March 13th 2013 - Scrunchie Time!

Mornin'!

I can now show you the little sewing project I made last week. It was a present for my Aunt and as she received it yesterday I can now show you :D

It's a scrunchie!

This was the first time I've made a scrunchie so it is a little rough around the edges.

This is how I made it:

I cut a strip of fabric about 3 inches wide and about 12 inches long. I folded it in half and sewed down the side. Then I pulled the inside out so the sewing was all on the inside. This was quite fiddly but I got there eventually.

Then I took some elastic - about 6 inches long and 8mm wide and threaded it through the fabric tube. Also pretty fiddly! After this, I overlapped the two ends of the elastic and sewed back and forward across it a few times to make sure it was completely secure.

The next bit didn't work perfectly but worked kind of ok, if a little messy. I folded in the ends of the tubes so there were no rough edges and then sewed the ends together, just by sewing through both ends and pulling them tight so the ends attached and I ended up with a complete scrunchie with  no elastic showing. You can just see the join in the top right of the photo above. It's pretty neat, but not neat enough as you can still see quite a few stitches!

I reckon there's a tutorial online somewhere showing how to join the ends perfectly, but I didn't even think to look, I just started making and sewing!

Anyways, I am very pleased with it for a first attempt, and my Aunt really likes it too so that's what matters!

And to finish, huge **HAPPY BIRTHDAY** to my cousin who is 16 today! Very proud of you in everything you do :) xxx

A quick look back on the first week of my fresh start :)

It's been a very interesting week since I started posting everyday, full of ups and downs. It's been hard to stay positive at some points as I do get so down about things, and once I feel down it's really hard to become positive again.

But I really should remember to look at all possibilities before letting something affect my mood, things aren't always as bad as they seem, and there might be ways around them!

Lots of good stuff has happened too in the last week, and now I have this blog to read back through and remind myself that things aren't all bad :)

One of the best bits has been learning a new crafty skill in order to make my mum's Mother's Day present (which I spent all afternoon on yesterday :D ) and simple things like this make me happy.

So I just need to keep slogging through my uni course, not long left now, and that will be another hurdle jumped. After that, it's one less thing to be negative about leaving me lots of room to be positive about something else.

Making things really does keep me sane, so I should probably carry on doing that too :D

    Picture found here. 

March 2nd 2013 :)

I managed to get all the boring stuff of washing and tidying and that kinda stuff all done yesterday.

Had a bit of a panic though - here I was thinking I was all done with doing work for the weekend, giving myself a few days off. Suddenly I remembered that I'm meant to be doing a presentation on Monday and because I missed Monday's lecture through being ill I didn't go and didn't have next week's material which I'm meant to be doing the presentation on! Cue big panic.

I eventually got hold of the material so should be able to get something sorted for Monday.

I spent the rest of the day not really doing a lot until I decided to make roast chips (I don't have a chip frier, and the frying pan isn't big enough to fry a decent amount of chips, so I par boil the chips then roast them for a good 40 minutes. They turn out pretty well for roasted chips!).

I did get the clay out as well. Had a go at mokume gane, but didn't really produce anything worth while, and I definitely need a new blade. Mine is full of dents and chips and doesn't really work as it should anymore. Hopefully I can get mokume gane sorted and have fun with the technique. I can't believe I've been working with clay for nearly four years and haven't ever tried it before!

I'm also in the process of making a memory book to store all those tickets and some photos and bits and pieces that I don't want to get rid of but no longer have space on my pinboard for anymore. I started last night but cutting up a bunch of old birthday cards with pretty patterns and stuff on them for use as memory book decorations. Then I just had to make an envelope using this fantastic envelope making tutorial
which was a lot of fun and just what I needed to store all those cut up bits of card :D I'm kind of nervous to start sticking in the book though, don't want to ruin it!

I was watching Mary and Martha at the time. You should watch it. It's about two women who suffer a tragedy and want to do something about it. Useless summary there but I don't want to give it all away! Watch it, it's on iPlayer! I did have a couple of tears though, so be warned.

                                              

Anyway. I should stop my rambling and get on with today's fun stuff. Beans on toast and cake making are first on today's agenda!!

Have some cuteness for the day :)

March 1st 2013 :)

I had a bit of an up and down day yesterday after I finished my essay. But it all turned out ok, apart from the huge mouth ulcer I have going on along with a wisdom tooth coming through and causing me hassle! Any ideas on how to get rid of wisdom tooth pain? It huuuuurts!

I had fun wandering into town to buy beads for my new pendants. I'm sooo happy at how she turned out. She's a Goddess pendant made by Jo over at Turner Rowe Glass Art. Completely gorgeous :) I decided to buy a few shades of matching seed beads and use my new bead spinner (so much fun!) to string three long strands of beads. Each strand has a different balance of clear to green shades of bead. I don't think I got the balance quite right but I'm happy with her so not going to worry about changing any of the strands.
What do you think?

 

Today is going to be one of those days full of boring stuff. Whenever I have essays to write my room gets a little out of control so I need to do something about it.

Ooh, I also had fun ripping up magazines and making them into a dragonfly collage at the Art Society yesterday evening. I'm debating whether or not he needs a background of greenery.

I'd quite like to make a cake this weekend :)

Happy Friday everyone!

February 28th 2013 :)

The sun is shining! This pleases me a lot, hopefully I will be able to go for a wander into town in a little while and enjoy some sun. Lack of sun has affected me hugely over the last year or so and when it comes out it makes me automatically happier :)

Yesterday was pretty productive essay wise. I got 1300 words written, and I just finished off this morning. It is now submitted so I can relax slightly :) Unfortunately I know it's not the best thing I've ever written, my head just hasn't been in the right place to write it, but at least it's done now.

My plan of action will now be to get myself sorted and hair washed, then I may re-read my essay and resubmit it.

THEN I am going to go into town and buy some beeeeads! I bought a gorgeous pendant the other day and it came through the post yesterday so now I need to make a necklace to string it on. I got lots of goodies through the post yesterday - DVDs and stuffs that I bought out of my birthday monies - and it was very hard not to play with new goodies and do my essay instead.

I got very fed up with the whole thing yesterday and had to come back to yesterday's post to see those 'You can do it!' words staring at me. Gave me a bit of a boost which was nice.

I'm hoping the rest of my mother's day supplies come through today as well, then I can start making that, or at least start learning how to do what I want to do, later this evening. I do have some un-fun stuff to do as well, such as listening to the lecture and doing the reading that I missed this week ready for my seminar tomorrow, but I might do that in the morning and just take a complete break from uni stuffs for the day.

Oooh and I need to clean out the mices and give them a nice fresh new tank. They're always so fun to watch running around after their tank is cleaned, they have so much fun :D

My lovely other half sent me this photo yesterday which cheered me up a lot, isn't he a little cutie? :D

February 27th 2013 :)

Yesterday was quite a good day really :)

I didn't get as much written on my essay as hoped but that's ok. It'll be a squeeze getting it perfect in time, but you know what, I had a good day yesterday and I'm not going to let the fact that I didn't get as much done on a silly essay spoil that :) I don't know if that's the right attitude to take all the time, but right now it's exactly what I need to do.

I had a driving lesson in the morning which was stressful. Nothing bad happened or anything, I just concentrate so hard in lessons that I'm exhausted at the end of it.

But we ended the lesson in town as I had a little bit of shopping to do - supplies for Mother's Day present! I spent over half an hour in the best bead shop ever (Raphael on St Benedict's Street in Norwich - go visit, it's amazing!) trying to pick the perfect colours, which I think I have :) Came away with 400g odd of seed beads - that's a lot of ickle beads :D

I also got through a new bead toy in the post, one of these babies:

 

It's a bead spinner, given to me by a lovely lady who had no use for it anymore. It helps you thread a lot of ickle beads quickly so you don't have to thread each one singly. I can't wait to have a play, but essay has to come first, and I suppose there's the small detail of needing other materials to come through the post before I can actually make anything with it :P

I also bought a pair of green tights. To go with my orange skirt :) I've been after some for a while but not being one who likes to spend money none of the ones I've seen have been the right price. H&M had the ones I want, and I went in there yesterday to find they were half price :D So I nabbed em. Now the sun needs to come out so I can wear a skirt :D

Today's plan of action is to finish this essay. I can do it, just need to knuckle down and do it. I just had some good brain fodder - boiled eggs and soldiers, so now I better get on with the essay.

Phrase of the day: You can do it! :D

Fresh start.

Mornin' everyone :)

I've had  a bit of a rough start to the year which is probably why I haven't been blogging. I need to be a bit more productive so I'm going to try to use this blog as a way to stay motivated. If I write it down for you lovely lot to see then maybe I will actually do it :) As a side note, these grapes I'm eating do not taste good. I hate bad tasting grapes.

There will be crafty stuff, uni stuff, long and short term goals, and I'm going to put it all out here for you to see.

Here's an outline of things I want to blog about in upcoming posts, then I guess I better get on with the day!

- Everyday things that I need to do. This will include boring things like tidying up, cleaning my mices tank, cleaning etc. Might be tedious to read but if I write it down I will feel like I've been productive. I get very down when I don't feel as though I've been productive so maybe this will help me to stay happy. 

- Goals for the future. The future is very important to me and I think about it a lot. It might help me stay happy to write it all down. These posts might be about things I want to do to develop myself, my skills, or simply just things that I want.

- Shorter term goals. Things I need or want to do in the next couple of weeks.

- As well as goals, I will carry on talking about things I'm making and doing, and will be holding occasional giveaways linking with my facebook page.

Hopefully this kind of thing will help me keep focused and happy and hopefully you can get something out of reading it as well :) Here's to fresh starts :D

Kayleigh xx