Bunting - sparkly celebration!

Good friends of ours are having a big party to celebrate being married for 20 years - so, on our last visit to their house we spoke about bunting (of course) and customising it to represent their celebration.


Here's the result - bunting with important dates sewn on in sequins to represent key moments. Born-Met-Dated-Married-Celebrating.

A good year....the year of the horse

Birds...

I really love birds...more than I love my cat, who brings birds into the house half-digested - but that's another story!


Here are some lovely artists who must also love birds as they draw them, screen-print them and paint them.

Hannah Turner Ceramics

Jane Ormes

Emily Sutton

Mark Herald

Julia McKenzie

What do you like?

Land, sea & sky

I want to...

...draw this..

...run around here again... 

...touch this...

...pick these...

...go back here asap...

...take a trip here!

Most pics taken by S x

What do you want to do?

Inspiration from shop windows...to use at home.

Last summer while on holiday in Cornwall we took a trip to Falmouth and I loved the decorations in the shop window of Seasalt. I took these pics with my phone.

Doily butterfly

It was the summer, hence the wellies

Lanterns - a work in progress in this house...

This Easter we had a go at making some doily butterflies with

- light weight card

- doilies (£1 in Poundland)

We displayed them in our window. They looked great (but don't look too closely at our dirty windows!)

Have a go...go on....

Taking knitting to another level!

Ok..so it's advertising. But great knitting!

Watch the video by clicking here - A knitted car!
Toyota Prius Projects -- Prius Cozy

Basic bunting - get the kids involved!

I'm mad about bunting. It comes in all shapes and sizes, fabrics and paper and spices up any occasion. Felt from Fabric Land Bristol (if you are not near one petition your council to get one)


Here's how I taught my daughter how to use the sewing machine and make her own bunting.


Step 1 - assemble materials

Assembly your materials - felt flags, bias binding (25mm)

Cut out flags - 15cm long X 11 Use felt - no need for hemming!


Measure bias binding - (25mm thick) - I buy it on a roll of 25m. It's cheaper that way and you're bound to make more.




















Step 2 - Using the sewing machine

Zigggg...zagggg

Once you have set the sewing machine up, have a go at doing a straight stitch and zig zag.


Remember - you can always take your foot off the pedal if things are going wonky!






























Step 3 - Start sewing

Gently does it!

Use a zig zag stitch and fold binding in half - place under foot about 2 cm in. Sew a few stitches forward and then reverse to stop stitching from coming undone. 


Keep stitch close to the left edge of binding.


Sew for about 50 cm before tucking first flag in between folded binding - stitch in place.


Decide on your spacing and place next flag in position.


Stitch until all flags snuggly in place!


To finish - make sure that you leave yourself another 50cm for the end tie. Make sure you use a few back stitches at the end to secure your stitch.







Step 4 - Hang your bunting..

Pride of place!

No sewing machine?
1) Hand stitch the flags in place with a running stitch (use a contrasting embroidery thread). It'll take longer, but will while away a few hours while you're eating a cream tea! 
2) Fabric glue - it's fab! Stick the binding in half and add the flags in along the way!

Starting out - why 'The Empty Oxo Box'?

When I think back to my childhood and the opportunities I had to be creative I am drawn to tea-time children’s TV, especially Blue Peter. Inspired by the ‘Here’s one I made earlier’ section of the programme, the ‘making ‘n’ creating’ part, we would take note and absorb the steps of the creation process, wonder why they called Sellotape sticky-tape, marvel at the miracle of double-sided tape and bother mum for the raw materials – invariable an empty OXO box or a Fairy washing-up liquid bottle. The results of our creations were varied and often led to other projects but I remember that my mum would empty the cubes out of the OXO box to give us our raw materials, in doing that we had the green light to make!

That green light has been on full-time at the moment and has made me think about the empty box and what it means.

1)   Given an empty box , any box, you can make something

2)   Someone, mum, giving up a box that was in use tells me that there is always a way to create, you just need someone to encourage it

3)   You can find your own empty box, just don’t be too hasty to collapse it and put it in your recycling box!

4)   It’s never too late to start playing with boxes and use your imagination