Halloween Cocktail Hats and Fascinators

Right, back to making stuff now...

I've been so busy with work and other randomness, shiny things have rather fallen by the wayside. However, a thing on my do-to list was to learn how to make fabric roses and, inspired by Halloween, I made some little hats as kind of an experiment. As experiments go, they turned out pretty good :)

First one was a little white satin and spiderweb lace creation, with some black and white feathers and black satin roses...



The fabric roses took a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, they're pretty easy. I made a red one too, thought I'd get a bit fancy, and covered the roses with the spiderweb lace too...


I also randomly purchased a little hot glue gun from John Lewis whilst I was buying sewing needles, which is possibly the best thing ever! It made attaching the feathers and roses sooooo much quicker than stitching them all by hand, and seeing as I stitch the rest of the hats by hand, I think I'm allowed a little time saving every now and again ;)

Happy (Very Belated...) Birthday to Me!

I have been super-busy, hence not much posting recently, but I took a couple of well-needed days of work and pottered off back to my little island at the beginning of this month for my birthday. It was lovely, actually, as I can never normally be bothered to do anything for my birthday. This year, however, I got a perfect day of walking by the sea in the sunshine, going to the zoo (meerkats and fruitbats... squeal!!!!), then lovely mum-cooked roast dinner and some awesome cupcakes that mum bought me. I did take a picture, but only after we'd scoffed most of them :)


I also got to meet mum's gorgeous new cat, Pudding, who is like a big fluffy teddybear. She also turned out to be somewhat camera-shy and refused to show me her cute little face. Booooo. But here she is...

I WANT A CAT!!!!!!!

Lori Earley - New Art Crush

Obsessed as I currently am with all things baroque, I accidentally stumbled across an artist by the name of Lori Earley yesterday. She paints beautiful and strange portraits and, excitingly, has an exhibition opening on October 16th at Opera Gallery in London, so I can go and look at the art close up, yay!

Check out more of her work here, as she is awesome:

http://www.loriearley.com/gallery/

Strange Dreams...

This week I have been mainly having dreams where I am getting my roots done. Apparently, even my subconscious thinks my hair is horrible...

Silver Christening & Birthstone Charms

I have only made one so far, but have been playing with a rather lovely new computer program called Lightroom, which I discovered allows me to select small areas of a photograph and "paint" new colour over them. Amazing! And so much easier than Photoshop.

So, this here is the original photograph, with a ruby for July:

Some deepening of the colour gets us to this, which is garnet, for January. Still red, just a little darker, so not that impressive, you might think...


...but check this out! Desaturating, upping the exposure then painting layers of semi-transparent purple colours gets us a pretty accurate rendering of an amethyst, birthstone for February:

And so on. We have aquamarine for March...

Diamond for April...

Emerald for May...

Sadly, June is still missing, as the birthstone is a pearl, and even the fabulousness that is Lightroom can't turn a faceted stone into a smooth and even coloured pearl. Booooo.

But, we have peridot for August...

Sapphire for September...


Opal for October...

Citrine for November...

And finally, blue topaz for December.

Sadly, Adobe will only let you have a 30 day free trial of Lightroom. Booooo. Something to do with them wanting you to actually pay for the program or something...

But, I love it so much that I may well do that. Maybe. When I have some spare cash...

Charm Bracelet for a Christening

Hello! As usual, things have been manic recently. This weekend was Luke's little brother's wedding, which was lovely, and last weekend my cousin had her beautiful little girl, Milly, christened.

As it's traditional to give silver for a christening gift, I thought I'd have a go at a personalised charm bracelet with Milly's name carved into a silver oval, and a flower with her birthstone, which is ruby. I'm happy that Milly is following in the family tradition by deciding to have expensive tastes before she was even born! Go Milly!

Anyway, here it is:

I may write some more about it later, but at the moment I'm at work, having had hardly any sleep and commuted in from somewhere in Essex after the wedding. Very, very sleepy... zzzzzzzzzzzz........

Canadian Cupcakes

A rather hectic time was had last weekend, as I frantically baked and iced cupcakes, tried to tidy the house, and also make a silver charm bracelet for a christening (more of which later).

So, my flatmate Yuri turned 40 and arranged a little party in a rather nice pub in Canonbury, the Marquess Tavern, which I've not been to for ages and is happily staggering distance from our house. Even though I wasn't actually drinking...

Anyway, I made some Canadian/birthday themed little cupcakes, with maple leaves and 40s cut out of red sugarpaste, with red and white frosting swirls. I even made them maple and pecan flavour...

Tada!