My heart in your hand

Here is my Valentine's day present for the Comedian.

We usually give each other underwear but I changed that by asking for the perfume below this year. Left to my own devices I decided to get my man something that may not seem romantic to anyone else but I know he'll be really touched by. He suffers from psoriasis on his hands and has tried most creams and often spends the evenings with cotton gloves on while the cream soaks in. I decided to buy some extra nice cream and make him some soft red gloves plus a bag to hold it all, oh and a little heart brooch....


and a card to match.....



I really hope he likes them :D

Dolly Perfume

This isn't about my own craft I'm afraid. I have a few things in the pipeline but life (and snow!!) keeps interrupting me. I just wanted to blog about this and it seemed more a crafty blog type thing than a family blog type thing... if you know what I mean.

When I was around the age my daughter is now, about four years old, I went into a Pharmacy with my mother and spotted some children's perfumes in the shape of little dollies. They came in various fruity fragrances and were in colours appropriate to each fragrance. My lovely mum agreed to buy me one but I was stuck in a dilemma. I loved the smell of oranges, but my favourite colour was pink (like my daughter's is now!).... should I go with the lovely orange smelling, but orange coloured dolly, or should I go with the pretty pink, but not so nice strawberry smelling dolly?

In the end I let my nose win and chose the orange dolly.... and I still have her!


She still smells ever so slightly of the perfume too! I let my daughter play with her now.
I was faced with a similar dilemma recently when I discovered that Gwen Stefani had brought out a range of dolly perfumes herself!


Now I have funny pheromones, it seems like whatever perfume I try it smells awful on me, so I'm always on the lookout for a perfume that would work. Generally anything fruity or with Jasmine seems to work, it's anything too musky that goes wrong. I read the descriptions of these 5 and two of them, "Music" and "G", sounded like they might actually work for me. I spotted them in Debenhams and tried them out. My favourite of the scents was "Music" but I really liked the blonde Gwen Stefani style bottle for "G", which to choose?


Again I let my nose win and am now the proud owner of this....



So far so good the fragrance really works for me, now I just need to stop my daughter stealing it!

Birthday Gift Bags

There are 15 pupils in Papaya's class including her. That means 15 5th birthdays this school year and 14 gift bags I need to make for the presents! Here are two of them for a party tomorrow. I love the 50's style little children fabric! The flowers that are holding on the gift tags are actually little brooches so kind of part of the present themselves.



Inside the bags are a book and card for each girl. I hope they like them :)

Shortie Pyjamas

Shortie Pyjamas in dinosaur print for my non-god-godson and robot print for his big brother.



I made them with drawstring waists, as they're skinny boys, and popper fastening for easy dressing. Of course they each come in matching bags ;)

More Xmas wrapping bags.

These ones are for my cousins. I enjoyed matching the colours of the bags and their ribbons to the contents. The tags are some of our saltdough creations with the message written on using a Sharpie.



The pink bag had a couple of homemade goodies inside too, a box and an unintentionally spider-looking brooch.

Funky flower brooches

I knew as soon as I saw this tutorial to make felt flower brooches that I had to give it a try. In the end I made three brooches to give as presents this Xmas but I forgot to take a photograph of one of them before I gave it away! The brooch above was for my mother, and ended up larger than I would have liked but I reckon it would look great on a coat or a hat.


This green and turquoise brooch was for my sister-in-law. After I had sewn around the back of the brooches and added the pin, I cut a circle of felt and and glue-gunned it in place to seal the whole thing and give a better finish.


All three brooches were rather large and un-wieldy so I need to put some practise in to make some more delicate ones!

Jewellery Boxes

Another part of my family's presents, I made these Jewellery boxes for my mother and my sister-in-law. The boxes were made by decorating some papier mache blanks I found in my local Hobbycraft. The inner circle in the lids was removable so I was able to decorate it separately from the rest gluing on a fabric or paper to suit each person. I glued the pattern on both sides so the inside of the box lid was decorated too. the rest of the box I painted using two coats of emulsion and then sprayed with varnish to seal it.



The green box is for my sister-in-law. I used the same fabric I had used to make her a badge and picked out the green colour for the rest of the box.



The red box is for my mother. I chose the patterned paper to coordinate with a book I had bought her. The red was so that it would match her bedroom. I found some glittery self-adhesive border supposed to be used for scrapbooking in Hobbycraft too so used that to add a pretty detail.