Baking Barmy!

Although I haven't done crafting today-I've done plenty of lovely baking. I've already eaten the scones I made with my mum! My sister and mum made some banana bread which we'll be having for dessert too! For good squishy banana bread you have to use bananas with scars on that have slightly brown peel. This way your using bananas that most people won't want anymore to make an amazing cake that everyone can enjoy! Also it makes sure that it's easier to work into the mix so it's stirred quicker.
   Enough about banana bread eh? Today I made a set of drop scones. No wonder they're called drop scones-you'll see a picture later. Even though they ended up a like a little bit of a flop, they tasted really good. Homemade produce is always the best. Before they were cooked they looked like this.

 You can see they're nice and round and plump....but all that soon changed! The cooking time was 15 minutes but it took a little longer to cook. After a few minutes they were warm and ready to come out of the oven nice and fresh.

But alas! They had changed considerably. You just have to see them. Take a look below-on the tray picture you can see the change the most.

 So you can see why they're called drop scones now can't you? I don't know whether they're supposed to flop down like that-but they did. They tasted delicious though and as you can see on the last two pictures, I enjoyed mine with juicy red strawberry jam. They were very sweet. You should try baking your own goodies-I'm still looking forward to my scrumptious dessert of banana bread this evening.

How to create a Good Mood Board

Mood boards are really helpful sources of inspiration for any sort of creative project such as making a cushion cover or designing fashion. However, you need to remember some of these helpful tips I have come up with to ensure that your mood board prepares you well for the project you will be making. You won't have to come up with any more inspiration sources for your designs if you do this well. Here's a list of the elements that you need to include in your mood board:
.Images (you always need these on a mood board but it isn't enough you also need the other elements to back up your inspiration ideas)
.Fabric samples
.Ribbon cuttings
.Interesting Buttons
.3D elements (I have included bindis and beads)
.colour schemes
All of the elements have to be relevant to the theme you are aiming for in your designs. I am creating a mood board for school as inspiration for an Indian themed cushion cover so as you can see I have researched things with that theme and have used other elements that remind me of the culture. You can take a look at my mood board below for ideas.

Loom Band Charm ATTEMPT

Loom bands have been a great hit in the UK for the past year or so-this crafty trend has now kind of drifted away and although I made plenty of loom band bracelets I never had the chance to made a loom band charm while they were in fashion. Now it seems like it was for the best. Yesterday I attempted to make an owl loom band charm. It didn't work out so well. However it was still quite cute so I used as a little gift for my Nanna. There were lots of kind of loose bands on the back of the owl so I made the creative decision to turn it into a magnet. First of all I used double sided sticky tape to attach it onto the charm but when I stuck it onto my whiteboard the adhesive pulled away and only the basic magnet was left on the board. My mum had the idea to sew on 2 pieces of felt slightly bigger than the magnet on each side then sew the whole thing onto the charm. It now works very well. You can look up many different tutorials for the loom band charms and maybe even try and create your own design to make using a loom. Look below to see my owl loom band magnet.

Sunny Soap!

Hi guys, I really hope that you're enjoying my blog much more at the moment. I've been trying in the past few months to upload more posts to do with special occasions and now I am doing a whole series of crafty half term kind of art projects to do when you're bored. If you like my posts at the moment you should keep coming back for more because I will try to upload more often for you guys now!

      Anyway, in this post I'll be talking to you about the handmade soaps I recently made and  a cool recycling project on what to do with the scraps. I used a soap making kit to make my soaps so you will probably need one of your own to make sure that the soaps you make are actually safe to use on the average human's skin. I got my kit for Christmas but I have seen it in shops so I know it costs around £25 so you'll probably want to ask for it for a birthday or Christmas (unless you save up) if you want to use it. To make 4 bars of soap, I melted a quarter of the given soap compound in a pan over a bowl of water on the stove. Once it was fully melted (using the stirring method) we added in 2-3 drops for each bar of soap (so you had to times that by 4 and add it into the mixture that would be shared between all four of them). Before it was poured into the molds, I put various seeds and petals into the bottom of the molds. We then poured a layer of the soap mixture into each one and then added more seeds. After that we filled each one up to nearly the top and left it o cool on the side for half an hour. When we came back from the cooling we covered it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for an hour! Once it was fully hardened we popped them out of the molds. Your soaps (if you choose to make them) should look a little like these below.

They have different variations of marigold petals, poppy seeds, linseed and aniseed inside them along with a lemony scent. I love the overall look of them and I think they would make great gifts! I'm giving 3 of them as mothers day gifts for my mum (of course), my grandma and my Nanna. I hope they love them as much as I do. I'm keeping one for myself (the circle shaped one) because I really like the way they smell and look. These have a matching scent to the lip balm so I'll use them both on the same days! Since I'm giving most of them as gifts, I wrapped them and her's a picture below so take a little look for inspiration on how you may want to wrap your own.

I used the lemon patterned tissue paper again to wrap my Mum's and pink colored tissue paper to wrap my Nanna's and Grandma's. Mine is the one that is wrapped lie a bonbon in cling film. I'm only preserving it, I didn't want to waste paper. I then use lace ribbon for Mum's little package and a pink bird on for the other two. 

    I don't know whether you noticed the little bag or not but I filled it with little bits of the handmade soap that crumbled off and some petals alongside some extra drops of essential oil. I may give this to someone as a little gift in the post- it's meant to be a drawer scent (you know when you have a little package in your clothes drawer to make them smell nice. Unfortunately I think I put to much extra oil in it, it's a bit strong scented for me. I enjoyed making this and I really hope you do too.

LipBalm Love

I absolutely love lip balm and the chance to create my own came from a cute little kit that I got from a past birthday, I've been so excited to use it for a while and since I'm having a crafty half term, I decided to use it. It's more of a DIY craft rather than an arty craft but oh well it still fits into the crafty category. To make the lip balm you had to have a bowl filled slightly with water then you had to fit in a slightly smaller bowl into the other one. After that I put the stove on a slow simmer and put into the empty bowl-coconut oil, beeswax and cocoa butter. To help it melt, you need to keep stirring it to move it all around. Once it was in a liquid form, 5-10 drops of essential oil had to be stirred into the mixture. I chose organic lemon oil to give it a citrus burst. Once the scent was in, you had to puncture two vitamin E capsules and squeeze them into the mixture. The vitamin E helps to preserve the lip balm and also helps your skin feel soft when you wear it on your lips. You should have given it one last stir and turned the heat off before carefully pouring into two containers. If you have any extra you should set it aside in a bowl to reheat later but I used a large bottle cap as a container for the extra, it didn't have a lid but this way my Mum could have some of the lovely lip balm too. Once it was poured in you should leave the containers on the side on a work surface to cool, this shouldn't take to long to harden and then you can  lose them up. Once I had make these fabulous products, I went to my room to package them up nicely. For labels I cut a sticky backed label into four quarters and stick one quarter onto each side of the (2) containers. These were the perfect size so I proceeded onto the text. On the front I wrote handmade lemon lip balm (so people knew I really made it myself tee hee) and on the back I wrote the ingredients. I kept one of them (the ones with lids BTW) for myself and wrapped up another for my friend. I used lemon patterned tissue paper (the same paper as I used for the decoupage box in my last post) and wrote for you on the front. Here's a picture I took of the finished look!
   I really hope you have many fun attempts at making your own lip balm because it is really rewarding  (and doesn't take that much effort or time to make). Mine turned out really well, they smell delicious and feel really moisturizing on my skin. I also think they last a long time once you have put them on your lips. This is an essential for your makeup bag and it's great  to pack in your school bag to keep you refreshed!

Decopage Box

Hi guys! In another one of my crafty series I'll be showing you a great gift box idea! Make sure you have mini specialist decoupage boxes at the ready and some tissue paper or decoupage paper to cover it with.
   Start off by using PVA glue to cover the lid with a thin layer of glue then tear up your paper into postage stamp sizes. Put one piece of paper onto the box then paint glue over it and then smooth out another piece overlapping it-paint it with glue again and keep layering the pieces of thin paper over it in this manner. Cover all the areas you want on the box with the beautiful paper. You must leave it to dry now before you may further decorate it with buttons, lace and paint (or anything else you want). For some ideas have a look at my decoupage box!

I've decoupaged the top of the lid and the round side of the base. I left the round side of the lid blank so that I could attach a flower lace ribbon all the way around and I then used double sided sticky tape to attach a yellow button where there was a small gap between the ribbon. I then painted the bottom base with burnt sienna. After that I painted the sides of the inside with the same color and the base with white acrylic paint and glitter paint. I used yellow acrylic paint to do stripes along all the inside.
    Now that you've completed your decoupage gift box you can buy (or even better make) a small gift to go inside-maybe even jewelry? This is a great box and it has so much thought put into it. People should enjoy the thought and uniqueness of this packaging, it's almost a gift in itself, they can keep it in the future. Enjoy coming up with your own ideas.

Strawberry Handmade Outfit

This is one of the posts in the series of my crafty half term! I hope you are getting inspired by these blogposts so that you can get creative yourself . I have been creating lots of handmade items but this particular time, I decided to make an outfit. I started by using permanent marker pens to draw a design onto a plain white t-shirt-I decided on a cartoon strawberry with a face. You can choose any design though  and you can even choose an image off of the internet to base your design on.Have a look at my tshirt.
  I even sewed my own matching purse to go with it! It is shaped and designed like a strawberry too! First of all you need to make a template, draw around it twice on pink or red felt and cut both shapes out. Now pick a side to decorate first. Use yellow thread to create small stitches to be the seeds then use green thread to do a zigzag back-stitch at the top to be the leaves (where the opening will be). Now that you have decorated the front you can write berry sweet with biro on the back piece of felt then sew over the markings. Once you have decorated both sides of felt you can then blanket stitch most of the way around (excluding the top of the purse). Attach a button to the front and a folded ribbon to the back to become a loop. Now you're finished! Have a little look!

             

PuppyCat Magnet

You may have seen my last blogpost explaining my extensive crafting this half term so you can be expecting several posts showing you how to make your own projects like I have made! This first blogpost will tell you how to sew a magnet shaped as a character from an internet cartoon. The character I have chosen is called puppycat from the show on cartoon hangover called Bee and Puppycat! You should watch it-it's made by the same people who made Adventure time (I haven't watched that but my sister has- I found Bee and puppycat by watching a trend report).
I started to make this by drawing out a cat head shaped template on paper and cutting it out. I then drew around it twice on white felt and cut the two shapes out with fabric scissors. Then draw out the outline of the facial features then thread your needle with black thread and fill it in with backstitch until there are no white gaps. Cut 2 ovals out of  brown felt by using a freehand method and attach them above the eyes with a single running stitch. Now cut out 2 brown pieces and 2 pink pieces (that are smaller) for the ears. Backstitch one side of each pink piece while it is attached to the brown pieces next to the ear sections. Now that the face is finished being decorated you need  to put the magnet insert inside. Stick a square of double sided sticky tape on each side of the magnet and place it in the middle of each piece of felt. Now press them together to secure the magnet inside. Now you can blanket stitch it all the way round. You are done! Well done! Why don't you put it on your magnetic fridge or whiteboard? Stay tuned to find out more about my crafty half term!                    

Crafty Half Term

Hi guys! I hope you're all having a great half term! Unfortunately I've been very ill so I haven't been able to go out as much as I  have wanted to but......I found a solution! I decided to make lots of beautiful items for myself and as gifts for my family and friends! It's been a very crafty half term! I think it's really beneficial to hand make your own items! It will really brighten your day when you create a new item for yourself-you'll feel a great sense of pride when you see your unique make. Handmade items make a great little gift for your close friends and family. Many people claim that they will more grateful for a gift that has taken ages for a friend to make rather than an easy choice of an expensive gift that has already been manufactured. So consider it, are you going to start making things straight away? I bet you are! Have so much fun-just like I did! You'll soon get the hang of coming up with new art project ideas!