On Repeat....'In my Mind' by Amanda Palmer

I'm in a bit of a glum mood (NOT because of the football) so am listening to this song on repeat and singing along.

Ah, it cheers me.

I Spy.....Magnetic Wallpaper

Image from Confessions of a Design Geek

Sian Zeng makes this amazing magnetic wallpaper, inspired by fairy tales. You can move the magnetic characters around the wallpaper, adding speech bubbles as you wish.

I discovered her after reading an interview with her on Confessions of a Design Geek.

I love this idea. It's such fun!

Happy Fathers Day

Yesterday was Fathers Day in the U.K. So I made a portrait of my father as a present for him.

My father

This one isn't one of my best. Somehow it doesn't look too much like my father. I think he is hard to capture. I also made him a card. He's a fan of Science Fiction so I found an old book cover for War of the Worlds and used it for inspiration.

I used pen and colouring pencils to make this.

Crochet Monster Blanket

Monster blanket

Last week it was the second birthday of my Fairy-Godson. Inspired by this tutorial I decided to make a crochet monster fleece blanket. I have loads of kindle-reject fleece lying around (it sheds and gets trapped in the edges of the kindle) and so thought this would be an excellent project to use some up.

I'm quite please with how it turned out. It's super cuddly. Unfortunately the fleece was quite thin and I think the crochet edging may be easily pulled out by child hands. But we shall see.

The tutorial was really easy to follow and took me about six hours. I will definitely make some more. Luckily as lots of my friends have been having babies recently I have lots of children to gift them to. I think I will try adapting the pattern slightly and make a robot too. 

House of Pinheiro Swap

As previously mentioned I took part in House of Pinheiro's Pincushion swap this month.

The lovely Katie from Booty-Full Things sent me the following:

I feel super-lucky to have been paired up with Katie. She sent me a beautiful hand-made crocheted strawberry pincushion, an embroidered card, a sewing set AND pins! I was actually ridiculously pleased with the pins. I've been in semi-desperate need for pins for ages (the only ones I had are lace pins, which get easily lost in things that are not lace).

Thank you Katie!

Her blog is full of equally wondrous crocheted goodies - I recommend going to read it. She's also currently hosting a jar swap. I'm taking part, you should too.

Also world, if you're into swaps - don't forget to enter my bird swap over at Tre La Creativity.

I Spy... 99 feelings

I stumbled upon this video is of artist Misty Sleurs talking about her 99 feelings project on Kimono Incarnate. It's really lovely so I felt impelled to share it here too.

Making a pincusion

I've recently discovered craft swapping and have decided to launch myself into it. Mainly because I love getting post, love making things and love a challenge. Swaps involve all of those things. Swoon.

So when I heard about House of Pinheiro's pincushion swap I signed right up!

Having received my swap partner I went and stalked her blog and started sketching ideas. I decided that it should be summery, and made of felt (of course). Felt sharpens needles so is in fact the perfect material for making a pincushion.

I decided to make a felt watermelon pincushion.

I assembled my ingredients:

Pincushion ingredients

I cut out my shape and started to piece it together. I decided that black beads would make good pips.

I folded the halves together and stitched in up with blanket stitch, pausing to stuff it with fluff and rice. 

The finished pincushion, avec pins.