Jackson Mouse Craft Kit Review

Today I have a kit review for you, the Jackson Mouse kit from the lovely people at Amazing Craft.

I was lucky enough to be given a toy making kit from Amazing Craft, in exchange for my honest review. My kit was to make a cute little field mouse called Jackson. If you order a kit in the post it comes in recycled packaging and a sweet little poem to explain. I think it's brilliant!

The kit comes in a lovely organza bag and contains pretty much everything needed to make the mouse. The only things I needed of my own were scissors and some pliers.

Jackson mouse is pretty tiny. He measures about 12cm standing up, and 10cm sitting down so the pieces to make him are pretty small.

You receive the paper pattern and fabric, so the first job is cutting it all out. Placement advice is in the instructions, just as well as I almost cut one leg piece with the fur going in the wrong direction! I used a water erasable fabric pen to mark my pieces and things like the dots for the joints. Then it's just a case of handsewing it together. There is no way I could have used the machine to sew him up, I don't have that sort of control! This took me 3 sessions of about an hour at a time. I was catching up on tv programs we had missed whilst on holiday so depending on the excitement of the programs I may have stitched more or less in each hour. The face is just a little stitched nose and glass eyes which are provided.

The kit contains little cotter pins to give the mouse moveable joints so I needed my own pliers to secure them. It was a little bit fiddly but not difficult.

A fairly quick and super cute little make - though I do say so myself. 

Isn't he sweet? He has little metal beads in his body that give him a lovely weight too.

Amazing Craft advises not to use the glass eyes if you want to give this to a small child. I think he is more suitable for an older child or adult really anyway. Someone who will appreciate him and all the hard work that went into making him. These kits retail at £25.00 or you can buy just the pattern and instructions for £6.99. Amazing Craft is a UK based company, they do ship the kits worldwide but it is quite pricey. The pattern is totally reuseable and they sell cotter pins and eyes very inexpensively so you could easily make more Jackson mice if you wanted to. They also have links on the website to video tutorials for the tricky bits which are really helpful. All in all I'd say this is a great little kit. This one is suitable for someone who has some sewing experience but Amazing Craft have loads of other kits to choose from too. 

Glitter Hand Lettered Greetings

Make easy sparkly greeting cards for family & friends with simple hand lettering.

This post contains a review of products I received free of charge and contains my honest review.
As I've mentioned before, back in July when I attended the Stitching, Sewing & Hobbycrafts Show and the bloggers workshop I was given a goody bag with some lovely crafty goodies in it.

In the bag was a great selection of products from Tonic Studios, several packs of cards, glitter, glues and Crystal Drops.

First can we just talk about how pretty these products are? The lids are jewels - isn't that lovely? I think they would make great gifts for a craft loving friend. I've been practicing hand letter again recently, not anywhere near as much as I should but still, practice makes progress. So I thought it might be fun to try making some simple hand lettered greeting cards.
The NUVO Deluxe Adhesive glue and the NUVO Crystal Drops both have a fine nozzle so it was fairly easy to just write with them.

• Write a word lightly in pencil on the Craft Perfect Jet Black card and then go over it with the NUVO Deluxe Adhesive.
• Sprinkle liberally with the NUVO Pure Sheen Glitter and then tap the excess away onto scrap paper.

The spare glitter can be tipped back into the pot ready to use again. The glue needs 24 hours to dry throughly then it can be mounted onto a card blank.

The glitter sheds a little bit once the glue is dry but not too much at all. 
As my hand letter is still quite beginner-y I tried using a lovely font printed on the computer next. I printed a selection of words in Bromello font (downloaded from DaFont) at font size 100.

• Lay the printed word over a piece of Craft Perfect Electric Purple High Gloss card, positioning it centrally.
• Trace over the word with pencil, pressing quite hard.
• You'll be left with an indent which is fairly easy to see on the shiny surface. Easier to see in real life than on these photographs that's for sure!
• Go over the word with the NUVO Crystal Drops and then set aside to dry for 24 hours.

I also had a NUVO Glue Pen in my goody bag and as it has a chisel nib I thought it might work for hand lettering too.

I made this card in exactly the same way as the ones using other adhesive glue. It's easier to write with the glue pen but the glitter sheds from this one A LOT more. Picture that trail of glitter everywhere.... The glue pen was perfect for mounting the card to the card blanks. I think I'll keep it for that from now on.
Lastly I tried using a cute hello stamp from papermania. I stamped it onto patterned paper, went over the stamped image with the NUVO Deluxe Adhesive then sprinkled then with glitter as before.

So in summary, these products are high quality and the packaging is lovely. Glitter in a loose format like this does end up spreading itself around the house, that's just how it is! The Deluxe Adhesive holds it in place pretty well though. The Crystal Drop product is meant for making tiny little jewel like drops on papercraft projects. This means when you write with it, the letters have a lovely depth to them. They really stand up from the card. I'm not sure if the photos here really show that off properly, or if they show just how glittery the glitter is. I did a little video on Instagram to try to show that shimmer.

You don't have to just use this idea for cards either. I used the 'thank you' on black card with the adhesive and glitter as a postcard and just wrote a message on the back. It might be nice to make gift tags too or even write straight onto gift wrap with the adhesive or crystal drop. Just allow time for it to dry before handing it over! 

Delicates Wash bag

Keep your delicates safe in the washing machine using a little net bag.

I'm going to start with a bit of a long background story today. If you have no interest in the 'why' and only want the 'how' just scroll on down!
I have had a very lengthy (ie: all my life) love/hate relationship with sockies, invisible socks, sockettes, shoe liners, call them what you will. I love how they look ie: you can't see them I love how they help stop your shoes stinking I hate how they don't stay on my feet It is just like when we were kids and our socks would always 'go to sleep' in our welly boots. Here's a facebook post of mine from last year:

Well I'm happy to say I have found a solution. PEDS Liners. I saw a review online (I can't remember where now, sorry) and thought they were worth a try.  Whoop whoop, they are great. They stay on my feet all day. It's the little rubbery grippy bits on the heel that make all the difference.  So once this problem was finally solved I had a new problem.  How do I stop these delicate and fairly tiny things getting swallowed up inside the washing machine? They are on the expensive side so I want them to last, and getting caught up in the machine somewhere is not good for the machine either. The solution - a net delicates bag to wash them in.
These delicates bags are available in the shops and they are not expensive.  You might decide to go and buy one right now and that would be great. If however, like me, you have a bit of old net curtain and an old zip (mine was rescued from an old cushion cover) then you can make one "FOR FREEEE" (Bedtime Stories anyone?) and in about 10 minutes.

Cut a piece of net curtain about 50cm x 18cm (20" x 7")

• Pin one short side of the net to one side of the zip and stitch.
• Pin and sew the other short side of the net to the other side of the zip.
• Trim the zip.
• Open the zip a little - this is important!
• You've basically made a tube so shuffle the bag round, until the zip is about 1 inch down from the edge.
• Stitch down each side seam, I went back and forth over the zip a few times just to make sure it was secure.
• Turn right side out through the open zip.

We leave this in the laundry basket so both our daughter and I can add our PEDS liners to the bag as we go along. Then whoever is putting the washing on can just bung the whole bag in with the rest without having to think about it too much.

I believe other little sockette things with the grippy heel are available, but PEDS Liners are the only one I've tried. This post isn't sponsored by the PEDS people, I just really like them! These are affiliate links, if you make a purchase when clicking through from here Sum of their Stories will receive a small commission. The cost to you is the same. Shop UK:
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Block Craft Printed Cards

It's simple and fun to make an assortment of greeting cards using carved wooden printing blocks.

This post is a review of products I received free of charge and contains my honest review. A few weeks ago, I talked about the bloggers workshop I attended at the Stitching, Sewing and Hobbycraft Show at the NEC Birmingham. I mentioned the fab goody bag we bloggers were given and how many exciting goodies were in there.  The lovely people at The Arty Craft Place had popped a wooden block printing starter kit into the goody bag. It contained a flower (or is it a sun?) carved wooden block, orange fabric paint, a piece of cotton fabric to practice on, a sponge, a foam mat and instructions.

Well, I've been playing and today I have a few fun greeting cards ideas to share that I been able to make. I tried the block printing on the fabric and onto card (the folks at the Arty Crafty Place say it works on either) I used textured card as well as smooth, which gave some interesting results. I think I like the results on the fabric best, it was really easy to get a good print every time.

To make it washable you just iron it on the reverse, which I did do even though of course I'm not expecting anyone to wash these cards!   The instruction advise you to always use the foam mat under whatever you are printing on. I found when I printed onto card the first time I pressed too hard and the card creased a little. So I tried without the foam.

No - don't do that! Just don't press too hard and the wooden blocks actually print beautifully.  The prints onto the textured card were a little mottled as I would expect, I kind of like that look.
I trimmed the prints on the card and turned them into a selection of simple cards, just by stamping a greeting on some and mounting them using foam pads onto mini card blanks.

I experimented a bit with embellishing onto the prints, one with a few dots and doodles:

And one with some sequins, which I just glued on with PVA tacky glue:

After that I thought it might be fun to add some embroidery embellishment to the fabric prints.

I tried a few different ideas, all very simple stitches, it didn't seem to need anything complicated. I just used regular DMC stranded embroidery thread and experimented with using 1 and 2 strands.

Then I just cut the fabric into squares with the fabric prints centrally and stitched them onto scraps of card the same size on the sewing machine. That way it was easy to mount the prints onto the card blanks as before. 

Ta Dah!

This little matching gift tag was so easy. I just cut a basic tag shape, printed the design using the wooden printing block, punched a hole and added a little matching pom pom trim. 

This gift tag is on the textured card, you can see what I meant earlier about that giving a more mottled look.

I've loved playing with this carved wooden printing block, even with just one block and one colour of paint you can get different looks. I've got some more ideas of how I'm going to use this block next - it's not the last you've seen of it I'm sure! The Arty Craft Place have a blog with more ideas too if you want to check it out.