a few weeks and I cannot wait to be exhausted after 5 days of fun, games, learning and very little sleep!

So I will be back in a few days with the start of the things that I have been making.

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Special Award!!!!!

Hello everyone, another lovely day here, it's great when the sun is shining and the creative juices are flowing.

A couple of days ago Lottie asked me if I had an old cup she could have as she wanted to make something (I thought she was making something for her imminent den) so I gave her an old white one.  She was in the hobby room with me and painted it in a lovely bronze colour and then cut out 4 squares of polystyrene and painted them the same colour.  I then left the hobby room to do other things and then about an hour or so later she went into the kitchen and called me in and asked me to close my eyes as she had a surprise for me.  When I opened my eyes the old cup and polystyrene squares had been lovingly made into an award for me accompanied by a certificate.  The certificate read - 'For brilliant commitment to housework and cleaning (washing-up) with enthusiasm  - Congratulations'.  It also came with my favourite chocolate bar - Turkish Delight and a box of Maltesers.

What a lovely surprise, it's nice to know that I'm appreciated!!!

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Felt fun

Good evening everyone.  It's nice now that the dark, dank January is behind us and Spring is round the corner.  Gosh I've been so busy these days that my hobby room has been seriously neglected  - need to tidy!!!

I'm working on a little recycling project at the moment and as soon as it is finished a will post but in the meantime I would like to share a couple of Lottie's little bits that she made last weekend for me.  She wanted to try something new and so she opted to try her hand at felt creations and hand-sewing.  The first project was a cute little toadstool which she made a template for out of card and then used it to cut out the felt pieces, she then sewed and stuffed and this is it - not bad for first try!!!

The second one she made was for my Valentines gift and she put it into a lovely little box and wrapped it beautifully for me - I feel very lucky x

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Lovely Award

Many, many thanks to Ann at The Scrapbook Garden for awarding me and Lottie this lovely award.  It really is lovely when you get awarded by fellow bloggers and it is really appreciated, THANK YOU x x

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The Liebster Award is given to smaller bloggers who have 200 or less followers in the hope it will bring them new followers and friends.  The tradition is that it is then passed on to five other blogs to help them too.  If you want to accept the award the steps are:

• 1.     Link back to the person’s blog who gave you the award and thank them.
• 2.       Post the award on your blog.
• 3.       Give the award to five fellow bloggers who inspire you.
• 4.       Leave a comment on their blogs to let them know.

I have to now nominate five fellow bloggers who have inspired me and I would like to nominate these bloggers for a mixture of fantastic inspiration and great blogging.

1. moonstruckcreations
2. Pretty Petal Handmade
3. Twinkles Tutorials & Twirls
4. alizabethy
5. Christmas Pie Crafts

I hope these five bloggers will accept their award and also forward it on to another five who deserve it too.

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Just a few........

Hello everyone, I hope you have had a fab crafting January with some great makes made.  I have been busy organising, designing and trying to come up with some interesting things to make for the coming months.  I have a list that keeps getting bigger and bigger!!

For this post I would like to share with you a few things that myself and Lottie made last year but I never had time to upload them on here.  The Inspire wooden sign above was painted and then decorated in some lovely paper with embellishments attached - this is wall mounted in our hobby room to hopefully bring inspiration!!

The card below I made for Lottie's Brownie leader (Brown Owl) upon Lottie leaving to go into Guides - we thought she deserved Best Owl title.

This poster was made by Lottie and I love it sooooo much so that it hangs in pride of place in the hobby room.  She chose the letter B and illustrated it with things beginning with that letter.  I think the colours and wonderful drawings are really cheery and should put a smile on everyone's face :)

Finally, in 2010 we went to Vintage at Goodwood for the weekend and one of the things that Lottie done there was decorate this calico bag.  I really like the little details that she picked up on while we were there and  used them on the bag to reflect 'Vintage'.  This has since been framed and I love looking at it every day.

I hope these few things may have inspired you in any of your crafting projects and I will be back soon with my new makes.  In the meantime please pop over and see my http://diamondjubileestreetparty.blogspot.com as I am now starting to upload my street party makes too.

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Upcycled dress

I seem to have slid into upcycling lately, which I am really enjoying as I am pulling back on throwing things away just for the sake of it.  Today's post is about a lovely dress that Lottie has now outgrown and we both like the material (it has lots of lovely apples on it) so we decided to make something new out of it and Lottie made use of her new sewing machine (so did I).

Lottie was desperate to make her own cushion and use some of the material as an embellishment and as she received vouchers for Hobby Craft at Christmas she treated herself to 1/2 m of fluffy material to make the whole cushion out of.  We already had stuffing as we purchased a couple of 50p cushions from a charity shop just for the stuffing to use.

Lottie Sewing

And this is her finished cushion, which she made from her own design and paper prototype!!

I used the whole of the bottom of the dress to make into a big, roomy bag for Lottie and added a little dangly embellishment on the side.

Dangly embellishment

Not bad from a dress which normally would have been destined for the dustbin, it certainly makes you think of what can be done by upcycling!!!

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

New blog

Hello everyone, well January's here and after today back to a bit more normality!!!

This is just a quick post to let you know that I have created another blog called Diamond Jubilee Street Party which will chart the progress of organising a street party for the Jubilee celebrations in June, I hope you might pop over and follow me there too as I will be putting some of mine and Lottie's makes on there especially for this event and hopefully inspire you too along the way.

Normal posts for this blog will resume shortly and I can't wait as I am overflowing with so many ideas for this year.

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Alice with a twist and another fairy door

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone and I hope you are all looking forward to the coming year with new ideas and inspirations.  My Live Learn Laugh ideas book has numerous scraps of paper stuffed inside it with ideas, things to do, things to blog about and all it needs now is for me to write these things down in a nice and neat way and keep on track of them all and so have given myself a deadline of 3 January 2012!!!

Lottie has also made a start on her organising and scheduling list, the first one is to design and make a cushion with her new sewing machine that she received for Christmas  - glad to say she loved it!! (Post on this coming up).

I thought I would share with you today 2 of Lottie's Christmas presents that I made for her.  A couple of blogs ago I shared with you the fairy door I made for my friend and the organiser for her daughter, well Lottie loved both of them soooooo much that I decided to make her one of each as a surprise.

FAIRY DOOR

With the organiser, this time my inspiration was from a water bottle label and a sheet of wrap from Paperchase which has a modern Alice theme on it - I have had these items since early November and I knew I wanted to do something nice with them.  I also had 4 traditional Alice cards packed away from about 8 years ago and thought I would mix the traditional with the modern along with a few other embellishments, the blank canvas and empty boxes I had made this wonderful organiser, which Lottie absolutely loves!!!

Added Lottie's Initials

Lottie has made use of it already and put all her important stationary bits and bobs into the holders and it looks lovely in her room along with her felt cutie, which she called Razzle and her 'Lottie Likes' frame and the fairy door - and today she hit upon an idea to expand the fairy door with a garden so that's another project to do - now where did I put my ideas book!!!!

I am really looking forward to 2012 and sharing much more of our makes with you x

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x 

NB. please excuse the poor quality pics as they were taken via my mobile.

Christmas Wishes x x x x

I would just like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and hope you get some time to relax with all your crafting pursuits.  I am hoping to get stuck into some of the many things I've been putting off and I'm looking forward to teaching Lottie how to use her first sewing machine that's happily sitting under the tree until tomorrow.

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Another Present Made

Wowsa!! Where is the time going, nearly the end of November and still scratching the surface of my 'To Make List'.  Well I have managed to finish another Christmas Present, a girly organiser, and I really hope the gift is well received.  The recipient is my friends 12 year old daughter who is mad about Rihanna.  My idea for this came when I saw in a magazine a wall tidy with various shapes of boxes, plain white and a ridiculaous price tag of £193.00 EEEEK!  I thought I'm sure I could make something similar and then I thought of my friends daughter liking Rihanna and put the two together.

I started with a canvas, which we have had for ages, and dug out a couple of different shaped boxes from our recycling box and started to cover the boxes in lovely paper (free form a magazine).  I painted the canvas with a delicious glitter paint and the inside of the boxes plain and printed some images onto the paper.  The silver bracelet thingys in the picture are off Lottie's worn shoes and the one and only thing I actually purchased for this project was the pack of badges for £4.00.

I then attached all the decorated boxes onto the canvas and continued to embellish the whole piece with the left over scraps of paper and added a couple of pegs at the bottom. 

Just have to coat in PVA and voila a unique organiser for a 12 year old Rihanna fan! Hope she likes it :)

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Children in Need & Hiding from Lottie

That time of the year again - Children in Need.  Me and Lottie are attending a fundraising event tomorrow with members of our home education group, so we thought she could decorate one of her old t-shirts with fabric pens. We used a stencil for the spots and then I hand-wrote a poem, which Lottie wrote by herself, on the back.  We will put this away in her memory box afterwards so she can look at it always.

Also in this post I wanted to share with you a couple of Christmas gifts I have made in secret for Lottie (so she wont be viewing this post!).  The first gift is something I've seen all over the place this year and that is a 'Like' picture.  So I sat in front of the PC and wrote Lottie's favourite things in life, printed it off, added a bit of glitter, painted a pine frame and then made a bead embellishment and added that to the front of the frame.

And added a label on the back.

This little cutie I saw in one of my magazines and decided to give it a go.  It's the first time I've worked with felt and stitching, and I'm really pleased with it.  I'm going to glue a little magnet on the back so she can put it on a magnet surface in her bedroom.

I just hope she likes them as much as me!!

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

It's a wrap

A selection of my Christmas stamps that I have had for about 8 years and have never used them, until now....

I have come to the conclusion that I really am starting to dislike waste and Christmas cards and wrap are two of my feared products at this time of the year as I can't bear the thought of them going straight into the bin afterwards, unless everyone is like me and recycles it!  So I was looking around my hobby room this week and I found some rolls of unused brown packaging paper (from my Ebay days) and have decided, with Lottie's help, to make our own wrap.  Brown paper I don't mind going into the bin as it is still a cheaper alternative.  So we dug out the stamps and rolled out the paper and stamped away and this is what our finished wrap looks like - Lottie even asked for some of her presents to be wrapped in it!!!

I am looking forward to covering my presents in this, adding some lovely ribbon and tag - I would love to receive a gift wrapped like that.

I thought I would share a picture of the new addition to our family, his name is Archie and he is a cross Jack Russell / Shiatsu. He is approx. 11 months and we rescued him from our local stray dogs home.  We are looking forward to our first Christmas with him - I can't imagine the chaos on Christmas Day!

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be Happy x x

Good to be back!!!

Hello everyone, well it seems like ages since I have posted anything.  Myself and Lottie have managed to get back into the swing of things and have started to enjoy our hobby room again, just in time for Christmas makes to adorn our home over this festive period.

I have made a few Christmassy things for my own home and my inspiration for this is to make inexpensive things that I have seen overpriced in the shops.  I am increasingly becoming bored with overpriced items when I can try and tackle it myself and have something more personalised.  I have an ever-increasing 'To Make' list and it gives me so much satisfaction to produce my own product.

The first thing myself and Lottie made was a few simple heart decorations for the tree - I saw this idea in one of my magazines and we gave it a go.  All we used was scraps of paper and ribbon.

Then we went on to air-clay again - after seeing so many 'keys' as decorations in the shops with prices ranging from £1.99 - £7.50 each, we made a selection out of clay, painted them and adorned them with embellishments/ribbon ready to hang on our tree.

Then I saw a really lovely tartan wreath at M&S for £17.50 and thought I would make my own.  I had some tartan ribbon and a red Christmas ribbon packed away from the sales in January, which I paid 20p each for and a plain red ribbon in my scrap ribbon box.  I already had a some thick wire and the red buttons.  In less than 30 minutes and for considerably less than £17.50 I had made my own Christmas wreath and I can't wait to put it up on our front door.

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Painted air clay and an award

Well I can't believe the weeks are just wizzing by! I have had a few changes to contend with at home as my husband and I made the decision to not send Lottie back to school at the beginning of September and I now home educate her myself.  Although it was quite a task to get the lesson plans, books, activities, class-room and things in place to carry this out, it has been, so far, good all round.  The only thing I don't have much time for now is our making things but hopefully once we have got into a solid routine we will have more time for our hobby room again.

So today I am finally getting round to putting the painted air clay pics on here for you all to enjoy.

As I said in my previous post, I found this to be such an enjoyable craft and I look forward to working more with air clay.

I was pleasantly surprised a couple of days ago to be awarded 'The Versatile Blogger' Award from another great blogger Twinkle Star which I appreciate very much.

Now that I have this great award I have to award it to 2 more bloggers and tell you all 7 facts about myself.  So the bloggers I would like to award this to are:

Just for Fun because that's exactly what I think life should all be about and

The Scrapbook Garden because she uploads a great post every day.

My 7 facts are:

1. Beauty and the Beast is my favourite Disney Princess film

2. My favourite flower is Lillies

3. I love watching all the 'Carry On' films and use the phrase "Oooh Matron" nearly every day

4. My favourite dinner is a lamb roast with all the trimmings, then extras

5. I always tell my husband off for snoring, when I know mine is worse

6. My guilty pleasure in music is Barry Manilow

7. Morgan Freeman is one of my favourite actors

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Air Clay

Monday already and mid-way through September! Busy as usual and today I thought Id' post a few pictures of mine and Lottie's air clay makes - these pics are in their unpainted form.

Lottie's Fairy

 I love the way she has got the fairy holding on to the flowers in each hand and the fairy's lovely smile :)

Lottie's Elves

 These are really cute and look fabulous all painted!

The pieces of a fairy door I made for my friend's Christmas present

This is the first time I've experimented with air clay and I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it - the fairy door is all assembled now and I am really happy with the result - Lottie's has said that she wants it so  I think I will have to work on a surprise one for her over the coming months!

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x

Fun things for the kids

This is our welcome message when entering the hobby room.

We have been rather busy bees in the hobby room and I thought we'd share a few of the things we have made as demonstrations for the children I work with at the afterschool creative club (ages 4-6) and I'm pleased to say they are all achievable in the 45 minutes I have as allotted time.

This is just a simple 'toss the ring' game made out of stiff card, decorated and empty glitter pots glued on and played using some cheap bangles - we have played a lot with this one these last few days.

 Simple spider - I will make these in black with the children ready for Halloween.

 Made out of a piece of wood, painted white with a cut-off sock for a hat and scrap material for a dress.

Lottie's favourite thing she made the old 'cup and ball' made using a plastic cup a scrunched up piece of paper wrapped in tape attached to string and a wooden skewer.

These were all very simple to make and Lottie enjoyed every minute - she is quite addicted to the the 'cup and ball' game - beats the DS all the time I think!

Live, Learn, Laugh and Be HAPPY x x