School Reunion Cake Toppers

Last night was my husbands school reunion and I promised to make some cupcakes.

I made the little toppers by shrinking down a picture of the school badge to about 4cm x 3.5cm and pasting it into a word document over and over. I then just printed these on thickish paper (about 120gsm). I got 12 pairs of images on each sheet.

I cut them out in pairs, as I wanted them double sided. Then I just sellotaped a cocktail stick to one side, glued the other side and folded them shut. Cocktail sticks were fine for this as everyone at the party was a grown up. I would use lolly sticks for a children's party!

We also had a picture of the old school rugby shirt, so I shrunk that down too, and printed it out in the same way. The last batch were just a little name and date label that I made by creating a table in my word document.

The school colours were navy & sky blue. (what can go wrong) Here's a great piece of advice - if you want navy paper cases, don't assume any shops will have them the day before you want them - they wont! Order them online from somewhere in plenty of time or you may end up with pale blue cases instead. (which were ok but not what I had in mind) 

Also, blue gel food colouring makes your tongue and lips blue - I'm just saying!

They looked pretty and tasted good, so all's well.

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Birdcage Cards

I spent the whole of last weekend making invitations for my friends wedding. They wanted something with birdcages and I found these votive wraps in Hobbycraft which I thought might work. They are £3.99 and you get 20 strips with 5 birdcages on each one. so that's 100 in a pack.

I cut them up carefully until I had a box full.

This is how the invitations turned out...

...but I had quite a few little birdcages leftover. So this weekend I had fun experimenting with them and made a few birthday cards.

This is just some lovely birdcage paper which came free in a magazine. The words were printed on the computer on card, cut just with scissors and attached with foam pads. The little bow is just a bit of embroidery thread.

This flowers paper was actually from some packaging that I rescued from the bin. I can't remember what, maybe a tissue box, or Easter egg, something like that. This is just lots of layering up of coloured paper & card, I think the technical term is "matting & layering".

Because I like the inside of cards to be blank whenever possible I stuck all these elements down onto the pink polka dot paper before I glued that to the card base. It's a bit more fiddly but now the card doesn't have all the ends of the threads inside and I don't have to use an insert.

This is half of a regular doily (you just have to be really minimal with glue when sticking doilies down, it easily squidges through the holes and you can get in a mess!) The words were printed on the computer, cut out and the edges inked. The tiny little butterflies are punched from patterned paper.

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Phone Charger Holder

This is such a great idea that I can take absolutely no credit for!

This was what our "Charging Station" used to look like:

Not good!

I found this tutorial on Make it & Love it

http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2011/12/holder-for-charging-cell-phone-made-from-lotion-bottle.html

These were the containers I started with:

I peeled off the labels - this proved to be a little bit more difficult that I anticipated. The bubble bath bottle had a sticky layer left on it and the Cif was a nightmare!

I have this bottle of liquid called Sticky Stuff remover which I've had for years. It works a treat on exactly this kind of sticky mess. You glug it on, leave it for a minute and then rub with a bit of kitchen paper and the glue/glue & paper just comes off. (I have heard that you can use baby oil to remove sticky residue but I've never tried that so can't comment. I guess you could try soaking them in warm soapy water too)

I washed and dried them thoroughly. Then I followed the instructions on Make it & Love it up to the point where Ashley painted them. I left mine see-through as I didn't think the men/boys in the house would use anything that was too pretty! As we have switches next to the sockets here in the UK I had to keep testing & then trimming them till they fitted right, but this was dead easy.

Ta Dah! Much better.

(There is an "at your own risk" warning on the Make it & Love it site and a lot of comments about whether this is safe to put on a socket, questions about it getting hot/melting etc.

Mine haven't even got warm in use)

(what can go wrong) I was feeling very happy about our new tidy "Charging Station" until this happened!

You win some, you loose some!

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Tea Towel Tote Tutorial

About 3 or 4 years ago my lovely sister in law gave me some tea towels. Lovely thick fabric, great vibrant colours - unfortunately our kitchen is lilac and white! I thought they would make great bags though and they did. 3 years later, they've been used and used, been though the washing machine loads of times and are still holding up well.

As I made them a while ago I can't show you photos of the steps as I go, but they really are dead simple (because it's a tea towel all the edges are already done for you) I will show you how I made them as best I can with a few little drawings where photos would be!

Fold your tea towel in half, right sides together. The short sides of the tea towel are together at the top and will form the top of your bag. 

Pin the sides then stitch down the both sides (one at a time!) from the top edge to the folded bottom with a seam allowance of about 2cm. When I got the the bottom I turned the fabric round and zoomed back up again so the stitching is double. This makes it nice and strong - I wanted a heavy duty bag!

This next step is as complicated as it gets (but don't worry - it's harder to describe than to do) so you can miss it out if you just want a flat "book bag" type tote. I wanted my bag to have a bit of width to it. This means I can put loaves of sliced bread in without them getting all squashed.

Take one of the bottom corners and fold the fabric so that the side seam you have just stitched is lying right on top of the folded bottom edge.

Make sure it's nice and straight and flat.Then stitch straight across the corner about 5cm/2" down from the corner.

If your line of stitching is closer to the corner your bag will be thinner, if you stitch further away it will be fatter.

Nearly done! You just need to add handles. For one of my bags I used some webbing that I had rescued form an old bag, for the other I cut up my 3rd tea towel.

I cut a strip 8cm/3.5" from the short edge of my "spare" tea towel. It was 45cm wide so that's how long my handles are, which turned out just about right.

Fold the bottom 1/3 of the fabric strip up tp the middle then the top 1/3 down. Stitch along the centre (the drawing above hopefully shows this clearly) in half. I found this much easier than sewing a tube then struggling turn it through.

Pin the handles in place, mine are 14cm in from the edge, then stitch round in a square. The photo shows it better than I can explain. This makes sure they are really secure.

My tea towel had the loop already (you could add one if you like) so I added a button from my button box on the other sides top edge so I can fasten it.

I use one for shopping and the other for my knitting.

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Padded Camera Strap

My daughter is studying Photography (the occasional really good picture that appears here on the blog is probably taken by her!). Her camera strap was very boring and definitely needed a make over and a bit of padding.

I wanted to make something removable so she can wash it/change it whenever she likes.

I based it on this great tutorial from TidyMom:
http://tidymom.net/2009/camera-strap-cover-tutorial/

I made a patchwork piece the size I needed as I thought that would be cute and use up some of my little bits and pieces of fabric.

Also I didn't have any fusible fleece interfacing, so in a tradition of making do, I used the thin fleece wadding I already had and just stitched it round the edge to hold it in place. Fusible would definitely been easier! It was just a little bit tricky to turn out but the final result is fine. 

Incidentally this is what I was making when I took the photos for the Thread Thrift tip http://sumoftheirstories.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/thread-thrift.html

My daughter is away at Uni now but the other day I saw her tagged in a facebook picture, she was in the background busy taking photos, wearing her Harry Potter scarf and with this padded strap in place round her neck. I just feel like I'm still taking care of her even when she'd not here - Aahhhh.

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Earring Holder

I seem to have a lot of earrings and they were just in a horrible mess in the top of my jewellery box. I couldn't find pairs and was wearing the same ones all the time because some were buried and forgotten under the others.

Annoying, sad and a little bit embarrassing!

 

I searched the internet for ideas and there are some great ones, pretty picture frames with wire, lace or fabric even twigs! Here are some of the brilliant ideas that I thought about.....

shabby chic dangly earring display from www.kevinandamanda.com

lace earring holder by Trey & Lucy at www.u-createcrafts.com

Framed lace earring holder from www.dreamalittlebigger.com

diy twig jewelry display from www.happinessisblog.com

In the end I wanted something REALLY quick and easy for now and may still upgrade to one of these one day. I spotted this pen tub in Staples for £2. They do a whole range of these wire things; bins, desk top organisers with little drawers, magazine files, bookends, all sorts and they come in grey or black. (since buying this one I did see a bright pink one in TKMax - very tempting)

The earrings just hook into the mesh and dangle down.

I've been using it just like this for a few months now but it's a little bit plain and boring, I did think about spray painting it another colour but I think the earrings might scratch paint off. Then I thought maybe I could add some sort of trim around the top..........

Our bedroom is creams/browns and turquoise so I found these possible trim bits in my box of bits and pieces.

I chose the pompom trim in the end and just stuck it round with my glue gun.

Happy, happy - I can keep make up brushes etc in the tub, I can see what I've got easily and the top of my jewellery box is much tidier with just stud and hoop earrings and other little bits and pieces.

Update!

I succumbed to the power of the gold spray paint and gave it a quick respray just over a month ago, whilst I was making my plant pots from plastic tubs. I've waited to see if it scratches off (like I thought it might) and I have to report - No - it doesn't seem to scratch off at all, earrings have been in and out of it every day since the respray and all good, bonus!

I just peeled the trim off, put it to one side and gave the tub a couple of coats of my usual Rust-oleum gold spray paint, one coat the right way up and then the second coat upside down. That way all sides of the wire got covered. Then I glued the trim back on.

And another Update for 2015!

We've moved house - the turquoise has gone from the bedroom so I've given this earring holder yet another makeover - find the details here

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