My Busy Craft Life

Good evening everyone! I carved my very first pumpkin for this year :) It was so much fun! I didnt have to search online for patterns as I still had lots from when I bought some carving kits over the last year so that was sorted, I just needed the pumpkins. Yeah that was easier said than done... I dont have a car and delivery isnt easy so I went to the shop after work and managed to get 4 pumpkins home with the help of a girl at work who helped me carry them part of the way :) Hollowing out and carving pumpkin: 1 hour. Cooking pumpkin (since we dont have tinned pumpkin in the UK, I need to stock up for the year): 20 mins. Baking pumpkin seeds: 20 mins (done while pumpkin is happily simmering away). Making the sweet and spicy mix for the seeds: 35 mins as I now know not to use grapeseed oil to make caramel and it burns the **** out of your pan, especially when trying to soak it with COLD water. Good morning... oh well, new mix was made with olive oil and that worked. I know peanut oil i...

Hello again! Now that all the costume posts have been done, it's time for some more general Halloweening :) I bought this Halloween candy making kit at Hobbycraft. I put it back about 10 times but I just couldnt resist! So after HOURS of melting (and burning!) and painting and cooling and more melting, I had a pretty good result :) First I made these cookies. These werent actually part of the pack, I bought separate moulds, but the candy melts are from the pack. On the inside there are Oreos, see? Check out these teeth, arent they amazing? I havent actually tried one yet, but they sure look cool :) As you can see, I made lots more. I used every mould in the box :) The skeletons are so cute, I just forgot to put the lollipop sticks in but they're still edible ;) Closeup of the lips, the red is a little smeared in some places but it was my first time candy making after all Very creepy eyes Tombstones The smaller moulds were for bats, pumpkins, fingers, and brains All in all quite...

Hi all! Like every year, I also had some pics taken by photographers that were walking around the EFF, shooting pretty much anyone willing to pose. I need some practice (dont I always) but of course I was more than happy to pose. Not a lot of people asked in comparison to last year, but we still got a handful of photos :) Better late than never, so enjoy! Photos from Saturday: Photo by Tom Bombadil (sorry I cant find the business card with the actual name!) Love the way the eye thing worked for a change :) Photo by Marga van Belkum Photos from Sunday: Photo by Aartwerk.nl , we had only just arrived and I didnt sit down properly so the skirt didnt show nicely but all in all the pic isnt bad. Very innocent vampire LOL. Photo by Fok.nl, we're actually the first pic on the website! This is my friend Mandy who came dressed as a Naga, we had such funny pics together :) Photo by Zeburaman Love this one, but the hair on the hat annoys me so much... It was the wind and I hadnt noticed... P...

Hi all, As I missed a day in Costume Week, I have one last costume post for you. Are you excited? LOL well maybe just a little bit :) A little while ago (I can only wear so many costumes on Halloween but luckily I have a lot of other costume events during the year) we had a Famous Faces party. I spent week trying to think of who to go as. There was even a FB app where you could see which celebrity you resemble the most. I got Reese Witherspoon, score! I was thinking maybe Elle from Legally Blonde but as usual I ran out of time.... I didnt want to go as someone who no one would recognise so it would probably be something movie related, but what? I also preferred to be something more mythical than just a Hollywood star... Then one of the builders outside my old work actually gave me the perfect idea: Medusa! Perfect! Mythical AND everyone knows her :) Plus I could totally pull this off with minimal sewing :) This was the result: (sorry for the bad pics, it was a bad day and I only have t...

Hello again :) Ok I missed one day during Costume Week but work was crazy this week and I just didnt have the energy to be online afterwards... but no fear, I have another costume to share with you! :) Once again, this is also partly gathered from other outfits that I made, but it really looks the part I think. A few years ago, I was really into World of Warcraft. I still am in a way but I dont have time to play a lot anymore (all that sewing and blogging!) but I still have the account because I know once I stop having, I will want to play. Plus it's a nice change from sewing sometimes. So when the Lich King came out in 2008, I joined my friends once again for the launch party at HMV. This year my costume was actually much better than previous years and I was even interviewed for the BBC! My costume for the launch was a Night Elf. I had originally wanted to be a warrior NE but the sword was lost in the mail or something so I was a druid and used my staff again. This costume was qui...

Hi again everyone! Another trip down memory lane, a costume I put together but not made myself... Do you remember this photo from the Practical Magic Blog Party ? (I have to admit that I still have to go through all the links, I do apologise to all the people who have already visited my party, I will swing by soon!) I called it the 'water nymph' at the party as from this angle it really looks like one LOL. The hair I made myself mostly. At the time my own hair was nowhere near this long so I bought a piece with dreads in my own hair colour and made woollen dreads from merino wool in various colours. I had bought a ton of colours and would swap the dreads according to the outfit. This hairpiece contains several shades of blue, black, and gold and blue ribbons. On top of the dreads, I added cream and black brooches because they looked really cool and had hangy bits, some blue and black flowers, and the same horns as I used for the leaf dress but had now painted with black instead...

Hi all, I have only started decorating the apartment last Sunday which of course meant I had to tidy first... Oh my was that messy! LOL... But now it's all tidy (well, except my hobby area) and sparkly clean :) Which of course meant that my blogging time was interrupted a bit, but I did come across some older pics of yet another easy costume that I made for my very first EFF all the way back in 2006. Much has been learnt since then... As this was the first time I went to EFF and I had to get changed on the plane (there was a sight), I decided on an easy fairy costume. I used a teal coloured sleeveless velvet dress with a cloak in the same colour which I happened to have. It was a sortof netty material so very fairy -like I thought. For wings I used some wings I had bought a little earlier. These were amazing wings! They were made out of wood, some sort of support thing which I now think may have been corset boning, and paper and glue. As these wings were 3D and didnt fit into my su...