Handmade Mother's Day

This year, inspired by Junkaholique's amazing handmade Christmas presents, I am trying to make as many presents handmade as possible. I'm not doing too badly, with a few birthdays under my belt so far I have made a variety of things including some moisturiser and bath salts, but I've always had a bit of 'proper' present like a voucher or something as well.  For Mother's Day I decided that I would just give homemade things so I made a selection of bits and pieces for my mum and my mother in law.  I went with two different soaps, some bath milk and some chocolates....

For the soap I made two different scents - Rose & Vanilla and Jasmine & Rose Geranium.  I had dried my Valentine's Day Roses in the oven and added them to the soap but they lost their lovely deep red colour.  I bought translucent shea butter melt and pour soap so it should be nice and moisturising but I think I might try the opaque version the next time as I think it might look nicer! I wrapped each of the soaps in some greaseproof paper and then made a little card sleeve to go over the top.

For the Rose milk soak I used this recipe from Hello Natural, you were supposed to add red food colouring to make it a light pink colour but I could only find gel food colouring and it just didn't cut the mustard!  I think it still looks pretty nice though.  I got the little glass jars from the poundshop!

For the chocolates I used my new favourite truffle recipe!  They are the same ones I made for my valentines day chocolate box and they were equally as delicious this time round.

A close up of the soap packaging.  I was rather proud of this!

All in all I was pretty happy how it all turned out, I packaged it in a gift bag with some tissue paper and I think it looked lovely.  There were no complaints from the mothers anyway! 

I am now quite addicted to making homemade soap and bath things.  It is incredibly fun and satisfying, I strongly recommend having a look at all the lovely recipes and ideas over at hello natural.

Homemade chocolate box for valentines...

I am trying my best to make as many presents in 2015 as possible. It saves a little bit of money, it's fun and satisfying and for what little money you do spend you definitely get more bang for your buck than if you'd just gone out and bought the finished thing!

So for valentines I decided to make some chocolates for my beloved. I've made truffles before but this time I treated myself to some silicone chocolate moulds to make the finished article a bit professional looking!  They were only a few pounds each, take a look on eBay, there are tonnes of different designs, I got  a plain round one and one that was described as robots but they are most definitely lego men!

The finished selection. 

These are Oreo truffles, I got the recipe from www.apartmentapothecary.com and they were really easy to put together and dee pinched one out of the fridge as they were setting and proclaimed they were the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted so high praise indeed!

Next up were salted caramel chocolates which I finished off with my favourite gold food spray which makes anything look fancy! These were just melted dark chocolate (from lidl - 35p a bar!) put in the mould and set in the fridge and then I melted some chomps with a little butter and added a teaspoon of sea salt, put that in the chocolate mould and set again then topped with more dark chocolate.  I didn't have enough caramel mixture to fill them all so I improvised and made some peanut cups too 

The peanut cups.

Finally I made some white chocolate and cranberry lego men/ robots. This was just melted white chocolate and some blitzed cranberries mixed in. I had some mixture left over so I set it in some mini bun cases, no point wasting it ;-)

All in all I reckon I spent £10 (£5 of which was for the moulds which I can use again) and it took me less than an hour. So pretty chuffed with the result!

I packaged them up in a left over box from my Christmas cookies (79p for two in home bargains!) and I think they look pretty fancy indeed!

Valentines cards....

It's that romantic time of year again so I've made some Valentine's cards and you can get one for that special someone in your life over in the shop!

They're all printed on recycled kraft card and come with snazzy colourful envelopes!  Plus there's free postage to the UK.  Order by next wednesday to make sure you get it time for the big day!

Needle felting

When everyone was round at my house for our wedding making day we all agreed that it was such a fun day we should definitely meet up again to try our hand at other crafty skills so at the end of August Tineke invited us round to her house to try our hand at needle felting.  It was such a treat, her house is absolutely gorgeous with beautiful views of the Mournes.

After a cup of tea, a tasty danish pastry and a look round all the nooks and crannies of Tineke’s house we settled down at the kitchen table to have a go.



I’ve never tried needle felting before but looking through this book for inspiration I decided to try making a little fox.

We used the green foam cushions off an old sofa to work on which worked pretty well…



It took a bit of time to get the hang of it and start to see the shapes coming together but very soon the felt began to develop into little characters…





Just needs his beads for eyes.

Tineke made us a delicious lunch of home made soup and tasty bread, cheese and ham, all rounded off with some freshly picked blackberries.  Yum!



Once we’d finished we took our little creatures out into their natural habitat to explore…







my little fox hanging out with Tineke’s dog and mum’s sheep.

It was a really fun day and I’ll definitely have a go at needlefelting again - i’d quite like to try making a little christmas robin for the tree.

Now we just need to have a think about what craft we’ll try next!

Wedding making....

One of my favourite things lately has been making all the different bits and pieces for the wedding - the dress, the favours and of course the decorations.

Over the Jubilee bank holiday I organised a making day at my house with crafty family members and friends.  It was such a great day and we got so much made (so much more than if I’d been making by myself, many hands and all that)  The chat, tea and cake (baked by my talented sister) made the day fly in and i could hardly believe how much stuff we ended up with.  I don’t want to give too much away before the big day so i’ve only got a few shots at the moment but I’ll put up photos of the finished decorations once its all over!



working on many metres of bunting.



I really don’t know why I am pulling such a strange face in this one!



oodles of paper chains



Hard at work pining bunting together



My mum busy at the sewing machine



Yet more sewing - Carol and Tineke



More old paper creations



I look a bit manic in this picture, I don’t know why as it was a really lovely day and not stressful at all (although my sewing machine had given up the ghost by the end of all that bunting!)

Everybody seemed to enjoy it (or maybe they were just being polite because I made them lunch!) and we agreed that we’d try to get together again for another (non wedding related) making day very soon.