Springy Eastery Garland

Some of you may remember seeing this photo on Facebook a couple of weeks ago.

I was having a particularly creative Saturday (it was the day I made my peg bag out of shorts) and decided to spruce up some sticks I’d bought from Ikea. I’d bought them because I could imagine them hanging over my fireplace, all covered in pretty springy decorations, but up to that point they were just sticks with a few flowery fairy lights!

So I grabbed some plastic eggs (really cheap from the supermarket), a jar of paper flowers and a jar of buttons and this is what happened…

I loved the colours of the eggs, but not how plasticky they looked. The paper flowers disguise plastickiness nicely! And I love the bright, spring colours too. I hadn’t really planned them to all look so coordinated – it was only once I’d finished that I realised I’d chosen really similar colours for each flower.

In addition to the eggs, I also cut up some fake flowers to add to the flowery fairy lights (the big white flowers in the photos below). I’m not usually a fan of fake flowers, but I’d bought these to go in my basket when I was Red Riding Hood (it was a dress up day at school – I don’t usually dress up as fairy tale characters!) and it seemed a shame to let them just gather dust somewhere. I really like the different pinky colours too.

As I was unpacking boxes I came across a couple of other decorations. I think this tin egg was a gift from a child at one of my placement schools when I was training to be a teacher.

And I made this heart several years ago when I was experimenting with sewing fabric and paper. I really like it, but think it must have been a bit of a pain to make since this is the only one I have!

I finished off the garland with a few tin heart bells that I found in a lovely local shop. I love their colours and the soft jingles they made as I hung them up.

Here’s the finished product, complemented nicely by the bunting which used to hang on my bookcase.

So things are complete – for the time being! I love the fresh feel of all the combined items together, but at some point (probably soon after Easter) I’ll take the eggs off and replace them with other things. Not sure yet what I’ll replace them with though – any suggestions?

Paper crafting

Last night I held a craft evening at my friend’s house. I needed to think of some Eastery ideas, so I turned to pinterest. I found so many things I wanted to try out! If I knew how to link to pinterest I’d let you have a look at my Easter board. (On that subject, if anyone knows what I need to do to put a pinterest link on the side bar, please let me know! It’s the sort of thing I’m sure I’ve done before, but have completely forgotten.)

Anyway, when I got back from my fun weekend away, I got started on some experiments. I decided that some were a little too complicated for a craft evening, but these are some of the things I came up with…

I also took some polystyrene eggs. I didn’t really know what to do with them, but my friend had some pretty napkins which she and another friend used to decopage the eggs. The eggs were finished off with a pretty ribbon and a thread through the middle to hang them. I only got a photo of one of them. The other was pink.

Someone else decided to make a bunny garland. So pretty!

And here are some of the things I came up with that I decided not to take. I’ve really enjoyed having a go at paper cutting, but it takes quite a lot of time – possibly too long to explain and have a go at all in one evening!

I’ve had a few more paper cutting ideas, but I need to give my neck a rest for a day or two!

Happy Easter

You remember these little circles of delight from the other day? The ones I made in the car?

Well, they’re finished!

We’re having a family dinner tomorrow, and I thought it would be nice to make little Eastery place settings for everyone. Hence these colourful little egg cosies!

Unfortunately however, Cadbury’s creme eggs have shrunk.

There was a time when they would have fit nicely in an egg cup, I’m sure of it. But now some of them look a little swamped. Some of them can barely be seen over the edge. Oh well, nothing I can do about that. So instead of the egg cosies being snugly wrapped around the top of an egg, the entire egg is now in the cosy, and each cosy is precariously balanced on each egg cup!

Even so, I think they look pretty cute and, along with the pretty napkins, add a nice splash of colour.

Happy Easter!

Procrastination

Today was the day I set aside for filling in an application form. Therefore today is that day that I have been procrastinating. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this (at least, I hope I’m not!). I was good this morning and did the longest part of the form with all the important information like my name and qualifications. It all went downhill from there.

It started when I decided to list my mini bunting on Coriandr. Everything was going well – until I published the listing. For some reason the title and product description changed to that of a ‘Recycled Tires Bag’. Hmmmmm. Not quite the same. And the same thing had actually happened yesterday too. And another poor seller who was listing a baby outfit ended up with the title and product description of my Crochet Cushion Cover! So of course I had to contact the support team to let them know what was going on.

By the time I’d done that all thoughts of application forms had gone right out of my head. My washing needed sorting and it was just about lunchtime anyway, so time for a break. Last week a wonderful friend (and my very first follower!) was having a clear out and gave me this lovely stack of old craft mags. So I started flicking through them over lunch.

But of course, when it came to the Crafts Beautiful mags just flicking through was not an option. Those need to be Read. And the one on the top there (from April 2007) had just so many lovely things to be looked at and admired. It’s a very springy, Eastery issue with some really lovely makes.

 

 

 

 

This was the first thing that caught my eye – a GIANT Granny Square jumper! I’m sure by now you’ve picked up on my love for Granny Squares, but the thought of making a giant one into a jumper just never entered my mind! Definately something to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

There were so many other beautiful pics that it would take forever to show you all of them individually, so I thought that this collage might do the job instead.

This is now also set as my desktop background as a sort of Springtime mood board. Mmmmmm, pretty 🙂

Also, a friend of a friend has just invited me to be part of a charity fair she’s been hosting the last 7 years to raise money for Motor Neurone Disease. She’s managed to raise £21,000 so far which is just fantastic! And I’m so excited that I get to be part of it this year. It’s not until July, but thought I’d better get a head start on boosting my stock, so have started another crochet bag (similar to this one). This seemed like a good place to start as several people have admired mine recently, so hopefully people will like it enough to buy it at the fair! I’m sure there will be many pictures over the next couple of months of my new stock (and hopefully some new ideas too).

If I’m lucky I might even finish that application form.