I took my inspiration from these beauties when I decided to leave my butterfly in the embroidery hoop and display it.
I moved onto this owl but I’m not sure about it, it seemed like a good idea at the time but it became apparent fairly quickly that owls are pretty boring looking in terms of colour so this one may not make the wall 
So the excitement of the bloggies has passed for another year and I’m back to work (boo!) and new crafting (yay!). I got the book Sublime Stitching for my birthday last year and have only just started to use it, but boy was it worth the wait. The patterns are super easy to use and as far as crafts go the financial outlay is pretty small. You’d probably spend about a tenner to get yourself a few skeins of floss, a hoop and some linen to practice on. Er, obviously you’d have to shell out for the book and I’m presuming you have an iron already as you’ll need one to transfer the patterns onto your fabric.
Anyhoo, this is what I’ve been at tonight.
Learning the stem stitch
And stitching a butterfly while reading all the new blogs I’ve discovered after the weekend.
I’m off to Cork for the Bloggies and I kind of feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, every year this event gets better and better so I can’t wait to get the party started. I’ll be going to the Ladies Tea Party and knitting circle before the awards so hopfully I’ll bump into some of you there. (Sabrina kindly added in the knitting bit at my suggestion that some of us may want to “stitch ‘n’ bitch”). Best of luck to everyone who is up for an award tonight and most of all, enjoy it. And of course huge thanks to Damien and his crew for all the work they’ve put in to make this a great night for everyone.
Update: What a fantastic weekend, I was going to list out all the fabulous people that I met but I’d be here all day adding in the links so lets just say that everyone was lovely and in great form. I brought the fiancé with me and he had a great night too. The Cork International Airport Hotel was gorgeous and really looked after us. We went into Cork city the next day and paid a visit to the Vibes and Scribes craft shop. Needless to say I was like a kid in a candy store, more on that later. We also drove out to Kinsale and ate lunch in the renowned Fishy Fishy café, it well deserves the reputation it has so if you ever find yourself in that direction you should definitely go there.
Ok, I’m off to play with my new craft toys and enjoy the rest of my day off!
Image shamelessly robbed from Alexia
These are two very simple cards for Valentines day. Simply cutting up and assembling required. Check our your local craft supplies shop as they will have lots of kits for making seasonal cards.
If anyone would like to send me some pictures of their handmade Valentines I’d be happy to post them up 
Photo by babybee
I’m sure it’s the same everywhere but it seems like every shop window in the city has been shouting about the fact that Valentines Day is around the corner. I tend to sit on the fence about Valentines Day because I like to celebrate it in some way but I don’t like to buy too much into the clichéd commercial side. I suppose what I mean is that I like to get a card but I love the fact that I’ve never received a shop-bought card from my significant other (he has always made them up on the computer with photos of us and little in-jokes). I know that for some people Valentines would be a write-off without a big bunch of roses but given the emphasis on saving the pennies these days maybe we should be thinking outside the box. My significant other is no stranger to this, about three years ago he bought me a gift basket that had a little conifer plant in it, it was about 99% cheaper than a bouquet of flowers and it’s still living on our balcony.
Of course you could always take a crafty approach and buy a few bunches of cheaper flowers and wrap them up yourself. Your local florist will probably be able to sell you some cellophane and your nearest fabric shop will have a selection of ribbon for you to chose from.
You can even make your own chocolates. I’m a big fan of chocolate truffles and they are ridiculously easy to make. You can present them nicely by reusing an old sweet box wrapped in some pretty paper and ribbon or use a tin storage box like this one.
Last but not least, the card. Here’s a great card-making project from The Purl Bee. I tried this last year and found it really easy especially since it was my first attempt at card making. I got hooked after trying that project. Maybe you will too. These were my end results.
I hope my crafty suggestions for Valentines day will inspire some of you to celebrate the day but not go overboard on the commercial stuff. I’ll post up some more recent love-themed cards soon.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right to accept cute commercial gifts if they are offered, like this. A gift, not from my significant other though but from his Mom. He’s dressed as a ladybird which as some of you will know has particular significance to me
Posting has been sporadic here for the last while but that doesn’t mean that crafting has been sporadic. There has been a good few birthdays over the last month so I’ve been kept busy making cards, I’ve also been working on a top-secret project (more to follow). And as well as all that I need to get cracking on the raffle prizes that I’ve promised Damien for the Blog Awards.
My cards are taking on a distinctively Spring like quality at the moment, but I think we could all do with some Spring in our lives after the dark Winter months. Here’s a typical example of my cards at the moment.
I’m planning on bringing two raffle prizes to the Blog Awards, one for the boys and one for the girls.
And here’s a sneak preview of my top-secret project due for completion in April
