Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all my lovely followers! 

I hope you get plenty of chocolate and maybe even a little bit of free crafting time :-)

My granny bunnies are from the fabulous free tutorial on the Green Dragonfly blog here

Getting back to blogging...

 I'm sorry for the very long blogging break, I can't believe it has been about 4 months since my last post! Because I decided to have December off I got out of the rhythm of doing posts and somehow we are now in March - oops.

I have been nice and busy though so there is plenty for me to catch you up with craftwise. First off I wanted to show off a couple of my tea related crochet projects - the weather has turned so chilly here in the UK that I thought some nice photos of mugs would warm us up :-)

In the photo on the left I've got the two pretty coasters that I made up from a kit that came in an issue of last year's Mollie Makes magazine.

The mugs on the right are my attempt at simple mug cosies... I wanted a quick project that I could work up as a couple of last minute Christmas presents and these were super simple to make and look so pretty. I also managed to use a bit of my yarn stash - this purple with silver yarn is pretty but so uncomfortable it was great to find a project that was suitable for it.

Now I think I'm going to get myself another cuppa - all these photos have made me thirsty!

Gruffalo!

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood...

and wasn't scared at all by the tiny little gruffalo he met :-)

This little crochet gruffalo was made as a last minute gift for one of my lovely nieces and turned out so much better than I could have hoped for.

I used my Mini Panda pattern for the body, arms and legs, then added some different ears and horns before going all out with the embroidered details.

I love his simple body shape - I think if I had tried to come up with a proper head and body then it wouldn't have been half as cute. I also had such great fun with adding all the gruffalo details - the purple prickles especially :-)

This little guy was so admired by one of my friends that she has commissioned me to make one for her little boy, and because I love this gruffalo so much I'm very tempted to make one for myself too!

November's craft - Fail :-(

For this month's craft I wanted to try and make some simple tree decorations with a variation on salt dough that produces a white finished item when baked.

There is a great tutorial for making these on the woodside kitchen blog and the ones shown there look really lovely.

I mixed up my ingredients, cooked it on the hob until I had a clay and then cut out and baked my decorations which I decorated with snowflake stamps... all good so far, however after baking only half the recommended time they and dried out, bubbled up, cracked and fallen apart.

So either used the wrong ingredients (quite likely as I substituted cornflour for cornstarch and baking powder for baking soda) or I baked these too long.

I think I had best stick to crochet & felt to finish up the rest of the Christmas decorations I need to make!

Lest we forget

In memory of those who died to protect us in the 1st and 2nd World Wars.

Butterfly hair slides

Just finished working up a couple of pairs of butterfly hair clips as a1st birthday present for a friend's daughter.

I really love how well they turned out and now have grand plans about making heaps more to add to my Etsy store. I've even gone as far as buying another 100 hair clips...

(if you are wondering why my hands are a similar colour to the butterflies it's because it is very cold here in Tea Towers today - only 15 degrees - brrrrr)

Movember

Happy Movember everyone!

If you are visiting the UK this month and think there is a strange trend towards moustaches while you are here then let me reassure you that this is just for this one month and most of the men you'll see sporting moustaches are just trying to raise funds for male specific health issue like prostrate & testicular cancer.

This little felt moustache is from the book "Heart felt holidays" and was quick and simple to make. Perfect as a gift for any female friends who want to take part in Movember :-)