I Heart Kirstie Allsop...

Don't all us crafters LOVE this woman???

Aaaah... Kirstie.

I mean, thanks to her, last Christmas I rediscovered my passion for this kind of thing, and she managed to get the majority of us searching out our needles and squeezing our creative juices. She almost single-handedly responsible for the sharp rise in knitting, crafts and tools sales both on our highstreets and on the internet. We've stopped heading straight for a shop-made shallow token and instead we try new projects that can then be given away as thoughtful gifts, and personal touches to our own homes. A seriously brilliant mascot!!

Tom's mum very kindly bought me her homemade craft book for Christmas, and I've now assembled enough of the stuff to start a few of the projects. Tonight I made this!! LOOK! IT'S SO CUTE:

Literally took me about 45 minutes to make, and it's so pretty! I've seen them in shops for a long time now, but they cost to buy, obviously. In fact, this was so simple, I'm going to take the same bits with me to work tomorrow so my client can make her own. I've found a good home for mine, but I've decided it looks a little lonesome on it's own, so I will post a photo once EVERY SINGLE KNOB has one!

Enjoy!!

BBxx

Sunny sewing

I bought this dress in a charity shop before Christmas, but even when I wore it on Christmas Day, I knew it wouldn't survive in it's current form because it was too tight around my arms and irritated the heck out of my skin! Today on yet another gorgeous afternoon, I took the scissors to it:

And made it into a skirt!

Much better!

BBx

Hen Weekend Crafts!

My friend Lauren gets married 2 months today!! This weekend gone was her epic hen weekend. The festivities included:

• Cupcake making at Herts College
• Belly Dancing session
• Lovely dinner at The Pepper Hut, Old Town, Hemel (check it out, it's AMAZING.)
• Glass painting at Horizons
• More scrummy dinner at Chianmai Tai Cottage, Old Town again.

We had an amazing time!

First off we made batches of cinnamon cupcakes and decorated them with white chocolate buttercream icing... If you have never had the pleasure of trying this stuff, you have not LIVED! It was incredible!! We made toooonnes of the stuff! We also got a mini masterclass on sugar paste decorations - extremely fiddly and extremely time consuming, but look at the effects we got...

Bride-to-be Lauren having a go!

As well as those, we also produced two pretty stunning lemon cakes, one plain sandwich and one Bundt style, again, laddened down with lemon juice icing.

Thankfully the maid of honor had planned a session to make us all feel better about consuming so much sugar in two hours... Belly dancing! It's probably best to just show you the video. I'm on the far right, Lauren is 2nd from the left:

 If you've never tried it, you SHOULD! Bellies are an advantage!!! Trust me!

The following morning everyone reassembled with hangovers and feeling very tired... so we painted 75 glass jars to cheer ourselves up!

 Glass painting has evolved since the days I used to do it as a child. Now you can buy ready designed stickers that act as the black lead outliner pen you used to use, and so your designs look far more delicate and complex, and instead of runny, messy paints, you now have glaze pens, which is a paint-pen, that behaves like a ball-point gel pen. The actual act is therefore incredibly easy, mess-free, smudge-free, and the results are stunning:

 I am going to order my own pens and stencils when pay day comes around, because I think in doing that activity I realligned all my chakras, cleansed my soul, and found inner peace. It was seriously theraputic!

That's all for now! What did you lot get up to at the weekend?

BBxx

Button Brown goes European!

My French friend I go to sign language is going to Geneva tomorrow to see her friend's new baby girl, named Lilou - how cute is that? Exasperated, Aly called me on Tuesday morning asking if I could make her a pillow in time for today, as she was unable to find any decent, meaningful baby gifts in the highstreet.

I came up with this:

 It's not the best photo, but it's a hot pink pillow, and I've gone to town on the details.

I've used the flying butterflies before, but thought it might work with little birds too, and it turns out they're very easy to add embroidered detail to.

I think it'll make a lovely personalised baby gift, what do you guys think?

BB xxx

Something rude and something shrewd...

Seriously, the weather has been amazing all day today, and I think the sunshine went to my head a bit...!!

I made a rather rude cushion. SO RUDE, that I daren't post it yet... This blog is just not ready for such smut, but I think I'm on to a winner design...

So, that's the something rude - let your imaginations run wild!!!

Something shrewd: Tom's friend - also named Tom, confusingly - has recently set up a pretty brilliant music promotion company called Lemur Promotions, and is now organising his 4th gig with bands mainly based in the Brighton area. If you're in a band and are interested in gigging under this name, go to www.facebook.com/lemur.promotions - Tom's a really good bloke, and even provides your beer and snacks for you! What a top banana!

I'm so sure of his success that I have made a little something for him that I believe will one day adorn a vintage arm chair in his smart office, that wannabe-bands will see when they come to sign a contract and they'll 'Oooh' and 'Ahh!' at it's magnificence...

Ladies and gents, I give you:

The 'Lemur Promotions' promotional cushion!!!!

Hope you like, Tom!! :)

What have all of you lot been up to today in this gorgeous sunshine? Happy days!!

BB xx

Wedding Favours

What lovely Sunday morning weather to be creative in!

So far I've cleared out and totally rearranged my sewing basket - everything now has it's absolute place, including sandwich bags for my patches for my patchwork quilt project - keeps them nice and flat - a bag of hessian, a box for all beas, buttons and ribbons, and so forth. Love it!

Before I did that though, I worked on my project for my friend's upcoming wedding. Her hen night is next weekend, and part of the festivities is a glass-painting session. A year ago, said-friend and I were talking about wedding ideas, and we got straight on to notonthehighstreet.com as they have so many unique, beautiful and bespoke wedding gifts and accessories on there. We found a maker of glass jars with penny sweets in and you could personalize them with your names on, the wedding date etc. Lovely, but expensive per jar. There and then we decided we'd do it ourselves, and over the last year we've collected over 100 jars of varying sizes, with their lids, and all has been made easier by asking others to collect jars for us too. 

Next week we'll be painting them in a specially supervised class with a tutor, and we are planning to fill them, seal them and write tags for each jar.

I found 100 stringed mainlla labels on ebay for £5 (that's including the p&p) and they arrived yesterday - speedy!! This has been my early morning project:

Buttons, manilla tags and glue...

Will make lots and lots of...

...These!!!

I think they look gorgeous! I just used glue to stick the buttons on, all in the same corner, and altogether they look stunning!! These will have gold and silver writing on them, probably with their names and the date, and the person who's seat they'll belong to at the dinner tables.

Such a cool effect when they're all laid down together!

Have you ever made part of your wedding yourself? Be it the invites, the cake, the dress??

Love BB xxx

Jeremy Kyle and bananas...

This Tuesday we had new carpet laid down throughout our flat and I am still high on those good new carpet fumes!! It has totally transformed the flat, and seeing as we had to haul the furniture out, when we put it all back we took the opportunity to rearrange a bit and now everything looks new and fresh and lovely! Happy times :)

With the house to myself this morning, I've hoovered, polished and cleaned up, and have been streaming episodes of Jeremy Kyle on to my laptop (I love that man.)

Grrr... love it when he's angry!!

I've also been doing some baking - Tom's bunch of bananas are on the turn so I originally thought 'Banana bread!'; but then realised banana's aren't very low G.I.-wise. I went online and found a nice recipe for a low G.I. version from 'These Precious Things' blog which is here!

I added a spoonful of sugar-free raspberry jam to it because it was in the fridge and wanted a little something extra to taste.

Bon appetit...

Perfect pre-work treat!

 Just to remind you as of the 1st April I will be embarking on my 2nd "£2-a-day" adventure, and relying once again on food donations, Asda's own brand crisps and staying in! Make sure you keep track and hopefully you'll find a tip or two on how to save some pennies!

BBxx