Birthdays, Bargains and a Ta-Dah!

No, not my Birthday yet I'm afraid.

My Mum's. I made her some yummy (albeit abit GIANT) butterfly cakes.

Didn't you just used to love these as a kid? I don't have enough butterfly cakes in my life I've decided.

I must change that.

I had a play around with some gift wrapping ideas too, here I've used brown paper, garden twine and ...

wallpaper border!

I used a paper punch to cut circles out of the wallpaper and mounted them on scalloped discs (also cut with a paper punch) to make coordinating gift tags.

Not bad huh?! What do you think?

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Today I have had a (very) rare Charlie free day.

I popped into town and some how ended up in a Charity shop (!?!?) ;-)

Where I found this pretty vintage dress. It was initially RATHER LARGE even for me.

So I did the good old inside outy, pin me uppy trick then whizzed it through the sewing machine.

Hay Presto! It fits!

I Love it.

Finally for my Ta-Dah!

I did finish my hexie cushion that I mentioned last time.

It ended up being half the size of the original plan.

Put plans are made to be broken.

Thanks for being here.

Lots of Love

Katie

xxx

Craft Room Re-vamp #2 - Ways with Wallpaper ...

Good morning ladies.

Happy Sunday! I hope you all have lovely, lazy things planned for today.

Here is the second installment of "Craft room re-vamp".

... Ways With Wallpaper ...

A while back I picked up three wallpaper books at my local Scrapbox.

They were super cheap and the papers inside were gorgeous.

For months they were propped up against a wall in my craft room and forgotten about ...

 ... until now! 

As we all know, storage for our crafty goodies is essential, and in my opinion, the prettier the better.

I quickly whipped up these A4 sized envelopes using an old, disassembled envelope as a template.

Simple, right?

They now house various templates and patterns.

I never throw away useful boxes.

I have covered an assortment of shoe and toiletry boxes in some of the papers.

I have an easy peasy method of covering boxes, leaving no folds and ugly bits.

Again, simple as can be.

The largest, sturdiest box is now used to organise some of my ribbons.

Somewhere in "Blogland" I saw this idea for ribbon storage and tried it myself.

All you need do is:

Cover your chosen box,

Punch holes all the way around at regular intervals,

Set an eyelet  in each hole, (to allow the ribbon to flow freely and not snag)

Place your ribbons inside and pull the beginning of each length through a hole.

Ta-dah!

I also used some papers to line these drawers...

I brought this little pine chest of drawers on Ebay for £1.99.

Gave it a quick lick of AS paint and cut the papers to fit.

Recently I have also used my wall papers to:

Wrap parcels sent in the post (it's really sturdy after all!)

Make little envelopes for handmade cards

(again, using a disassembled envelope in your chosen size as a template)

and

Cut out shapes to use on Christmas cards!

But, why not try:

Snipping out flowers etc, to use for Decoupage on furniture?

Creating little pouches for handmade goodies?

Covering or creating your own books?

Paper bunting?

Any other ideas, Ladies?!?

I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for reading my waffle today.

Lots of Love

Katie

xxx

Craft room Re-vamp #1

Over the past month I have been giving my little craft room a make-over.

It's a small room at the back of the house, so it's often dark and very cluttered.

My aim is to make it a more inspiring place to be,

by making small (and inexpensive) changes.

This little storage unit was one of the first under the radar.

I've had it for years (I think it came from Ikea once upon a time), It's always been very handy, but not very pretty.

I gave it a couple of coats of Annie Sloan Old White and waxed the parts that weren't to be decoupaged.

Good old PVA was used to paste the patterned papers to the drawer fronts and a craft file to sand down the paper edges flush to the drawer.

These little trays had the same treatment, but here I used a mix of AS Duck Egg and Old white.

I hope you all have a super weekend.

Can't wait to hear what you've all been up to.

Thanks for reading.

Love Katie

xxx

A few thrifty buys ...

Good Afternoon Ladies.

I just wanted to share with you a few of my favourite thrifty finds.

Flowery doves, Liberty oven mitt, Rosey coasters and pomander...

Sweet tapestries - Quiet as a mouse and Busy as a bee,

Birdie pomander, rosey bedspread, some pretty hearts from a craft fair and a few more books for my collection.

I want to tell you more about the books another time and you may have noticed my little pile of hexies propped up again my Bee tapestry. I'll also come back to these soon. 

Short and sweet...

Have a lovely week.

Love Katie

xxx

Jar of Love swap goodies.

Hello Ladies.

Just a quick one today. Lots of pictures I'm aware and not a lot of words.

I should have posted this before now so sorry about the delay.

Anyway ...

Because of the odd number of entrants to the swap I had two partners.

Marina at Evelyn-May and Beki @ Ramblings of an Everyday Mummy

Here is what I sent Marina ....

I tried to make both jars equal, so each had 26 items inside. I had read that Marina liked toadstools so had made her these little toadstool earrings and bag charm. There was a few Cath Kidston goodies in there: a keyring, soap, buttons. I made a tiny heart hanger with birdie embroidery and crocheted a pot cover to decorate the jar.

This is Beki's jar ...

Again a little more Cath Kidston. I made some button earrings and a ring too. The little cupcake charm I made out of Fimo. I notice she liked Hello Kitty so when I saw these magnets I thought they would be perfect. Again I crocheted her a pot cover for the jar.

This is what I received from Marina.

A pretty jar, wonderfully wrapped and finished with a pretty bow.

There was cupcake cases, fabric, perfume, hankies, teddy, socks, necklace, cookie cutter, lace, glitter, beads and chocolate inside (the choccy didn't live long enough to make it in the photo) !!!

Thank you Marina!!!

I am yet to receive a parcel from Beki, but if I do. I will be sure to share it with you.

Have a great weekend.

Love Katie

xxx

Brightening up wash day ....

Well as the weather hasn't been on our side, I had to find another way to brighten up wash day...

I have been in need of a new peg bag for ages.

My ugly plastic thing made me cringe every time I hung it on the line.

I was making this Cath Kidston bag using the free kit in "Sew" when I unexpectedly acquired two free Cath Kidston handbags! Did I never tell you about that?!? How jammy am I, I couldn't believe my luck!

Any way, that meant this one was sort of surplus to requirement, so I decided it would be my new peg bag.

The entire bag was hand sewn, including buttonholes and every thing.

Because the handle fastens with buttons, I can undo one and fasten it over the washing line or wear the bag so all my pegs are to hand.

And of course, once I had my new peg bag, the ghastly plastic pegs had to go and have since been replaced by nice wooden ones (cheap as chips in the £1 shop!)

Well after I had a pretty home for my pegs that went rather well with my floral laundry basket (perhaps I show you that another time) I turned my attention to the ironing board.

I snapped up this cute cover in Matalan for the bargain price of £3 , well actually I didn't even pay that as I had a voucher code for 30% off!

So the weather can do what it wants, because my florals will brighten up wash day!

I'll leave you with another little drawstring bag I made to go in the bathroom.

They are so easy to make and so useful for storage. I can't get enough.

Also hanging in my bathroom is my "new" vintage summer dressing gown - £3.50 at the charity shop. :-)

How are you brightening up wash day?!?!

Lots of Love

Katie

xxx

My weakness and GIVEAWAY reminder!

Today I feel quite deflated.

I had an appointment this morning with a mortgage adviser, to say the least, it did not go well....

All in all we have no where near enough money ...

...and this is why!

I don't stop spending, in my defense I always spend little, but I do it often.

Here are a few of my recent goodies.

My pretty blanket box, it needs a bit of TLC but I love it all the same.

Some new tea towels, with cute florals of course.

A new blanket (to go in my new box perhaps?) and some vintage pretties.

Pillow slips.

and a little belated Easter treat for me. More books!

So Mr. Mortgage man, this is why we have no money!

Thank you to all the lovely ladies who have entered my giveaway and to those who popped the button on their sidebar.

My giveaway ends this Sunday so there is still plenty of time to enter!

GIVEAWAY

Until next time .... keep spending!

Love Katie xxx