... and a Handmade Wedding Ring Pillow

My friends Eleanor & John got married last weekend, and it was an amazing day. The whole wedding was meticulously planned out by the the couple (the bride mainly!!) and there were lots of handmade touches that made it really special. My contribution was a wedding ring pillow that Eleanor requested - "not too traditional, or bridal - and colourful to fit in with the rest of the theme". This is what I came up with:

Obsessions & Distractions - Upcycled Sweater / Jumper Crafts

The weather here has definitely turned chilly, so what better time to check out all these great upcycled sweater and jumper crafts! All of these can be made from your old clothes, or finds form charity shops etc. And if you make these, you get to buy yourself some new jumpers!!

.... and our Autumn Textile ATC Swap!

We really enjoyed our first Textile ATC (Artist Trading Card) Swap back in June, so when we heard that Ali at VeryBerryHandmade was organising another, we couldn't put our names on the list quick enough!!

... and the Yellow Suitcase Exhibition

The Yellow Suitcase project has been founded by a group of people who live, survive and are in recovery from mental health issues. The idea of the project is to get people talking about mental health by taking the yellow suitcase to places of work, community groups and organisations around Reading (UK). More often than not one of the most difficult things about having a mental health problem is talking about it, in fear of stigma and discrimination in the workplace.

You can read more about this project on the Yellow Suitcase Project website. "We all have a common dream and shared hope that people suffering with mental health issues, have the right information, help and support, they need to make the most informed decisions about managing their mental health".

... and a Picture Frame Pincushion

You can never have too many pincushions right? As my crafting has definitely spread out all over my house (and not nicely contained within my craft room as I pretended would be the case), I felt the most sensible thing to do would be to make another pincushion. Having seen loads of these all over Pinterest, I was dying to make one that could stay on my desk in my craft room...

... and a Scrappy Felt Sunglasses Case

Well we've had a glorious few weeks of weather here and dare I say - its felt like a "proper" Summer! What better time to make sure that my sunglasses are out, and that they have a beautiful case! As you can see from this picture, the one I had was perfectly fine - I actually like that it is a hard shell case... It was just soooooo boring! And it gave me the perfect excuse to try something new - making new fabric from scraps!

... and Patchwork Postcards

Hello everyone! This is an exciting post for us - we have been asked to do our first craft Book Review*! We were contacted by Vivienne Wells, Director at Vivebooks and asked if we would be happy to review one of their ebooks. We wanted to review the book by actually trying out one of the projects so we chose Patchwork Postcards and Pinboard Quilts as it looked fun and was something we hadn't tried before - well there's nothing like throwing yourself in at the deep end is there?!! We only hope we've done it justice!

... and Pillowcase Dresses for "Dress a Girl Around the World"

It's Red Nose Day! For those of you who don't know about this Red Nose Day happens here every 2 years and its an opportunity to fundraise and help change people's lives in the UK and Africa. You can read more about this here

We wanted to do something to help, that would also give us our crafting fix. The emphasis this year was on baking - we thought we'd try something that couldn't potentially kill someone - we are trying to improve people's lives after all!!!

Having seen this blog post by Sew Scrumptious, it inspired us to make our own Pillowcase Dresses for the charity Dress a Girl Around the World.  This is how Louise from Sew Scumptious describes it: