Post-Christmas Chocolate Dilemma

I hope you had a lovely Christmas. Mine was fun and quite hectic, involving lots of different people to visit and huge amounts of food. I received lots of presents featuring zombies, cats and fake fur, and a HUGE amount of chocolate. I'm now feeling extremely unhealthy and am aiming to start eating fruit and veg to get my eczema and energy levels under control, but there's still so much chocolate...

A hugely exciting thing happened on Christmas Day - Christmas Bob was featured on Mr X Stitch! I may have squeeeed extremely loudly for quite a while...

In the run-up to Christmas I decided to actually make some things from my Crafty Creatives Christmas box, rather than getting excited about the contents then leaving it all in a giant pile in my craft room like previous boxes... I made some lip scrub (fun and messy), then made up some felt baubles just using what was in the box. This really challenged me as I would never usually use brown embroidery thread on any colour felt other than brown!

There were some gorgeous heavy Christmas tree beads in the box along with some wreath rings and tiny bells, which I made into a mobile to hang from the lounge light fitting, along with the usual baubles:

Luckily I am short enough not to get it tangled in my hair and set the bells off, others have not been so lucky...

Finally, here is a Ethel Christmas hoop commission I did for Anna Marie - photo by her as it is SOOO much better than the awful ones I took before I posted it off:

See you in 2014 (eeek)!

Happy Christmas!

Wishing you all a happy festive season! I will be back blogging next week - I have spent the last few days feeding a reindeer and making Christmas decorations, and will spend the next few days eating too much and watching bad films.

Thursday Things - Christmas Craft Special

Christmas crafty things I've found and will have no time to do:

• Styrofoam blossom bauble
• Gold painted ornaments from abeautifulmess
• Felt snow globe ornament from bugsandfishes (tons of Christmas tutorials on her blog here)
• Deer and fox ornaments from cutesycrafts
• Snowflake patterns (I love the mobile!)

Wordless Wednesday

Things I Did This Week

I'm not getting on particularly well with finishing craft projects. This is my Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery Halloween Sampler so far:

I've been doing this since October. I think I'm admitting defeat with linen (I've also only managed a tiny part of January for the 2013 Woodland Sampler ) and going back to Aida. I've signed up for the 2014 Once Upon A Time Sampler and would like to finish it before 2020.

I went to see the Subhumans on Sunday:



And this is what happens when I have too much rum:

Thursday Things

Things I found on the internet this week:

• DIY Bell jar Ornaments
• Gorgeous colour and patterns from ArtyMess
• Giant squid pillow - this is on my to-do list
• Zombie snowflake papercut pattern
• Actually, mostly everything on Geek Crafts (where I found the last two)

Wordless Wednesday

Random Stuff

There are some really cute things made from supplies and tutorials sold/written by Laura "Lupin" Howard on her blog, including Phylisss as her wings were made from the super-soft felt that she used to sell.

I went to the First Cut exhibition at Southampton's Sea City museum on Saturday to see a talk by Su Blackwell who is one of my favourite artists (I love the fragility of her work). There are some amazing pieces in the exhibition, and they've reduced the price until Christmas. I haven't been to the actual Sea City museum, but if you're interested in things Titanic-y, entrance to that is also cheaper at the moment. There's a life-size paper motorbike in the art gallery, which is free entry.

There are also a couple of pieces from First Cut at the Tudor House Museum, where I shared a stall at a craft fair yesterday (I have now decided that my "target demographic" isn't to be found at normal Southampton craft fairs, although if children were allowed to spend their parents' money I suspect I would have done much better. I wish Southampton was more like Brighton). I didn't see most of the museum, but it looks quite interesting, and I think it's free to go to the Tudor Garden and the café. Everyone got very excited at one point as a giant container ship sailed past... Sadly something about the building kicked off a 12 hour asthma attack which was a bit alarming. I thought it would go away when I got home but it took another 8 hours to calm down. My asthma is usually completely under control so it's all a bit odd :(

Thursday Things

Things I found on the internet this week:

• How to beat creative block
• Cute birdy hoop tutorial from whileshenaps
• Marwell Zoo has a baby giant anteater!
• Adorable sheep
• Random cat behaviour article because I've run out of ideas this week

Wordless Wednesday

Christmas Monsters

Right, that's all the monsters I am making for 2013 (except for two commissions I agreed to a while ago). Here are the Christmas decorations I have up on Folksy:

And these are the monster hoops:

I've just taken part in an online market on the Bubbling Well  Facebook page, there's lots of lovely stuff there.

I'm looking forward to the Victorian Christmas at the Tudor House Museum in Southampton this Sunday (8th) from 10 - 5, again I am sharing a stall with Naomi and her octopii and other crocheted creatures, tentacled and otherwise. I've never been to the Tudor House Museum so I hope I get time to explore it (also it's free entry for the day, so worth coming for that!). There are various places like this dotted around Southampton - I keep missing the dates when the vaults are open to the public. I must start a list of things I want to do in 2014.