Crafts

Be my Valentine

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been making a few Valentine’s Day themed bracelets to go on the Ramsey Crafters’ stall at Potato Day on Saturday.  Potato Day is an event organised by the Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group, it’s a chance to buy seed potatoes to grow at home.  They have over 60 different varieties and you can buy just one or two of the ones you fancy.

There are some nice simple memory wire bangles, they fit pretty much anyone and are really easy to make, you literally just thread beads.

The black stars are hematite which is supposed to be good for grounding and helping people cope with stress and depression.

I also made some seed bead bracelets  with words included. Aren’t they cute!

Hopefully someone will like them as much as I do and they’ll all be sold!

Distraction

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Today has not been a good day.  Actually it’s been a massive kick in the teeth kind of day where we found out that our poor dog is very sick with cancer.

I needed something to take my mind off of things so I picked up some beads and started making

Biset

I think it’s kinda cute. especially the little teapots on the chain ends.  The colours are those of the bi pride movement.  I’m not 100% sure how the teapot fits with that, but somehow it just does.

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These are a congratulations gift for a friend who is celebrating completing her phd but I have loads of these beads left so may make some more – I think I’m going to need a lot of distraction over the next few days, I just wish my stupid body would stop hurting and let me keep making for longer.

Wedding Update

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

My daughter has let me have copies of her wedding photos, so I can bring you an update on how it all went.

parentals
This is the bride and groom with their parents.  I’m the one in purple

I think the flowers turned out really well, Vicci’s choice of colours was lovely and bright and cheery

bridesmaids
Beautiful autumn shades for all the bridesmaids

The men weren’t left out

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The groom’s buttonhole

I do think my darling daughter looked particularly lovely 🙂

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My son scrubs up pretty well too – Heffalump was also part of the bridal party

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It was definitely a wonderful day, filled with happy people enjoying themselves.  The perfect start to a marriage.

This is my favourite picture from the day.  I have a framed copy to go up on the wall.  It’s just so fabulously romantic and gloriously gothic, there could be werewolves or vampires hiding behind those gravestones and the lit up window in the background is just perfect!

wedding

 

Shiny things

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Today has been more wedding makes. My mum bought a pretty necklace for Vicci to wear and I offered to make the bridesmaids ones to match.

I’ve used purple beads and beading wire so they match with the bridesmaid dresses but the long silver tubes and diamanté rounds match Vicci’s set.  I’m quite pleased with them, they are more delicate than I would usually make but that is what Vix prefers. I hope she approves and the bridesmaids like them.

I have loads of left over beads so I might make myself something sparkly to wear as well 🙂

They haven’t photographed very well but you can see the idea

   
 

Salt dough decorations

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Such fun at Ramsey Crafters this morning. We made salt dough decorations, and it was just like being back at nursery school playing with the play doh.  Very therapeutic. I may make some more at home later

I made a Santa-thulhu and a tentacle and a skelly and a few more traditional shapes. Just need them to dry nicely so they can be painted.

    
  

Feeling fruity

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Finally got round to putting together the sloe vodka today.  While I was at it I also made a strawberry vodka and a peach vodka.  It’s probably a bit late now for the sloe vodka to be ready for Christmas, but the fruit ones only take a couple of weeks so they should be good to go.

It’s the same method for all them – just fill a bottle with fruit, a couple of spoons of sugar and top up with vodka or gin or any other clear spirit.  Give them a good shake every day or so until all the sugar is dissolved and the liquid has a good colour and then strain off the now yummy flavoured booze.  If you really want a boozy hit you can eat the fruit too – or throw it in a trifle.

I’ve not tried peaches before but strawberry and sloe are both old favourites.  I have some vodka left over which I am thinking of adding salt and licorice to just for something different.

With the sloes you’re supposed to prick them first, but since I froze mine until I got round to bottling they were splitting anyway so I didn’t need to.  Apparently you get a better flavour if you wait to pick the sloes until after the first frost but freezing them at least overnight is almost as good.

A trick I picked up from a friend recently is to add a few drops of vanilla – it’s the same flavour you get when spirits are aged in oak barrels so it makes cheap booze taste that bit posher.  These are definitely made with cheap booze, I went with Vodka rather than Gin because it was on special offer so this whole lot is only about £12 worth of alcohol – bargain!

I’ll try and remember to come back and add photos of the finished results.

Buried in flowers

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

Today I have been swamped in all things floral.  Darling daughter’s wedding is fast approaching and I had finally assembled all the flowers so it was time to turn them into bouquets and corsages and boutonnieres.

She wanted something fairly informal and in autumnal colours to go with the lovely purple frocks her bridesmaids will be wearing.  I don’t think I’m too far off the mark 🙂

flowers

Today was also the day that Vicci’s wedding shawl arrived.  My friend Janet does the most amazingly delicate shawls, so fine they will actually pass through the inside of a wedding ring!  She has been extremely kind and made one for Vicci – the work in progress posts on ravelry are just stunning so I can’t wait to see how the finished shawl looks with Vicci’s beautiful dress.  It’s lovely having such wonderfully talented friends, it sounds a bit soppy but in my head seeing that shawl wrapped around my daughter on her wedding day will be like having her wrapped in love and friendship and that has to be the perfect omen for a happy marriage.  That’s pretty awesome.

Festive Fascinators

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

This morning was interesting. I have a rotten cold so am finding things like breathing and talking a lot harder than usual – however I was down to run the Ramsey Crafters session so I had to haul my sorry self out of bed and go be sociable.

The plan was Christmas fascinators for the craft fair. I’d intended to pick up some baubles and tree decorations which would then just be attached to headbands with bits of wire; however I have yet to find anywhere selling tree decorations so I had to come up with something different.

I spent ages looking at Christmassy crafts online and eventually decided that I liked the look of felt poinsettias and that they would make a suitable hair piece which could be blinged up or left quite simple depending on what people fancied.

I sort of cobbled together several online tutorials into one and that’s what we did. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me so the only photo I have is this one of the one I made as a demo model. The others were glammed up with feathers and ribbons and beads to make them really party ready but this one is very plain.

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Snowflake

~ DMWCarol ~ 2 Comments

Last week’s craft group was a lesson in beading from Dawn.  The idea was to make festive snowflakes that we can sell at the craft fair.

I’m not a big fan of beading.  The results are lovely but I find it really painful working with anything that fiddly.  After doing this little bit of beading in the craft group my hand was absolutely throbbing.  It’s taken until today for it have calmed down enough that I could go back and finish it off.  I really can’t see me making many of these.

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It is very pretty though 🙂  I do like the way the beads sparkle.  It still needs to be dipped in varnish and left to harden so it can be hung from a christmas tree or in a window.

Feeling autumnal

~ DMWCarol ~ Leave a comment

I love this time of year.  There is something so satisfying about picking fruit from the hedgerows.  Free is always my favourite price.

We just stopped the car on the way home from work as I spotted some sloe bushes – these beauties will soon be turning into sloe gin.  There were loads of sloe bushes and all of them had oodles of berries.  I might have to go back for more!

sloes

We’ve already picked a load of apples from the garden.  I had the idea of putting them through the juicer which meant we had loads of pulp which was turned into apple sauce, (add sugar and water, boil and sieve) and the juice is busy turning into apple mead. (I used this apple wine recipe but substituted honey for sugar).

mead

I’m planning on making a load of jams and chutneys over the next few days, I have a huge amount of ginger since we were lucky enough to pick up a small mountain of it from the reduced bin at the supermarket so I’m going to try making crystalised ginger, ginger honey, ginger curd and possibly ginger wine

Some of the jams/chutneys are destined for the Ramsey Crafters Christmas craft fair which is being held on my birthday.  It feels a bit early to be thinking about Christmas but it makes sense to take advantage of all the free food in the hedgerows, we had a busy morning yesterday harvesting willow from Sue’s garden and twisting it into wreath forms, we’ll be having a wreath making and decorating session at one of the Crafters sessions soon , hopefully these will have time to dry out nicely first.

wreaths

We’ve already had one craft session on christmas makes – we made some festive tea light holders from old glasses and jars.  They are really simple – just cover the glass in white pva glue, layer on tissue paper (the white ones are just tissues like you would use for blowing your nose the coloured one is cut up bits of coloured tissue paper) cover in more glue and decorate with sequins and/or glitter.  They don’t look like much until you put a lit tealight inside, but they are really effective when they are lit.

tealights

I have loads of ideas for Christmas makes, the next few months should be fun.