My Busy Craft Life

I LOVE these yoyos! My stacked yoyo hair accessory have quickly become my trademark and I wear them all the time with every outfit. I am actually considering making some and trying to sell them on Etsy or Ebay or so. Of course now that I have shared this great news, someone is bound to swoop in and do the same... Yes, I am a little paranoid like that... It's nearly midnight and I am still blogging! LOL. But I havent created anything big lately and I feel quite bad about that, especially as the bf is sooo active with his miniatures and really trying to reach his painting deadlines (he has a big game thingy soon) and I'm just surfing instead of working on my costumes that also need to be done. Last night, for example, I finally worked out how to work the fabric that I had left from the ruffe skirt that I had altered. I still had some ruffles left over and wanted to make a matching flower and as the bf was busy painting, I thought I should do something creative as well. Since this...

Last Monday, the Dutch were playing in the World Cup again. In my office, we are allowed to watch a certain number of matches during work hours if that's when the team of choice is playing. So I was allowed to go down to the cafe and watch the match! As we have a 'business casual' dress code at work, I couldnt exactly show up in my normal comfy stuff that happens to be orange lik e last time. What to do? I had an idea for a while to make a top of this piece of shiney orange fabric that I've had lying around for years and never really seemed to be using. Having already made the hair accessory out of it, I thought I could make a matching top. But in less than half an hour and at 7am? So I went online and found this really lovely tutorial here that really helped me out. Ok so the tutorial is for kids but it was the idea that mattered. After all, I didnt have a lot of time. And I managed to make it work! With the hair accessory and the black ribbons it looked really cute ...

It is nearly 30 degrees Celsius here which for London is unbearable... All houses are made for rain for insulation is pretty much non-existent and temperatures inside can be just as bad as outside... This morning the bf went out to do some archery (he was back by noon, it was just too warm!) so I opened all doors and windows and let in the cool morning air. How wonderful that was!!! Sadly because of the heat my creation skills have decided to go on indefinite leave and I have yet to start creating something new. But since I had some free time (and some rare Sunday morning energy) and the weather was nice enough to do a handwash that could be left outside and dry within just a few hours, I decided to wash a dress that I bought at the charity shop sale for only £2!! It is a size 8 which miraculously fits me waist and length wise, but the bust of this dress is enormous! I need to adjust this but at least now it's clean and I can start thinking about what to do with it. For £2 I just c...

It has been a while... this week I have not crafted AT ALL! Can you believe it? I surely cant... I've been so busy and stressed at work that I just went to work, came home, cooked dinner, ate said dinner, and then fell asleep on the sofa until the bf woke me up to go to bed where I happily continued sleeping. So glad I had today off :) One of our best friends here in London got married today. Now this guy is the ultimate bachelor and I'm so happy for him! He asked both the bf and myself to be the witnesses at the wedding which was a great honour and of course we gladly accepted :) So the wedding was today, and the reception is tomorrow. Being me (and most of you know this), I dont exactly have any pretty dresses that are eh how should I put this... discreet. Luckily I know the bride and I know she doesnt dress very glamourously so I knew what to expect. After all, I didnt want to upstage the bride! So I had three options, one of which was already ruled out by the bf as being no...

Last week, my sister was here. On the Sunday, we spent the whole day in Camden Market and on the way home we went to Platform9 3/4 from the Harry Potter movies. The only photo taken of the both ofus was on my sister's camera and she finally emailed it over today so here it is: I just had to share ;) By the way, I have no idea why my face is that shade of pink... LOL

I HATE football. That is, until the EuroCup or the WorldCup events are on. There is this song in Holland about 15 million people (quite old as there are now at least 16 million) containing one line which is so true (the whole song is true actually): The country where no one lets go, unless we're winning and then we're very passionate and no one will stay inside And win we did! I know it was only a relatively unimportant game but still, we need every victory we can get :) Check here for a translation of the song (I just cant be bothered sorry). The video can be seen here , even if you dont understand it, it really shows what we (the Dutch) are like hihi. Anyway, now that I have promoted this song enough, lets cut to the chase. My point was actually that I get extremely patriotic when the football (the soccer) is on. So naturally, I had to go out and watch the game in town. First of all, I needed a hair accessory to match as I didnt have any of the cool things that normally come ...

Remember my friend P. from work ? Well, for Christmas I made some cookies for my mother as a Christmas present. This was prior to blogging so I dont have any photos of that. Anyway, as my mother loves shoes (and I mean LOVES shoes, she used to have them inside her closet, nightstand, behind the curtains, you name it and there were shoes), so I made her shoe cookies with a cookie cutter I bought in Salem when I was visiting there. Of course, shipping a ton of cookies isnt cheap, so I selected the best and sent those. My mother was very happy with custom made cookies (they were also purple and had sparkles so all great). My colleagues were also happy as they got to eat all the ones not deemed worthy for my mother. Ever since then, my friend P. has begged me for shoe cookies, but as cookies take time I just havent made them yet. Then, a few weeks ago, she resigned with a notice period of three months. So I promised her I would bake her shoe cookies before she would leave the company. Afte...

Yay, blueberries were on sale! 125gr for only £1 :) As I still had lots of lemons (which actually had gone off and I had to buy more), I decided to make lemon blueberry muffins. Oh so good! I used a recipe that I once received on a mailing list and adjusted it. I even made a tutorial! My first ever, and I really tried to take photos of each step so I hope it's clear. I couldnt take pics of the actual actions like mixing and grinding etc because I was on my own in the kitchen, but it should be clear enough to copy. Here we go! For 12 normal-sized muffins you need: 2 cups of self-raising flour (or plain flour with 2 tsp of baking powder) 2 eggs 1 cup of sugar 1/4 tsp salt 1 lemon (2 if you want extra lemoney taste but I only had one and it was fine) 5/8 cup of milk (this recipe was adjusted from a different amount and I normally add somewhere 1/2 cup and a little bit extra so 5/8 would be close enough) 1 ounce of melted butter Stir together the flour, sugar, and salt (and baking powd...

A few weeks ago, I was in the Poundstore, and found this strange contraption that I just had to give a try. It's called Quickachips . I mean, £1 is ok if it turns out to be nothing right? I figured if it's bad I can sure change it into a hat or something... The day before yesterday I actually had a chance to test it. Basically it works like this: The Quickachips is a large flat net basket which goes into the oven. Fill basket with chips as you would any oven tray (so dont overfill), place in oven on the normal on the oven shelf and bake as normal. The good thing about it? Because it's a net basically, you wont have to turn anything over and everything cooks the same on all sides. I love it! Very easy to clean as well which is always a plus. I didnt have a chance to take a photo beforehand, but this is what it looks like in the oven: Taadaa, lovely fries baked to perfection :) What do you think?

Today is my mother's birthday. Since I'm not in the country (and actually seperated by an not insignificant Channel) I sent her some stuff and it arrived in the nick of time today. Well, I did pre-warn her and she actually stayed home to wait for the mail! How sweet is that? Do you remember the Clutch Bag I made for my sewing stuff? Well, I still had all this shiney and sparkley fabric leftover and my mother looooves sparkley and shiney so I made her one of those as well. Lined with leftover purple polycotton (not shown) and decorated with what seems to be becoming my trademark stacked yoyo rosette, this is the bag (the star cotton actually has silver glitters on it so it sparkles): Of course I also needed some contents, so I bought her some nailpolish as she has a very particular colour she always wears and which seems to be discontinued pretty much every year by all lines imaginable. I also found the coolest card ever with a cat that actually quite resembles her LOL. She tho...

So during the whole shopping weekend with my sister, we went to one of my favourite stores (yes, I love Primark! I'm not really into brands and they sell nice things for cheap. For US readers, it is similar to Target I think). Anyway, I found these baby sleeping bags with such cute cupcakes on them!! They were only £3 each so I just had to get one (and another one the next day). So now am wondering what to do with them? Obviously I wont be using them for a baby since I dont have one, but I was thinking of maybe turning them into a bathrobe? I've had my current one since 2003 so I could do with a replacement. Each sleeping bag measures 63x25" and has a long zipper on the side, and I have two of them so that's a lot of fabric for only £6! Does anyone have another (and possibly better) idea? Here is a picture: Isnt it cute?? Yes, it has pink in it and it ueber-girly but I just had to have it. Again very different from all my Halloween stuff but maybe cupcakes can be for s...

It's been a week... OMG the first week without blogging! LOL But between work, hospital stuff, and trying to get my sister over here, there was just no time... Yes, my sister visited... for the first time in 10 years!! This is mainly due to the fact that I live too far away to visit usually (she has a family with 3 kids so 'swinging by' is not that easy) as she lives in Germany. So this weekend she was here! Her first time on the plane and everything so she was a little nervous *grin* but she made it ok in the end. Can you believe we didnt actually do anything except shop? I kept to my frugal schedule and only purchased a few things that I couldnt make or were just really good deals. One of which I will ask your opinion on later in a different post btw. As I have this thing for cupcakes right now (I am normally the total Halloween fan and most of my stuff has cats and pumpkins and witches and stuff on it) my sister got me this super cute mug as a present. Isnt it cute??? We...