I have been trying...

I had such good intentions on Sunday night. I'll admit I am something of a Buzzfeed fanatic, but a recent post called (temptingly) 31 Insanely Easy and Clever DIY Projects. I think it was the 'insanely' part that drew me. These are not just normal DIY projects, the are so easy it is actually crazy.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard a gauntlet being thrown down.

Loads of the ideas caught my eye, but it was the promise of ombre nails in a flash that really tempted me. I love nail art but have so far been restricted to crackle and glitter effects. The ability to paint accurately on a sloped surface smaller than a five pence piece is not a skill I have quoted on my CV for obvious reasons.

Picture credit - thenailasaurus.com

Look at it. Success in ten easy steps. It's INSANE how easy it is.

You will not be surprised to learn then, dear reader, that I ballsed it up. I had planned an amazing blog post about how you should definitely follow this amazing tutorial, but in actual fact I ended up looking as though I had pressed a washing up sponge onto a damp manicure (which, I had).

I'm not defeated yet. I will try again. Until then, let me know if you have more success.

DIY Wedding Invitations

I've been waiting to write a blog post about my invitations for ages! They've been the biggest crafting project I've had for months and took an absolute age to make. So now they've all been sent, received and RSVP'd to (apart from the laggards, you know who you are!) I can let you in on how I actually made them.

You may want to frame yours when you realise the hours of toiling under a hot sewing machine lamp that went into them. To maintain anonymity, and avoid any gatecrashers, I've blurred out the important bits. Sorry chaps.

So. To begin. I made a sample back in August and, to be honest, alarm bells should have started then. It took about three hours, start to finish, and I only had one. One!  However, unperturbed I carried gallantly on and went shopping for all of the ingredients.
This included -

• Acres of ivory card of exactly the right size and weight (oh yes, you measure card in weight! Who knew?)
• Double-sided sticky tape (obv)
• Black wool
• A hot wax gun (sounds dangerous doesn't it? The woman in Hobbycraft just started at me blankly when I asked for directions to one)
• Black sealing wax
• A sealing wax stamp with appropriate initials
• Miles of black thread
• Fabric (which I already had. Oh, so thrifty!)

The first job was printing all of the buggers out. I will spare you the details, but it was painful. On a separate note, did anyone else know there where three different sizes of A4? No, me neither!  Once printed I trimmed them all to the right size and began cutting out and attaching the fabric. The aim here was to create a band of colour at the front and a handy pocket at the back - ingenious! So after hours of toiling, here's what I ended up with -

 and another from the side to get the true impression of the size of the pile.

From here I attached three lengths of black wool with a twist in the middle. The boyf helped a little on this job, purely so that he could claim the invitations were a 'joint effort' I think. Here is my wonderful workstation about half-way through the mammoth task.

The final step was to machine stitch a beautifully neat line around the whole thing. I'll be honest, about five invitations in, I was desperately regretting this design feature. However, once done - perhaps 30 hours later - I think they looked rather good. With an artistic flourish the boyf added the wax seal and - ta da - the finished invitation.

Now repeat the first few infuriating hours with the printer to get the inserts and RSVPs sorted. With just over two months to go, it's time to kick the planning up a gear.

See you next time!

Happy New Year post!

A belated Happy New Year, we're all back at work now. It's been all change here, with new job and new car on one side, and a complete company rebrand on the other meaning we don't really know whether we're coming or going.

Where do you work now?

Eeerrm... just give me a sec, it'll come to me...

In line with this new name came a new look and we no longer have a smart dress code in the office. Cheers went around the room. Huzzar! We can finally wear jeans and a t-shirt! I was less excited about the news having spent my Christmas vouchers on two new work dresses. Plus - and here is the real nub of the issue - several hours of confusion making myself a pencil skirt.

Now when am I going to wear it?!

Anyway, I'll give you a little run down on this now entirely redundant skirt. It started life as a pair of trousers. Now, although I do love a good pair of jeans, I just don't like work trousers. I always get that horrible feeling that I look like I should be at school. And considering I wasn't the coolest ice cube in the freezer, that's not an entirely pleasant vibe. So not wanting to throw them away, I decided to breathe new life into them.

As you can see, not the most flattering of trousers. Why do I always convince myself wide-leg will look good on my spindly pins? I started by pulling the hems down and then unpicking the stitching along the inside seams and the crotch. I then got out my pins (the other type) and set about raising the waist, lowering the hip-line and pulling together the old inside seams to create a basic skirt shape. I also moved the zip fastening from the front to the side, but I left the buttons at the front for a bit of detail.

After - carefully! - trying it on, I shuffled some of the pins around and then put a tacking stitch in bright red so I could see it and unpick it once I was finished. After that I took to the sewing machine and, slowly at first, stitched along the red line I'd left.

Once done, I tried it on again to make sure I'd not made any major mistakes and it fitted! Amazing! The next step was to iron it and hem it - possibly the trickiest bit. I hate hemming. I made a mistake here by accidentally sewing wrong side up, which means the dark grey bobbin thread was on show, rather than the matching mid-grey thread (I was too frugal to throw away what was already on the bobbin). However, I think it actually looks quite good and I think I may sew another line a little bit above it to echo the stripes on the waistband. But here is the finished item -

Please also note my beautifully festive Christmas socks! I think I did a relatively good job for a pretty major project, but I'll have to wait until my next job to actually get round to wearing it for work.

That's your lot for now - happy sewing!

Phili x

Christmas prezzies!

Hello all you lovely people!

Good tidings and festive blessings. Christmas has come and gone and - to steal a turn of phrase - we are now in the non-time until the merriment of New Year's Eve. So, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to write a sneaky little blog post (as the OH entertains himself mis-singing Call Me Maybe while watching the Big Fat Quiz of the Year).

Plus, I was truly spoilt this Christmas, with crafty goodies from my own family and the future in-laws (big thank yous all round), so I couldn't wait to get in the kitchen and play with my new toys. As it was a test-run with my new food processor (thanks Mum), I kept things simple with an ordinary sponge. It took three minutes! Three! Everything in the pot, quick whizz and ready to go. The oven hadn't even warmed up.

Anyways, I spooned the mixture into my new plant pot muffin cases (thanks Erin and Craig), let them cook and then let them cool. Made a minor boob with the icing mix - not enough butter - so my flowers went a bit squishy. But I think you get the picture...

I have also finished another of my crafty projects so I will have to write about that later in the week. Until then, I hope you had a merry Christmas and have a fabulous New Year.

Much Love

My own British Bake Off

A short while ago my beloved bought me a book providing all the hints and tips you need to create show-stopping cakes. Some would take offence. Baking? Moi? Ardent feminist that I am? Get out. But not I. While - to borrow a phrase from Caitlin Moran - I am a strident feminist, I also like crafting and baking and traditional housewifely pastimes. So I took it as a hint that he would appreciate a show-stopping cake for his birthday.

I started with standard victoria sponge mix - putting a generous amount of blue food dye in one cake tin, and a good glug of orange in the other - then popped them in the oven for about 15-20 mins. Once cooked, cooled and sandwiched together with butter icing and jam, I got to work crafting the icing.

Ready to roll regal icing is really easy. It does exactly what it says on the box. I covered the whole cake in a thin layer of butter icing, piling a bit more on top (I hate marzipan) then gently layered on the icing rolled to around 5mm thickness. You use your palms to smooth it out, not your fingertips, as this will make sure it's dimple free.

Then the tricky stuff happens. Creating the 'ribbon' was a matter of dying the icing orange and then cutting out thin strips. The bow was a little challenging but also not as tough as it looks. You cut out five strips the same thickness, but two about double the length. Slice a triangle out of the bottom of these longer strips and they become your 'trailing ribbons'. For the bow, wrap the two next strips around a bit of rolled up kitchen roll to give them their shape. Carefully slide them off, pinch the ends and then place them together, wrapping the last strip around the middle. Et Voila, your bow. Now it's just a case of carefully transferring it onto the cake.

Finally I made the dots by dying the remaining white icing blue, using a small shape cutter and then attaching them to the cake with a tiny dab of water. Then I presented it to the birthday boy. He was thrilled, but a little alarmed that the dye job hadn't worked out quite as planned...

Perhaps a little more dye was needed? Oh well. Happy baking!

Creepy Cake

A few weeks ago our office went all out for Halloween this year. Everyone dressed up, we had cakes and creepy music. It was amazing.
OK, so not everyone dressed up.
Well, a few people dressed up.
Alright! Five people dressed up and it was pretty mediocre. But the thought was there! And to mark the occassion I embraced my inner Nigella and hit the kitchen.

My vision involved a beautiful bright orange cake with a ghoulish ghost and scary black spiders. I hit only two stumbling blocks in my efforts. Number one - enough food dye to make ready to roll regal icing turn that perfect shade of orange will also make it incredibly sticky and soft. Number two - I neglected to buy any black food dye, so had to make do with gallons of blue in the hopes it would be close enough. It wasn't.

The cake went down well at work and I think made up for my lacklustre costume. On an unrelated aside, it is very difficult to have serious meeting with your manager about resourcing when dressed as a skeleton.

Oh and by the way, those are spiders. Not crabs. Obviously.

Shamefaced apology...

There has been a severe lack of blogging in the last two months - alas myself and Bethany have been very busy bees and have let things slide. Big style. But that's all going to stop from now on (hopefully. Unless I get really busy... y'know...).
Despite the lack of posts, we have not had a lack of creating beautiful homemade goods - well I have been making beautiful homemade goods, Bethany has been working about 15 jobs and seemingly only appearing long enough to email me stories about cats and Helen Flanagan. Sometimes both. So, staying on that theme, here is a picture of a kitten to illustrate how heartfelt our apologies are.

In the last couple of months I have been spending most weekends planning my upcoming nuptials. So much to do from venues to flowers. I am also making all of the invitations which I am in two minds about whether to blog about.
On the one hand, it is a large project and is taking up a lot of my time and skill. However, I want them to be a wonderful handmade surprise for those lucky enough to get one (you lucky, lucky people, you). I will probably do a step by step once they have all been sent but for now I will cryptically tell you it involves card, fabric, wool, thread, wax and double-sided sticky tape (obv).
To tide all you keenos over until then, I'll do a couple of blogs about my recent cake creations. I was given the Great British Bake Off Showstoppers cookbook for my birthday which inspired me to try my hand at creativity in the kitchen for once.