Flower necklace

This is my finished flower necklace I started this last term and have finally found sometime to finish it.

Star pendant

It's that time of year again. I started the new term of Silver jewelry making. This is what I made. It is a hand drawn Gamma star. Like most people I have a tendency to draw stars the same way and I liked the idea of transfering that standard Gamma star to a simple pendant.

I was a bit concerned that my skills would be a bit rusty, though my sawing and burning skills seem to be intact.

Happy Birthday Dad

Hope you have a Whale of a time.

The coloured felt looks nice on this Whale, I decided to let the Whale shine on its own, with no glitter or background other than the card.

Jo's Birthday

Happy birthday Jo.

A little bit more paper craft! This is a simple layering of paper with a brought butterfly glued on top.

Mum's Birthday

Mum's Birthday Card

My Mum's birthday was in May, though this is the card I made for her. My parent's are Beekeepers, so they decided that it is a Honey Bare. I made this felt with three different shades of brown. I used a cookie cutter for the shape, which I thought would turn out better than it did, but I thought he looked cute. I will have to make a better bare template and try this one again, maybe I could send Dad a honey bare card for his Birthday using a better template.

Fab multi-brown felt.

Looking at this fabric like this makes me think of a Tiger, I think I might try something like this with tiger colours, oohh I'll have to try to make a tiger template as well.

Be-Ro Chocolate Brownies again!

Chocolate Brownies

I made these to take to my friends tennis match for the after show tea party.  I took the opportunity to play with the recipe so that I got bigger brownies.

Ingredients:
75g Chocolate
100g Marge
2 Eggs
200g sugar
125g Self raising flour
pinch of salt

Melted choc and marg

  Firstly melt the chocolate and marge together, add the eggs and sugar, then the flour and salt.

Mixing everything together.

Mix it all together, add mixture to a 20.5cm square tin which has been prepared, cook for approx 30mins. And hay presto yummy brownies.

Brownies

This tweak of the original recipe seems to have made bigger brownies which are ready to go into a world of bigger portion size!

First brownies

Second Brownies

These two pic's show the difference, there's a lot isn't there? Both yummy though.

Father's Day

Father's day always comes around at the wrong time, namely it is when I am celebrating my birthday. This year my Dad came to me for Father's day. We went on a birthday/father's day walk and BBQ. Ok so we mainly did things that I wanted and he didn't have a choice, but that's what Fathers do right? I mean isn't that the point of Father's day, letting them know you know that they do everything for you because they love you.

Father's Day card

If you remember last year I did a textiles course and did some marbling, well this is one of the scraps from then, I love marbling, the patterns that are created are so pretty and it's so quick. Marbling is one of those crafts that once you start you can't stop, I always end up with my flat covered in endless scraps of wet paper. There is a sense of a job well do thought after a marbling session.

All you need to marble is oily paints and water, drop the paint in mix as little or as much as you desire and pop some paper in, see the wondrous patterns that develop.

Crunchies

Crunchies

This is another Be-Ro recipe, instead of using golden syrup I used my parents honey. They were lovely.

Ingredients:

100g Margaine
75g Caster Sugar
5ml Honey
15ml Boiling Water
Few drops Vanilla essence
100g Self-raising Flour
50g Oats

Cream the marge and sugar together then mix in the essence, water and honey. Once totally mixed add the flour and divide into small balls on a prepared baking tray. Cool for approx 15mins.

I went around work telling everyone about my parents fab honey and giving them these lovely biscuits. It was annoying to find out that swarming honey bee's meant that there was no honey to sell yet. Luckily there Bee's have chilled down now and are producing some more lovely honey this year. Oh and I will be making these again, so easy to make and were delicious, next time I might try them with a little less sugar.

Be Ro Chocolate brownies

Brownies

I made these for a dinner party at my friends alongside a yummy moussaka. We had them with ice cream and raspberries. They were delicious just the right amount of chocolate and not to sweet.

mixing up the ingredients

I am discovering a theam with Be Ro recipe's they provide small portions. The recipe provides brownies that are about two centimetres think, ok it might just be me but I like big brownies. This recipe is yummy though. Next time I will be doubling this one.

April Birthday's

April comes with lots of Birthday's, this April I decided to pull out my card and paper craft stuff. Something I haven't done in a while. Got all caught up in that felting malarkey. It took me approximately 10 minuets to make these cards, but I go very engrossed in the materials that I had, so in the end I think it took about three hours. I got a bit frustrated with myself about that I have to admit, I am annoying when I get into things like this, it's all so fun, but I lake efficiency. My living room floor by the end of this simple task was covered with card paper, boxes, ribbons and various other bits and bobs. And at the end of it all I returned to my obsession with Angelina fibers and created these.

Happy Birthday Sarah and Louise. Hope you enjoyed your special day.

Grandad

Happy Birthday Grandad.

Tree card

Hope you feel better soon, wish I was able to see you on your special day.

This was a really easy card to make and turned out very effective, I love making scraps of felt and playing around with different ideas so this was a nice way of using up some of my experiments. You are probably noticing the angelina fibres theme running through my card recently, I still am in love with them, and continue to get a little to excited when I finish ironing them and lift away the paper to find fused fibres, how do you know if your addicted to something?

Carrot cake

Carrot Cake

So over our post BBQ cocktails we flicked through cook books to find a cake to make as my friend decided I should make her a cake, or was it 'you haven't made me a cake in a while' I can't quite remember. She decided that she wanted a carrot cake I made the same cake for her Birthday and I guess she loved it so much she wanted more. This is a carrot cake I made from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book.

Tier of carrot cake

 The recipe calls for three tiers to this cake but I only have two cake tins, even though my oven is now fixed because of the increased thickness of this tier it took almost double the baking time. Umm this looks ummy, the cake was a bit soggy in my opinion so next time I make this for my friend as I think it is inevitable, I might alter the recipe slightly, or buy another cake tin.

Slice of carrot cake

I think it is important to point out that after our cocktails my friend was a tad tired (or hungover), for the day and she cancelled our tennis plans, she was however up for the carrot cake and got out of bed especially for it. Now that's friendship isn't it.

Albert's Birthday

Albert's Birthday card

It was Albert's birthday on last Sunday he was three, he had his birthday party today. This is the card I made for him.

If I had had more time I would have attempted this again. It is supposed to be a bird of prey. One thing about making animal cards from hand made felt is that it comes apart easier, I need to make animals that have bigger body parts to make them work. Part of the wing came of here when I was dry felting on the detail, luckily you can't tell. But hey live and learn, the next ones I make will be better.

We went on a picnic to the Zoo on Albert's birthday, I was supplying the crisps, but I also made some Vegetarian sausage rolls with the left over pastry form the antipasti tart I made for my Easter BBQ. I used this recipe which is a Delia one. The ones I took on the picnic disappeared quickly, however the pot I took to work lasted three days, one person told me that they were not my best!

Cheese and Onion Veggie Roll

They went down very well with me though, I need to adjust to having a working oven though! Old habits and all, I fear that I might be burning a lot of things in the near future.

Easter BBQ

I know April isn't the best season to have a BBQ April showers and all that, but I like playing hostess and I like making food. So having friends over is fun for me and I have no room in my tiny flat for a table so the best thing about BBQ's is that you don't need a table and everybody tends to go outside. So I planned a BBQ hoping that the lovely sunny weather would hold up. I also abused the recipe's on the BBC 4's website for my food plans.

I made Haloumi skewers and Mediterranean vegetables, which I found here.

Haloumi Skewers

They were yummy and were lovely the day after with salad and home made bread for lunch. I worried that the haloumi and marinade combo might have been to salty as, the main base of the dressing was olives but it worked well.

Homebaked fresh bread

I made lovely bread from Nigella Lawson's book How to be a domestic goddess. It was a basic white loaf, but it was scrummy. And my kitchen still smells of it.

Ummm I love the smell of home cooked bread. I made this on Friday and stored it in the fridge overnight and then crushed it and cooked it before the BBQ so that it was still warm. As I made this after my last shift at work, by the time I had finished needing or pounding it to oblivion all of the tension I was still carrying was gone. I might try and put this into my stress relief program.

Antipasti Tart

I also made antipasti tart which I got from here. I was unsure about artichokes but decided that I should try something new. They were salty but it was a nice starter, as I prepared this before people arrived. I used sun dried tomato intense paste instead of red pesto as I couldn't find any that was suitable for vegetarians (a good reason to make my own sometime).

Antipasti Tart

The last thing I made was sweet potato and chilli fries. I love sweet potatoes. I got the recipe from here. These were lovely and easy to cook in the oven whilst the BBQ's were warming up, though I should have asked the people who were coming if they liked things hot, I didn't think they were hot but watching a friend puffing and waving her hand in front of they mouth shout 'oohh there hot' I suppose is a point against my hostess skills. But it was a tiny bit funny.

Sweet Potatoe Chilli Fries

Oh and it did rain, which was good for my BBQ, but bad for the country as we are in the middle of a drought. Poor country!

March .....

Were did March go? Well my March has involved a night shift stint, which for most people means a chance to catch up on the work you can't do during the day, but no. I am one of those people that does not have any luck! There are many of us out there and you know who you are ..... March also included a finally submitted my final tape and assignment, so hopefully I will be a CBT therapist of some description soon. To complete my assignment I poped up to Nottingham to see my parents (see Sacher tort).

During manic March I also found the time to learn how to Crochet.

I decided to start with a blanket, it may take me a while, this is about thee weeks work. I have only been doing this in the evenings and I need to build up my finger muscles so that I will be able to keep it up for longer than 15minets.

It was also my best friends birthday, wohoo fab night out in London Happy Birthday Liz.
 

Also Eve was born,

 

It was also Mothers day, happy Mothers day to the best mum. Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the card I made for you. But it was yellow and had butterflies on. There was a bit of a butterfly theme this month. They were all made with a butterfly hole punch.

Hopefully April will be a bit less manic.

Sacher Torte

When I popped home to see my parents in Nottingham my Mum made a great suggestion, 'lets make a Sacher Torte'.  

We got the recipe from here. This is a recipe that my sister has made a few times and she makes it really well, so much so her husband requested it as his birthday cake. It is a truly wonderful torte. 

Here is our torte all gunked up with lovely marmalade which we used instead of apricot jam as Mum decided that this was not needed. I have to admit it made no difference, the jam is used to keep the icing attached to the cake and apricot jam is preferable as it is not as flavour sum. Making the cake was fun and I opted to do this before writing my assignment, which was defiantly one of those no brainer decisions! Cake first please.

This was the best bit, making the icing, chocolate and cream mixed together. This was made the day after the cake was, as I got a bit to engrossed in writing my assignment, which you will be pleased to know I finished. I think my motivation was increased by the thought of Sacher Torte at the end of it. The icing was left to cool whilst we all get dressed and showered. And then the fun began.

The icing has to be poured onto the cake and you rotate the cake to make the icing reach all the edges, it was like one of those puzzle games were you had to get the balls to roll into certain places. If you spread the icing you lose the lovely sheen. As you can see we had to do a bit a spreading.

The finished product! It was yummy, I need to work a bit on my writing skills, but at least I spelt it right.

Silver project

Ok, so in my jewellery class I picked a nice simple project, hmmm ok that's not true I did the opposite. I found the fiddliest design I came up with and made that.

 This project has left me with lots of happy thoughts whilst I sawed out the smallest flowers possible (in the picture below that file is a mini one, just so you can gain some perspective of what I am referring to as small), yes lots of happy thoughts as I filed my thumbs and fingers and managed to saw into my finger nail at one point, I was concentrating so much at one point that I jumped when I realised people were watching me, apparently they were impressed with how quick I was whipping up the little ........ heavy aspiration. The end project will have leafy bits on and will obviously be soldered together. I am still pondering other aspects but this will hopefully end up being a necklace.

Oatmeal biscuits

This is another Be-Ro recipe, I am still having problems with my oven which is why I haven't been doing any baking. But as one of my go to things is to bake I am finding my force abstinence from baking hard to cope with. So even though I did not think they would be nice and I knew my oven would not maintain a temperature I baked. And I felt so much better afterwards and they tasted nice, maybe a bit dry but I am sure that was the ovens fault not the recipes.

Fabric pin boards

For my birthday my friend brought me these,

My filing system was basic it when a bit like this, put into a pile and forget about. To say the least it had its floors. So these pegs seemed like a great way to solve some of the problems with my filing system. So I made some fabric pin boards to peg things to.

As I have no table this ment that my floor was covered, this project alowed me to cut wood, hammer (yes, I did have a problem with my fingers getting in the way) use spay glue and a glue gun. 

 So all in all it was a great project and easy to do, I used the bottom of some draws for the wood so there was even a bit of recycling in there as well.

Not only are they a great way to remember to do things they also look pretty.

Rowan

My nephew turned 1 this month, in celebration I decided that his birthday for my part would have a moose theme. Why well why not!

I started knitting this fab moose about a year and a half ago, I could have finished sooner but I took my time and some more time, aaaaaannd then a little more time.
Happy Birthday Rowan.

Silver pendant

This was the first piece of jewellery I started when I started the 10 week silver jewellery course with Making Space. It was however the last to be finished. It's simple but I like that about it, it will go with everything.

Friendship cake

 I was given a yeasty smelling pale yellow liquid in a margarine tube by a work colleague and an A4 sheet of paper with instructions. To make this .....

It took forever to make, I think my oven has forgotten how to cook things, I eventually took the cake out and turned it upside down and it went back in the oven in the hope that it might cook. It kinda worked. It was a tasty cake unfortunate about the cooking. It was lovely warm with ginger yogurt.

Beeswax candles

These are my Beeswax candles. My Mum was kind enough to show me how to make these (and to give me the wax sheets and wicks - she's the best Mum). I was impressed with how these turned out and how easy the wax was to mold with only the heat from my hands, though my hands must be good at the heat thing as it is an essential when felting!

These were given to my friend for Christmas, so I hope they behaved appropriately. I am hoping to have time to play with more beeswax sheets, the contemplations over shapes and sizes alone are fun! but what will they be like in real life?