Cards for daddies and some red, white and blue!

Hello.... isn't this sunshine just glorious?? I LOVE it! I am very much a summer girl and I love to feel the heat. I am super pale though so can't really go out in it without a very high SPF on, but I am loving not being cold all the time.  And the sunshine just makes everything seem more cheery doesn't it, I always get out of bed with more of a spring in my step if it's sunny! I dug out both my flip flops and the suntan lotion today - ooooh I love the smell of sun tan lotion don't you? Reminds me of the beach! 

I've been out in the garden doing bits and bobs this week, mainly planting up the other flower bed with geraniums and petunias and mowing the lawn - yes get me, I can now mow the lawn! AND I changed the blade all by myself! Believe me, it was an achievement :D Tomorrow I hope to get rid of a load of the rubbish (old turf, stones...etc) which is currently clogging up the side path, into a skip bag that we hired and then it will nearly be done! Hope this weather lasts so we can enjoy it. I will do a 'garden ta-dah' sometime, maybe when the flowers have bloomed in a few weeks!

Anyway I've also been working on all sorts of things this week... more wedding cards, and Father's day orders too which are now coming in. I don't think I've posted about any of my Father's day things yet have I? I didn't get around to designing as many as I wanted, always the way, but here are the ones I have so far...

I always find it quite tricky to design things for men, as I am so girly, and my taste in fabric and design in general really is not very masculine! In fact I think these are the first 'men things' that I've ever really made. 

I'm planning on keeping them in my range after Father's day is passed, well, the football and the boat ones anyway as I think they would make cute birthday cards for boys!

Many of the designs can be personalised so hopefully lots of daddies around the country will be receiving them in a few weeks time! You can find them all, and the rest of my personalised range here.

I've also been working on a new magazine commission this week though it won't be out for a few months yet. Because I have been a bit useless at posting recently (especially as I have been otherwise emotionally occupied!) I forgot to show the project I did for the June issue of Crafts Beautiful - and now it has gone off sale, oops! But here is is anyway...

 For more crafting ideas, visit www.crafts-beautiful.com

I'm going to dig out the bunting next week for the Jubilee celebrations... not that we're particularly doing anything here but there is a little 'street party' going on in the park opposite the house and I think there are going to be lots of celebrations in town too! What are you doing to celebrate the Jubilee, anything or nothing?

Anyway better go, the sofa and a box of chocolate fingers is calling my name but hope you have a lovely rest of the sunny weekend, back soon x

Flowers and a spotty windmill

Things are still very much up in the air at the minute... To try and take my mind off everything that's going on, I have been trying to keep busy doing bits and pieces in the garden... it's not finished yet, the other side needs quite a lot of work still but this side is nearly done at least. Mum came down at the weekend and we built a flowerbed with log rolls and some tent pegs! Not the way you are supposed to do it I don't think, but it worked! Do you like my spotty windmill?

xxx

p.s thanks so much for all your comments, emails and messages from my last post. Even if I haven't replied directly, please know how much I appreciate them all at a time when things are so very difficult.

Squares, hexies, plants and weddings...

I've started another crochet project... which is actually very bad as I have quite a few on the go now. I really hate to have projects unfinished but I can't stop starting new things!

I made these teeny squares last night whilst watching telly... I tried three round ones too but they looked too big somehow, so I've decided two round ones are the way to go. They are super small though so will probably have to make over a hundred of them! I want to make a second cushion for the sofa, one which will kind of match the hexie one I'm doing... 

The duck egg blue in the hexie one I have substituted for pink and red in the little squares one. I don't want them too samey but hopefully they will co-ordinate nicely as they will both have the green/cream in them.

I have nearly made all my hexagons, I think I need four more to go then I can start joining them. I was supposed to do this before I started on the squares but I just couldn't help myself. I bought a couple of new balls of yarn yesterday, (the deep pink and the red) and I *needed* to see what they looked like made up! I also stocked up on some more Tilda fabrics, aren't they just so pretty??

This week has been an odd one really. I have been here by myself for a whole week now, as Karl is away abroad. I'm usually quite good with my own company but I have been quite bored this week though I've tried to keep busy to pass the time. At the weekend, I spent quite a while in the garden doing odd jobs - not pretty planting ones, but mainly ones that involved being up a ladder with a saw! I was chopping down a load of branches that were overhanging into the garden... I think if anyone saw me doing it they would have laughed -  especially as I was wearing bright blue 'mad professor' safety specs! I am one of the least practical people you could meet and I'm quite small (only 5' 3'') so it was quite a tough job to do by myself but it looks loads better now.

Anyway we're going to give the grass it's first mow soon (excitement eh??!) I've ordered the compost for the flowerbeds and have been trying to decide on the plants to get. I am thinking a mixture of summer bedding plants and perennials such as...

and...

and...

and...

Pictures courtesy of here and here

To be honest, I'm just going for plants and flowers which I like the look of. I have no idea really whether our garden/conditions will be right for them but I guess I will find out soon! I think I am going to be very much a trial and error gardener :)

Anyway I have also been busy with work... lots of weddingy things mainly. I have had quite a few orders for these as wedding favours lately...

Also had an order for 8 of these to do this week for wedding favours... and quite a few of these too. In fact there was definitely a wedding production line going on!

And keeping on the wedding theme, I also designed a new card this week...

 

These has been an idea in my sketchpad for so long now, months and months, I'm really glad I've finally got around to making up the samples!

Right, I think I better go. I've been writing this post for ages and I'm not even showered or dressed yet! And actually I haven't even had breakfast! I did get up at seven though so not really sure how it is now 10 o clock. I do love working from home sometimes :) Anyway hope you have a good weekend... Am very much looking forward to it myself after my lonely week... the sun is supposed to shine (here at least) and Karl is coming home tomorrow, yay! Back soon xxx

An all sorts week...

It's been a funny sort of few days here. I've been getting quite a few orders through but for a real random variety of items, so there's been lots of different things being made.  I've also been trying to get my Father's day range up but the weather's been so awful that I've not had a chance to photograph anything yet!

I have added a few bits to my shops recently though...

'London Bus' mirrors

and  'London Guards at Buckingham Palace' mirrors

I am actually quite in love with this fabric! I haven't gone to town with making Jubilee products as I don't want to be left with lots of unsold stock afterwards so this is my token effort! I thought the London bus would be the most popular but so far I've sold an exact equal amount of both designs. Do you have a favourite out of the two??

I've also been concentrating on handmade personalised cards in the last few weeks. I've nearly completely changed my entire product range on Not on the High Street in the last few months, taking off products that haven't sold that well (or ones I was bored of making!) and trying out new things. I only get to have thirty products live at any one time, so I'm trying to make the most of them!

Thanks for all your lovely comments about our garden by the way! The weather has been awful this weekend though, torrential rain and such scarily strong winds that we have not ventured out there at all since I took these pictures. The grass has not been laid two weeks yet though so it's giving it a good chance to root before we start walking on it! It is still growing fast though, in fact at the moment it is looking gorgeous - the sun is shining and making it look extra green! Come on Summer!!

Anyway in other news... I finally started using my Debbie Bliss yarn! 

 

I'd been sat looking at it for a couple of weeks whilst I worked on my other patchwork blanket (so must get around to taking some pictures of that one soon!) I didn't want to rush into anything since I only have one little ball of each I couldn't afford to be making mistakes, but eventually I gave in and started making.....

...mini hexagons! Aren't they just so sweet?

They are made with Jacquie's pattern, except I've added an extra round to make them a little bigger. They're not joined yet, just laid out so I can see the colours together... They're destined to become a cushion cover for our sofa... the softer more muted palette is just right for our living room and I'm really loving working with these colours though I am missing the brights a bit! You might notice though that I took out the brighter pink from the pictures above, it just didn't quite sit right somehow as I really want a muted vintagey look with this one, like an old (but much loved) patchwork blanket...

 

I've made 32 hexagons so far, not sure how many I actually need, probably double that so it will take a little while to finish yet. Although I did a lot of them on Saturday, I've only been doing a couple in the evenings since, though hope to make some more tonight. They're really quick to make, though I find that if I'm not concentrating properly I tend to miscount the stitches!

Right I best go, as I am trying to clean up my computer this evening too. The one I do all my image work and blog posts on is my super ancient desktop as the screen is better than on my laptop. But it only has 70GB of disk space in total including for all the programs so it gets full so quick (my image files are always huge!) I have copied everything onto an external hard drive and am now going through it and trying to delete what I can. I have to do it every few months, which is really quite tedious but I'm fed up of the 'C drive full' message popping up every two minutes! So far today I've deleted 19GB but I want to see if I can clear off just a little bit more!

Anyway have a great rest of the week, back soon xxx

Garden makeover: Part one

Well I'm sat here killing time until I have to go out this afternoon.... I have a dentist appointment which I'm really not thrilled about but has to be done! I always feel nervous before I go to the dentist, even if nothing ends up being wrong... that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach is with me now, even though I'm sure it will be ok.

Anyway let's not dwell on that for the moment! Things have been really busy here this week but not just with my work... so sorry for my blogging absence... again!

When we moved into this house last year, the garden was literally bare, just soil (and crappy soil at that, half soil, half builders rubble). It is not a huge garden at all, and is kind of a funny shape as it wraps around the side of the house, but for us it is plenty to be looking after and after living in a second floor city flat for years it is so lovely to have a garden at all!

 

Anyway by the time we had sorted ourselves out after the move, it was then Autumn and the weather got colder and wetter and we just decided to leave it until Spring. I did a bit of research online and had almost decided to just put gravel down as it would be low maintenance. Neither of us really know anything about gardens or gardening - I would like to learn but Karl has absolutely no interest at all so it kind of just seemed like the easy option.  

So we dithered about for ages, I rang up some landscaping companies to see if they would come out and do the work but they were all busy... so we dithered about some more.... but then last week, Karl ended up having the week unexpectedly off work. So on Monday morning last week, we made a snap decision to 'do the garden' ourselves, deciding that turf was probably the easiest way to go. So we set about measuring and ordered three tons of topsoil that morning!

The weather did not help when we were trying to prepare the soil. We spent ages digging out all the weeds and stones - of which there were so many - and spreading all the topsoil - poor Karl shovelling three tons of soil by hand... all in the pouring rain! When it had dried out a bit, we levelled it, and tramped it all down, as instructed on the Internet, and awaited our turf which was supposed to be arriving on Thursday.

It came... at about five in the afternoon. After waiting in all day for it, the moment it arrived, the heavens opened and all our neatly levelled and flattened topsoil turned into a bog within about three minutes. 

That three hours work were some of the hardest I've ever done. Turf is bloody heavy!! I could barely lift each piece and it was a real struggle. I literally was close to tears, at the mud and the rain, which was ruining our neatly prepared soil and at just how physically exhausted I was. We had to lay the turf that evening as Karl was going away the next day and you can't leave it rolled up otherwise it will die. 

Anyway Karl was a hero and ended up doing most of the heavy lifting and putting the turf in place whilst I pressed it into place with the rake. Although the soil had so many footprints in due to torrential rain, when pressed down, it thankfully squashed them all out flat.

Having never had to put fresh turf down before, I kind of naively thought that as soon as you laid it, it would look like a beautifully manicured lawn! Wrong. The turf, obviously having been rolled in on itself was really muddy and dirty...

But in just one week, the rain, which has actually been a godsend, has washed it all clean and it has already started to grow. When we lifted up a corner, you can even see tiny white roots poking out! Hopefully in another few weeks it will become established and we will be able to walk on it.

It is obviously still a huge work in progress and a total blank canvas  at the moment but the hardest bit is now done. The bare bits of soil left are where we are going to dig out flowerbeds... we've got some of those little log things to put around the outside of them! Then I can start the bit I will actually enjoy - choosing flowers and plants. As well as the couple of large flowerbeds, I've got quite a few tubs and containers to fill, I want lots of colour so lots of summer bedding plants will be going in!

We have probably been the only ones who have been loving all this rain in the last week. Newly laid turf needs masses of water in the first week to help it root so it has been great timing (just not when we were trying to lay the stuff!) and means we haven't had to do any watering ourselves.

Sorry if this has been a bit of a boring post for some of you, I felt like I had to write it though, one, to document it so that we can look back on it and remember what it was like before, and two, as it took nearly the whole of last week, it just had to get a mention! Although it may not look it to some people, it feels like a massive achievement and I'm so happy to look out of the window each day and see green! I will be even happier once it is all done and we can sit out and enjoy it, but I'm really pleased with what we've got done so far.

Anyway hope you are all having a good week and keeping warm and dry in such miserable weather! I have had quite a productive week this week designing  new cards, mainly fathers day ones, which have actually been really fun to work on. I was going to add some of them to this post but I've now run out of time and need to get some lunch before I have to go to the dreaded dentist! Back soon xxx

P.s I've also (nearly) finished my patchwork crochet blanket, hooray! Though it has shrunk to a baby blanket size - more on that next time! x