It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's nearly that time of year again... Time to let the festive crafting begin!

Office Secret Santa this year is buy something for £1, and also decorate a plain mask with something Christmas themed.

Found a lovely deer mask pattern on www.illistyle.com/masks (good old Pinterest!) and thought it'd be easy enough to adapt to Rudolph.


Step 1 - deer fur. Or felt, y'know whichever is easiest to get hold of.






Step 2 - eyeholes.









Step 3 - ears.









Step 4 - that bit of deer face thing.









Step 5 - a little red nose.









Step 6 - antlers!










Need to replace the antlers with extra thick felt so they stand up on their own, but then happy days!

It's a bit girly for my male Secret Santa recipient, but I think his two year old daughter will love it.

Pretty damn proud of myself!

Halloween

Some friends had a fabulous Malice in Wonderland dinner party last night for Halloween. I wasn't feeling brave enough to make a full costume but I did make some ears for my White Rabbit outfit.





Just a bit of stiff felt with some blusher for the pink bits, but pleased with how they turned out!

Also made some gluten free chocolate cupcakes...





Happy Halloween!

Florence

Had a trip to Florence with little mummy, here's a few pics...

Pencil Skirt No.3 - Disaster

Merrily cracking on with pencil skirt number 3, this time in a lovely coral bike print fabric. I cut all the pieces and darted them months ago, but have only just got round to putting it together.

Disaster no.1 - may have slightly melted a hole in the lining fabric...






However, invisible zip tacked and went in perfectly first time - for the first time ever!

Merrily chugging away on the machine doing everything by memory = so chuffed with myself that I may have burst into a rendition of "They call me Mr Boombastic, say me fantastic". Oh how that joy was shortlived.





1. Forgot that one is not supposed to sew along the top part of the vent. Unsightly!

2. Some swiftly bodged hemming of both lining and main body.

3. Hmm, looks a little snug. Better try it on.

4. AAAAAAAAARGH! I won't treat you to a hideous photo of my chubby bum hanging out of the zip, but I'm sure you can picture it! How has all the room suddenly disappeared from the hips? All by itself. Am I screwing up the lining and that makes it too tight? How can it lose a couple of inches all by itself?

Oof, still feeling sew useless.

Jaffa Cakes

Chairing a meeting tomorrow where the rotating chair is responsible for bringing biscuits. So I thought I'd try a cheeky recipe from Homemade Memories book my lovely little mum gave me for my birthday.

How hard can a Jaffa cake be?!

I made the little cake biscuit things last night - dead easy. Then for the orange jelly. Note - I have never made jelly from scratch before. It is tricky. But also oh so simple! I was one orange half away from the full quantity of juice when I got distracted and knocked the whole jug flying. Typical! Fortunately I was a little baking psychic and bought shed loads of oranges.

I also have a slightly orange jelly-ish shelf in the fridge where I spilt it. Tonight was tackling construction...theoretically simple. How the effing jeff do you get a thin layer of jelly off a cling film lined baking tray?! Not the neatest orange jelly circles in the world but they'll do the trick...





A little not so beautifully tempered chocolate later (Mary Berry avert your eyes) and I've got some slightly wobbly looking homemade Jaffa cakes.





Fingers crossed they set ok and people like them!

Shift Dress

Thought I'd try a new fashion adventure and make a shift dress.

Got the pattern out of the Great British Sewing Bee book, but Rory had other ideas about letting me cut it out...









Once I finally persuaded the cheeky monkey that cats and patterns don't mix, I managed to trace out all the parts.

Thought I'd give it a go in some cheap calico first as there's bound to be some huge mistakes! Watch this space...

Bandana Bibs

A friend from work is off to have her first baby, so I made some teeny tiny bandana bibs.

Found a free pattern through the wonderful Pinterest and after 10,000 attempts to get all the gathers right and much pinning and repinning I finally managed to cobble three together!





Top stitching is 1/4 inch too wide (sew useless as always!) but not too shabby for a first go.