February's craft: Glass painting

The giveaway is still open - the post is down here

I love painting glass - it's easy, relatively quick and always gives such rewarding results.

These heart nightlight holders are the ones I painted up for the recent 'sisters valentines swap'. Very simple to do - just some free hand hearts drawn on with outliner paste and filled in with red glass paint.

If you fancy giving this craft a go then have a look at my mini glass painting tutorial.

200th post giveaway!

My Valentines day post yesterday took me up to the 200 post mark so to celebrate I thought I would send out a beautiful crocheted fan bookmarks to one lucky winner.

If you want to be in with a chance of winning then just leave a comment on this post before the end of Tuesday 21st and I'll draw the winner the next day. All entries welcome as I'm happy to post this out to anywhere!

Thank you all for keeping me blogging, having people read and comment here have given me the encouragement to keep posting.

So get commenting and I'll start thinking about what my next giveaway will be!

Oh - and if you don't win this time then you could always have a go at making one for yourself, the pattern for it is free :-)

Sharing the love

Even though I love the idea of the craft swaps that happen on so many of the wonderful blogs I follow I've never had the courage to put myself forward to join in. However, when my sister suggested that we do a few craft swaps between just the 3 of us I decided it would be the perfect way to make 2012 the craftiest year yet.

We decided to have our first swap in February to give us a bit of time to think about what we wanted to do and hopefully be able to make a couple of pretty things. February = valentines so hearts seemed to be a good theme for us to focus on.

For the packages I sent out to my sisters I managed to make them each a simple card, a fan bookmark, a painted nightlight holder and a batch of slightly undercooked heart shaped biscuits. I also included a pack of 'love in a mist' seeds in case they felt like being green fingered this year...

I also had a bit of craft fun with my lovely husband's gifts - hopefully he'll enjoy his lego chocolates (I just melted some chocolate into this fantastic lego man ice cube tray). For his card I used the free template off minieco which I had a bit of a struggle cutting correctly - but I'm very happy with how it looks.

Now I'm off to open up the packages my sisters have sent - I can't wait to see what they got around to making :-)

Latest winter head gear

This has to be one of the simplest hats that I've made for Sam yet... it's just a rectangle shape with pom poms added to the top corners. To make it up was so easy (the hardest part was getting it the right size) that I'm slightly ashamed that it's taken me over a month to finish!

I started out with a foundation chain the width I wanted the finished hat, then I worked double crochet into the back loops of the chain, continuing crocheting round through the front loops of the chain and finishing the first row with a slip stitch to join. Next I joined the second colour and did a row with that (still double crochet) and after that changed colour every row. I continued working in rows (carrying the second colour at the inside so no need to rejoin the yarn) until the hat was the depth I wanted.

Now I'm tempted to make a matching hat for baby Emily...

January's decoration: Maroushka dolls

Even though 2012 is still very young I'm already thinking and planning about what I want to have made as presents for Christmas. I'm going to try and make all my Christmas presents again this year and after the rush I had when I tried it for Christmas 2010 I think starting as early as possible can only be a good thing.

These lovely ladies are from "Fa la la Felt" (a fantastic book full of wonderful felty Christmas inspiration) and apart from some fiddily cutting out were simple and quick to make. I love their sleepy eyes and I'm extra pleased with how the simple embroidery I did on the flower centres turned out. More decorations out of Fa la la Felt will definitely be making an appearance during the year, the hard thing is going to be resisting making everything in the book!

Oops - I only just managed to get this post in at the very last minute, I'll try to be better organised for February's decoration.

January's craft: Cross stitch

January seems to have flown by incredibly quickly - so I'm finding it a little tight to get the first of my monthly craft posts in. This year I'm going to try and complete a project using a different craft each month and to start me off I've been working on a little cross stitch project.

This little cross stitch kit is was the free gift that comes with the Cath Kidstone "Stitch" that I got for Christmas. The kit is to make up a simple little purse on some pre-printed canvas fabric. To help keep your stitches lovely and even you are also provided with a little piece of dissolvable cross stitch cloth. Once I had finished working the cross stitch design on the front of the purse I got to rinse the canvas in water and see the dissolvable stuff magically disappear. Before finishing up the purse I also added a piece of white felt to the back of the design which will hopefully help prevent any of the thread at the back of the work getting pulled.

Pretty and quick - my favourite type of project! Now I wonder what I shall do for February?

A new venture?

My regular followers are possibly getting tired of seeing photos of baby booties - I seem to make them a lot. In fact I make them so much I even designed my own pattern for them (which is currently available through the CrochetMe website but hopefully will be moved over to Raverly later this year as the CrochetMe page is getting heavily spammed).

Last year I was finding myself very frustrated at not having any of my own earnings coming in and I wanted to try and find some sort of flexible/part time money making venture. I did a basic "how to start your own business" course and after that registered as a Phoenix trader and started selling their beautiful cards.

I also started crocheting booties - lots and lots of booties. I've simplified and fine tuned my crochet bootie design, sampled a number of different yarns as well as stocking up on some of the lovely hand dyed buttons that paper-and-string sells. So now I have quite a pile of booties made up and after I've worked out how to set up an Etsy shop as well as draw up a logo I'll be able to start selling these too!