Baking, succulents, and parties

Hello! I realised recently that I have an awful lot of photos of little things I have made/ baked, but I haven't shared them with you! You may have seen some of these on Instagram, but here we can talk about them a little more without having to make those huuugggeeee comments that end up looking like a really dense wall of text ~___^

First up: ugly cake! Scott and I recently celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary for which the traditional gift is salt. I thought that sounded a little boring so instead I decided to make a salted caramel cake. I wanted to make a layered cake, but I also didn't want it to be huge so I made a rectangle shaped upside down cake, and cut it into smaller circles. The caramel part of the upside down cake means that I didn't have to put anything between the layers.

However, cutting nice looking circles from cake is actually a lot harder than I expected it to be! When I layered them up, I realised how wonky my cake was! >___<

I thought about covering the entire thing in buttercream icing to try and make it look nicer, but ultimately decided that salted caramel layers and a salted caramel sauce poured over the entire thing was probably enough forms of sugar for one small cake so I left it naked and ugly ~___^ We ate it anyway, and it tasted pretty good!

I also made a simple card for Scott. I used a black and white chevron paper to cover a blank card, glued on a square of gold heart patterned paper, and stuck a black and gold embellishment in the middle. I messily scribbled a border around the heart paper with my silver metallic pen and it was done!

Bunnings had a heap of tiny succulents for sale recently, so I brought, ummm, way too many of them. I put one in a tiny teacup to give to a friend for her housewarming, and put two more in two empty tins I kept because they're cute. I added dinosaurs because dinosaurs are awesome.

I put the rest in a bigger pot, and added more dinosaurs and some pretty little rocks. I'm not sure how well that one in the middle is going; I brought it because I thought it was a cool colour, but I'm now thinking that perhaps I brought a dying succulent. Hmm.

I designed a badge to give to some of my derby pals, and recently two of my buddies from skating star classes had their birthday so I used two of the leftover pins to decorate some hair bows. The fabric I used is the same design as the badges, which I got printed from my Spoonflower store.

For my birthday I had an Adventure Time themed party - I didn't take many photos but I did remember to photograph some of the food (the most important part, right! ~___^)

I made Lumpy Space Crackles with using this recipe ... except I didn't put in any cocoa and I used honey instead of maple syrup. I also added some blue and red food colouring which didn't mix in that well. I was hoping for it to make purple, but it mostly didn't. I also put on some star shaped sprinkles to make them more space like ^___^

I brought some Adventure Time cookies, but they didn't taste that great so I made them into chocolate bark, with the addition of salted pretzels and pop rocks. They were a big hit!

I also made a Tree Trunks apple pie; the fancy lattice top was trickier to make then I expected it to be! It tasted really great and even though it was huge, it got demolished really quickly.

These sunglasses were made for my friend Clare for Christmas. Clare has an adorable style and is a big fan of daisies, so I wanted to make her something to suit her look.

All I did to make these was glue little daisy cabochons around the frame of some round sunglasses. It was really easy, but they turned out really cute!

I also made these Wookiee cookies after seeing these super cute biscuits by Sugared Nerd.

I used a mini gingerbread person cutter, and melted chocolate for the details. I adore how they turned out!

I made this chocolate bark for my dad for Christmas - I added almonds, pepitas, pistachios, dried cranberries, and white chocolate chips to melted dark chocolate. I also made Dad some coconut ice using this recipe (except I used Stevia instead of rice malt syrup), a trail mix, and more gingerbread. I added twice the amount of ginger into Dad's batch than I used for the Wookiee cookies because both of us like our gingerbread really spicy (not that he wanted to share! ~___^)

Inspired by Messy Nessy Chic, I made this cheese platter Christmas Tree for after our family lunch. Honestly, we were all a bit too full for this, but we did our best anyway! ^___^

Lastly, I've been working on the Death Star blanket. If you've been a long time reader of this blog, you may remember that I started this project in, oh, 2011. It's been in the WIP box for a long time, but the new movie inspired me to get it back out. I've started joining the squares, which makes the whole project a little more inspiring - I've almost finished the rows with the laser! (Baby steps!) ^___^

- Lisa xx

Crochet Instagram Cushion

Hello! Guess what? My Instagram cushion is finally finished!! Omg, I was really struggling through this project; I had forgotten how much time classes and studying actually takes up! I think my next couple of projects better be quick little ones that I can do between classes ~___^

 

It's looking kinda out of shape here - maybe I shouldn't have hugged it in joy before taking the photos? I was just really happy it was finally done!

 

Here's how it looks on our, rather overcrowded, couch. Our couch is actually a single bed which a large piece of wood added as a back; I cover it in vintage sheets and tons of pillows and crochet blankets and it's a lovely little nest to snuggle into. Also in this picture you can see my flamingo cross-stitch, my first flower crown (currently worn by Marty the Moose), the Companion Cube, Sweet Tooth, Lumpy Space Princess, the Ctrl Alt Del cushions, and the little ewok pillow. Gosh! It will probably not surprise you that our house is filled with things I have made and thrifted - it has been affectionately described as "walking into some kind of strange opshop" ~___^

 

To make this cushion, I first crocheted 32 rows of 90 trebles in some creamy white wool that I had in my stash. 12 rows in brown finished off the main part of the cushion. The lens is made with 12 rounds of black wool and finished with two of white.

The corner square is a granny square, made with five rows, and the coloured lines on the other corner were made by doing 31 chain stitches and then making a treble in 28 of those stitches (the other three are used as the turning chain). Since I used different kinds of yarn for each of the coloured lines, they ended up not quite even. I didn't notice this until I'd sewed them down and I honestly wasn't bothered enough to unpick them and do them again. I don't find it super noticeable, but if you were making a version of this and were concerned, I'd use the same type of wool for all colours if possible or at least measure them better then I did! ~___^

Since this project had already taken me longer than I had hoped, I decided against crocheting the back and instead sewed on a piece of black fleece. It's very soft, and makes hugging this pillow extra nice ^___^

 

Hopefully going into week three of this semester I will be getting the hang of balancing school and life again. One thing that has also been taking up a bit of my time is sports - this is very surprising for me! I used to craft a lot simply because with my chronic fatigue I couldn't do much else (and even then crafting was sometimes a stretch!), but that seems to have gone away a bit and with my diabetes getting under control ( ... mostly!) I have much more energy for jogging, fencing, rock climbing, ten pin bowling ...! I can't be too mad since I've been having so much fun, but I guess it's just another thing that I have to balance against everything else ^___^ Maybe I should craft  myself some fancy new sports shorts?

Anyway, here's to time management and the weekend! I hope you have a good one ^___^

- Lisa xx

Instgram Photo Canvases

It is very cold and cloudy here. It's kinda nice because I can wear layers and stockings (which I love!) and use all my crochet blankets, but it kinda sucks for taking photos. First world blogger problems, right? ~_^

Anyway, here's what I made as Mother's Day gifts ^_^ I'm only showing you the ones I made for my Nana Alma and Scott's Nana Mary though because our mums wanted photos of us and I figure you get enough photos of my face on here without taking photos of photos of my face ~_^

 

I made these using some photos I had taken using Instagram, and they were both quick and easy to make. My favourite kind of craft ^_^

(And also the images have more definition in real life. I blame the clouds for this. I don't know how, but somehow it was them ~_^)

I resized my photos to 6 inches square, and then printed them off onto light card. Then, I cut them out, making them just an teeny bit smaller than exactly 6x6. That way, when I glued them onto my 6x6 inch canvas, the card wasn't larger than the front of the canvas. 

When the glue was dry, I used a sponge brush to paint the sides of the canvas. I also painted on the front a bit, to make a messy kinda border.

 

I think maybe if I try this again (which I probably will as I tend to buy cheap canvases in bulk) I will mod-podge the whole thing as that tends to make the image a little darker and the colours slightly more vibrant, which I like ^_^

Possibly if I really like how it looks, I will secretly bring mod-podge next time I go visiting and sneakily paint the canvases that I assume will be hanging in pride of place in my mother's/nana's/mother-in-law's/nana-in-law's home. ~_^

Did you have a nice Mother's Day? Are you addicted to Instragram? Are you procrastinating on your university assignments?

That last one may be just me ... ~_^

- Lisa x

Instagram magnets

Hello! Today I have a project plus a little tutorial for you - but this is such an easy craft that you would be able to work it out for yourself I think! ^_^

I printed out some of my Instagram photos today to make into magnets, which is very simple to do. The two A4 magnetic sheets from Riot have a sticky side, so all I had to do was peel off the protective paper, stick down my photos, and then cut them out.

Then I used some stamps to decorate them! Going clockwise from the top left, I used some tiny alphabet stamps, a Amy Tangerine roller date stamp (it's very small but it says "enjoy today"), one of the stamps from the "Vintage Office" stamp set (by Cavallini Papers & Co), and the Happy Birthday stamp from the "Owl you need is love" stamp set (from Typo).

I also inked the edges and covered the entire photo with a layer of mod-podge. 

Then, I pulled out my old Wacom tablet and experimented with adding handwriting to some of my other photos in Adobe Illustrator. I made them into magnets using them same process as above.

And so what am I going to do with so many magnets? 

I'm making cards! All you have to do is cut a couple of slits in a blank card with a scalpel and slip your new photo magnet in. Yay! One of my goals this year is to send out more snail mail, and this way my corespondents have a special present to keep as well ^_^

What do you think? Do you like them? I sure hope you do!

- Lisa x

Vintage style monogram brooch, hanky tissue case, and Ninni WIPs

Hey! How have you been? I have been lazy. Very, very lazy. Even though I am *finally* getting over this flu thing all I want to do is read and eat cherries. Neither of which are bad things, of course, but I was *meant* to be finishing a pair of gloves for my Nana's Christmas present.

As you've probably guessed, I haven't done that. >_< So, because I'm seeing her (and the rest of my family) tomorrow for the gift exchange, and there is no way I was going to finish the gloves in one day, I made her some other gifts. *Fast* gifts!

First up: a pretty vintage style brooch made entirely with stash components.  I love it when my hoarding tendencies actually come in useful! ~_^

Here's how I made it:

1. I drew a fancy "A" (for "Alma" in this instance) onto a piece of calico, making sure that it was going to be small enough to fit into the ... setting? (I'm not really sure of the proper term. It is meant to be used as a pendant, once a cameo or something similar is attached to the middle of it, but I turned it upside down for this project.)

2. Using tiny stitches and only one strand of DMC, I embroidered the A. 

3. As mentioned before, I used a necklace setting (if anyone knows the proper term, please tell me!) turned upside down; I attached a bead and pearl teardrop where a jump ring would normally be attached. The bead and pearl teardrop are from an old earring. See what I mean about hoarding? ~_^

4. I had some epoxy stickers which I hadn't used before; I stuck one over the embroidery and then trimmed the edges. I was pretty nervous that it would ruin the stitches, but it turned out fine and also magnifies the image somewhat. To give you an idea of how small this is, the epoxy stickers are about 1.5 cm high.

5. Then I used E6000 to glue the embroidery into the setting. This had the added bonus of ensuring my stitches will never come loose ~_^

6. To finish, I used the E6000 again, this time to add a brooch clasp to the back of the setting.

Hurray! One present done!

For the second present, I was inspired by this tutorial, but I wanted to make it smaller to fit those little packs of travel tissues and thus make this more of a "keep in your handbag" kinda gift.

To make this, I used one handkerchief, cut into quarters (cutting it was the scariest part for me, and this isn't even a real vintage hanky, it just looks like one). I used fray-stop on the raw edges, then I just stitched the ends closed. Very easy, but check out the link if you want to see more detailed instructions.

It fits a travel sized pack of tissues perfectly, and is pretty cute too ^_^

I used a piece of baker's twine to make it look a little more fancy; it is a gift after all ^_^ 

Now, with Nana's gifts ready for tomorrow, I can get back to the *other* project I've been procrastinating on ... making Ninni Monsters! ^_^

I hope you had a great weekend! Have you been making any Christmas gifts?

- Lisa x

I is for Instagram!

Hello! Happy mid-week! I have exciting news (well, it's exciting to me anyway!) .... I upgraded my phone to a shiny new Galaxy Note (ooo, ahhh) and (almost more importantly) I finally have instagram! I am way too excited about this app - I'm loving the filters and how pretty all my photos look and I'm pumped to start trying out all of the cool tutorials and craft projects I've seen using it around the webs.

So, here are some of my photos so far ^_^

... and I have two questions:

1. Is there an easy way to add instagram photos to my blog posts?

2. How do I find people so I can follow them? I have had no luck by typing in usernames or keywords but I am probably just being really dumb about the whole thing!

- Lisa x

P.S. I'm on instagram under teaandcraft - of course! ~_^