Cake toppers - crochet hearts

 

More cake toppers! Little crochet hearts (pattern here) stuck on wire, i used a bit if glue to fix them to the wire otherwise they spun round like weather vane!

 

I also remade the wire word cake topper, with long legs to stick it into the cake this time

Heres the whole selection! Well theres actually one more (4 cakes, i know, a bit ridiculous!) but number 4 isnt finished yet - watch this space!

Hessian 'Just Married' Banner (including a how to)

 

More decorations for the wedding! A hessian 'just married' bunting style banner. 

I just cut out 12 rectangles of hessian, twice a long as i wanted the finished size to be. I folded them in half long ways.

Then i sewed the three open side closed, but left 2cm open on the longer sides, at the folded end (this is to thread the string through). The edges are exposed as I was going for the rustic look

Then, with a sharpie, i just drew the letters on, its hessian and pretty rough so the drawing doesn't have to be accurate. I used a heart in the space rather than leave it blank. I then threaded some string through each letter - hey presto a banner!

Wedding dress hanger

 

 

I made my wedding dress its own special hanger. I just uses a sharpie, added our names one end, the date the other end and 'bride' in the middle. Pretty pleased with it to be honest, might make lovely BM one for his suit...

Wedding guest book update

I finished the guest book! I just used the same 'jenna sue' font as the invitations, cut out our names and the date from some black vinyl on my silhouette and fixed it on the front, looks all nice and finished now!

Henry the cat

My sister's cat is (almost!) as cute as mine!

Iced sugar cookies - wedding favour practise

I'm not brilliant at piping, and ive never tried piping royal icing but i really want to make iced cookied as my wedding favours so i figured id better brush up my skills!

The cookies are these amazing chocolate sugar cookies by sprinkle bakes (theyre so good that 4 cookies didnt make it to the photo opp!) and i followed this icing tutorial by the ever wonderful annie's eats

 

Initially i tried piping with just a plastic piping bag, no special tip, just the end cut off the bag and this wasnt great. The bag makes quite a flat stream of icing, not what i was looking for. I also made the icing slightly too thick. I found if it was super thick the tension of squeezing the bag make me go wonky. So second time around (blue icing) i used a proper metal piping tip, approx 2mm hole, and thinner icing and it was so much easier. I think i might have gone slightly the other way and made the blue icing too thin, as it spread more than i wanted, but it was still a better effect than previously. Next time i just need to pay really close attention to the icing thickness, thats the most important thing...

I also need to check whether the un-iced cookies freeze well, if they do then theyre definitely my wedding favour cookies!

Mini Bunting Cake Topper

Another cake topper! (I'm having multiple wedding cakes)

Isnt it cute! Its just some thick cotton thread sandwiched between triangles, a bit fiddly as theyre so tiny, but well worth the effort. I then split the top 1cm of 2 wooden skewers and slotted the thread in those. Im definitely using this on one of my cakes - yay!

Wire words cake topper

More wedding stuff trialling! Tried my hand at making a wire word cake topper. I love the effect but i forgot to give any of them legs so i can stick it in the cake!! I used 3mm aluminium wire, which is pretty thick and tougher to bend than i thought, so i had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to do most of it. I think i might use slightly thinner wire, 2 or 2.5mm, when i make the final one, so its slightly easier to handle. Just need to decide what style lettering to so, i think the one at the bottom is my fav, love that curly 'e'!

Ribbon bunting

I made some ribbon bunting to see if i like it for the wedding, maybe to hang behind the cake table - marquee walls can be so white! Its just 5(ish)cm strips of coloured jersey lightly knotted onto garden twine. So easy to do and i love the final effect. Its pretty heavy so i'll have to be careful how i hang it. Could make it with satin ribbon instead maybe, then it would be lighter...

 

Anyway, its a work in progress but loving the progress so far :)

Soft kitty...

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little bar of fur. Happy kitty sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr

(sheldon cooper and cats - two of my fav things combined!)

Dressing Gown Loop

Who makes a dressing gown without a loop to hang it up with! (well you can see from the picture who, but thats less dramatic!). Lovely BM got a new dressing gown for Christmas and its been driving me mad every since that it doesnt have a loop to hang it up!

So i finally fixed it last week and made my own loop with some cute spotty ribbon. So easy and now im not annoyed - win win!
 

Another Craft market

 

I did another craft market the other week, still didnt sell much (i'm thinking craft markets might not be my target audience), but really enjoy doing them :)

Crochet Taxidermy Rhino Kits

You can now crochet your own taxidermy rhino! Kits are available in my etsy shop :)

 

Crochet Lavender Pattern

I was going to have traditional button holes but the cost of them freaked me out a bit so i decided to make my own. After after not really finding anything flower based that i liked and that i could do myself, but loving this knitted lavender buttonhole, i decided that was the way to go. Ive yet to decide on the final look of the buttonholes but i wanted to get started on the lavender flowers asap.

So I found this cute lavender pattern but then managed to lose one of my set of dp needles and was so miffed about that that i refused to buy a new set (childish but true!). So i decided to try my own pattern but crochet them and this is what i ended up with
NB you need to know how to crochet i cord, this video is brilliant




I used Sirdar Sublime wools
Subline Luxury Aran Tweed in 365 Vineyard for the stalk
Subline Luxury Aran Tweed in 269 Indigo Tweed for the more mottled Lavenders
Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK in 160 Rubadub

Pattern
With lavender head wool and 3mm crochet hook
Chain 2
Rnd 1: 3 dc in 2nd dc in chain (3), join in the round
Rnd 2: 2 dc in each dc (6)
Rnd 3-9: dc in each dc (6)
This is your lavender head, do more or less rounds for a longer or shorter head


Your now going to swap to stalk coloured wool and swap from crocheting in the round to crocheting icord
NB. If you're able to crochet 3 stitches in the round them feel free to continue with that method but that's far too fiddly for me and i have to do icord
For icord you need to have 3 stitches on your hook, rather than the usual 1. So we're going to decrease the round from 6 stitches to 3 but leave all 3 on the hook

Continue in the round but with stalk coloured wool
Rnd 10: 2dctog

(1 dc left on hook)


Rnd 10 cont. 2dctog but only pull through 2 loops

(2 dc now on hook),


Rand 10 cont: 2dctog but only pull through 2 loops

(3 dc now on hook)


Rnd 11-19: work as icord (3)

(pic after 2 rows of icord)
Rnd 20: bind off
Weave in the ends and your finished :)

To make the stalk a bit harder im experimenting with pipe cleaners and lollipop sticks!

    

Wedding Invitations

The invitations have gone out! I printed them all myself, it was really easy. I used this lovely free font Jenna Sue for all the text and printed it in a lavender colour. To make them I just bought card blanks from hobbycraft and made a template for each page in microsoft word (use the column feature to print on the two halves). The hearts are just standard shapes in word with text added, and the little heart shape at the bottom was a clip art of two kissing snakes i already had - so easy!

 

I also included an invitation to my hen party, the font is Scriptina Pro, and i printed them onto blank postcards i found on ebay

 

A stag party save the date was also included, the stag is just clipart i already had, that font on Courier New.

Im so pleased how they turned out :)