Ami swap time, travelling craft box and Little Ladies everywhere!

Hello everyone! Happy Monday to you all :-)

So hope you are all well and having fun! The rain and thunder here has been mad for a couple of days here, I would love some sunshine again but the British weather strikes again.

This week I can show you the ami swap goodies! The monthly swap with the lovely Steph always makes me smile :-) Steph sent mine a week early as she was away last week so I couldn't show them until she got back and received mine. So my parcel from Steph was brilliant as always, she sent me this gorgeous knitted kitty

How gorgeous is she!! I love her little bell and the pretty flowers stitched around her, so cute. Also, Hercule Poirot arrived! This is brilliant, we both love Agatha Christie so he's just perfect :-)

And some lovely kitty ribbons and beads, bells and buttons. Thanks Steph, I love everything!

Oh i nearly forgot, there were also two super cute crochet mice for Poppy and Daisy too :-) Here's Poppy who had pinched them both straight out of the wrapping paper!

I made a ballet dancing bunny for Steph, seen here dancing in the flowers :-)

I also sent a lot of stickers and a stitched card of a fairy,

Also the travelling craft box has been and visited me. Now it's with the next person on the list Kayla, I can reveal what I took from the box......

the fabulous stitched notebook, lovely metal bookmark with the painted wooden hearts and white and pink felt heart are all by Kerry. The lovely big heart and sweet mini mitten and flowers were by the lovely Cucki.

The things I made and added to the box are the felt flower pot and butterfly brooches, a Little Red Riding Hood bag tag.....

and the little knitted Converse boot pincushion and embroidered mermaid  scissor keep. 

I had a lot of fun making these, in fact LRRH gave me the idea to make a series of bag tags on a theme of Little Ladies for my Etsy shop. I have six so far and lots of ideas for more, they have become a bit addictive, lol!

So I have so far Snow White, Alice, mermaid, fairy, a little girl and another Little Red too. Hope you like them as much as I do :-) These will be appearing in my Etsy shop over this week. Finally I made Billy Bunny too, a lovely little sailor bunny from a Debi Birkin pattern, I love how he turned out :-) Isn't he sweet!

Well that's me this week, I have a custom order of a big hanging mushroom I'm busy making, it has a fairy on it which is fun! Have a good week everyone!

Ouch!

Hello everyone and welcome to my new followers, lovely to meet you :-) Thanks to everyone who's entered the giveaway and if you haven't there's still time, it's in the post before this one and you have until Tuesday to get your name in the hat for a mushroom cottage.

Been a busy week again, I don't seem to have any other kind lately! Firstly a card I stitched for the lovely Helen's birthday, you can find her fabulous blog HERE It was another of the new stitched cards I've been trying out

 
I also stitched this biscornu for Helen, I haven't made a biscornu for a while and it was fun to make.

I had a custom order for a set of eight napkins to be embroidered with a little bird design for a wedding present this week too, I love how these turned out. The buyer had already had a set of napkin rings custom made out of reclaimed slate with the couples initials etched on them. They were gorgeous!

A ruby wedding card too was on this weeks list, I've made this one a few times with different coloured flowers. It's a lovely design and always looks pretty.

Today I made this mermaid dolly :-) Isn't she lovely? I'm really pleased with her. She measures 16 inches tall so is a big one! She was made with a Dolls and Daydreams pattern from  HERE 

Here she is from the back with her lovely red hair.

On Saturday I was at the garden centre again with my new cloth on my stall. What do you think? I was really annoyed with the white sheet looking so battered and creased all the time and decided to make a better cloth. I went for the red with white spots as it looked like my mushrooms roofs!  I'm really happy with it but this is where the OUCH of the title comes in! I was busy sewing the cloth last week and one of my cats Poppy was having a blast jumping on the fabric on the floor, wrapping herself up in it. Well she pulled it hard and distracted me, the sewing machine needle went right through my index finger, in the nail and out the other side!! I have to say the air turned a lovely shade of blue :-) So for two days I was doing everything with one finger in the air because it was so sore! It seemed to heal really quickly though, I'm left with a hole in my finger nail and a little black dot on the other side but it's fine now I'm happy to say. But the cloth is fabulous and I didn't bleed on it, although it was the right colour for it!

There have been other makes this week too but they are for the travelling craft box which I've got at the moment so I can't show them until next time when it's on it's travels again. It's such fun getting to pick goodies out of the box and I have to say they are all fabulous, it's so hard to choose!

See you all Tuesday when I'll be back with the winner of the giveaway, good luck everyone!

Lots of lovely post :-)

Hi everyone!

Wonderful post week this week for me :-) Firstly a surprise parcel from the lovely Steph, she sent me a super cute little choco chunk  with a cute pocket that has a little heart keyring , isn't that adorable!

There was other goodies like gorgeous pink beads, some lovely incense sticks and shells from the beach as well as lovely charms. A gorgoeus  parcel, I love everything :-)

Yesterday I got another parcel! This was a swap I did with  Cara over at the Dotty One blog. She sent me two gorgeous fused glass necklaces, I've pinched these photos off her blog as the weather has been so dark here mine were just rubbish! Hope you don't mind!

They were in this gorgeous little pretty bag,

Also this gorgeous little cat ami, now you must know I love cats :-)

and I was thrilled to get one of her fabulous felt strawberries!! I love these so much!!!

So I had sent a starfish, crab and baby octopus as I knew she loves the sea and diving,

a cross stitched ornament,

 
and a cow card as well as she likes cows :-)

A fabulous swap!! Thanks so much to Cara, love everything you sent me and it made me very smiley :-)

Today was the third good post day of the week as the Travelling Craft box arrived, YIPPEE!!  This has been started by Laura and I received it from Kerry today. The idea is it's a box of handmade lovely stuff and you get to take as many items as you like from the box as long as you put the same number of items made by yourself back in, simple. Well it's a lovely box of pretty things and this will be tough to pick, I think I have decided on six things but that may change before I send it on it's way in a couple of weeks! I have a couple of things left to make for it, it's a great idea :-)

Here's the box when I opened it

I'm not allowed to show you what I make for it until it arrives at it's next stop with Kayla and then I'll show what I'm keeping too.

Oh yes, and this was the box ten seconds later.......

Poppy can't pass a box without getting in it! She jumped in checked it out and picked her choice from the box before I got to! The ami heart made by Laura has been carted around the house, loved to bits and totally claimed by her so that's one of my choices, lol!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Happy New Year!

Hello, welcome to my new follower too, lovely to see you :-)

I finally finished the curtain for my kitchen!!! Now some of you will know I stitched a loooooog strip of gerbera flowers about 6 months ago with the intention of making a new curtain but then we decided to re-do the kitchen with new work tops and paint it pink so it got left until after that was all done. Well now it's finished and up, so here it is.....

Poppy did her usual trick of getting in on the photograph! The window is two metres long so the flowers seemed to go n forever when I was stitching them but I love the result.

I have to show the presents I got from my wonderful friend Steph for Christmas! Just look at all these!

The robin is lovely and hanging on my wall now, the teeny snowmen and Santa I added silver threads to the top and they are on my tree :-)

She knows me well, look at all the chocolate!!

A fabulous owl hand warmer and bracelet. Gorgeous smelling soap and wax melt, lovely perfume and chocolate brownie lip balm (it smells divine!)

Cute Hello Kitty and Fizzy Moon stationary, I love stationary!

Two super cute cross stitch kits and the sweetest gnome fabric.

And a Witches Brew mug which is fabulous! A pendulum dowsing set and lovely incense. Can you believe all these gorgeous pressies!!! Thank you Steph for my gorgeous presents!

So now that Christmas and new year is finished for another year it's onwards and upwards for 2012! Happy new year to you all and I hope the year brings you everything you want and more.

Lori xxx

The big kitchen makeover reveal and some more crafty stuff of course!

So I'm back without too big a gap since the last post, well done me, lol!

Firstly my new makes, I've been mad busy playing with felt this week, it's the CRAFTfest online craft fayre at the end of the month (check out the side bar to see where and when) and I'm on a mission to fill my stall with loads more stuff by then. Don't forget to come over and see us all, there are around 150 stalls of fabulous different crafts so you can get your Christmas pressies in!

First make of the week is this mushroom house....

I embroidered lots of  french knots for the window boxes flowers and had great fun stitching this!

I want to live there!

I thought I'd do some pretty brooches too in felt that I can sell cheaply as I realised I had nothing for under £5 in my shops for stocking fillers. So here's a couple of them....

and a keyring too...

 There's a couple of heart hangings too

I hadn't realised until now how much I'd done this week, lol! Lastly there's my cross stitch Christmas cake bands that were a custom order. They were a pain to stitch with all the repeats of the patterns but the results were fabulous so I'm glad I did them!

Here's a close up of them both, this is the ice skating  ladies,

and the swags and bows

So that's all my finishes this week, I must have bored you to death now with all those, lol! 

I promised to show the before and after of my kitchen re-do last time so here we go.....
Before....

Those orangy looking cupboards were awful, really dated looking. The worktops I hated, with being blue it meant that the walls had been yellow since we moved in 8 years ago as not much goes with them and I don't like white walls! ('scuse the bag of potatoes, I forgot to move them first and that's the back end of Poppy at the end of the worktop too!)
We got new worktops for free (handy to have a relative who can get them!) Bought new handles for the cupboards and with primer and cupboard paint and some bright emulsion for the walls this is the result...

I love the bright pink walls! The cupboards came up great too, it looks like a new kitchen.

and to finish it off my fabulous new kettle!! I so had to have this :-)

So a new kitchen for about £120, how marvellous!