Doodles

When I am bored or nervous I tend to doodle. So with two four hour plane journies within a week I made sure I was prepared with my sketch pad and some decent doodling pens.

Sometimes I copy designs from a book, like the above mehndi design. But mostly I just mess about and get covered in ink and end up looking scruffy.

Lillia and I are busy today making salt dough and practising our ballet (she looks beautiful and graceful, I look like a drunkard at a wedding) so I thought I'd do a quick and easy upload of the doodles I churned out on my flights to and from Cyrpus last week. Can you tell I am a nervous flyer?

I like this one, especially the leaves..



Not so keen on this one but it's hubby's favourite as he thinks the little aliens are funny...

This one got me through take-off on both flights...

This is my favourite...

xx

Day 282: Swappity swap

Day 282 already!? How fast time flies. It's only a couple of months before I reach the end of my first year of blogging. Things have certainly taken a different turn than I expected when I set out on my crafting/blogging journey - what started as an intention to include more craft in my life has evolved into a much larger and less specific reality. But more on that next month I think. Right now I am too excited to navel gaze for I have my first swap to share with you!

I have received my fabrics from my swap with Parallel Botany...

I am in love with this green flower one especially, the green (which I just can't capture properly on camera) is my favourite shade. I think this is going to have to be incorporated into a cushion for my living room so I can look at it every day, and it matches my..ahem..colour scheme* perfectly...

She also sent some lace trim, which is lovely, I didn't have anything like this before. And the fabric it is pictured on has leaping fish on it! I just love this fabric...

I am especially excited about this fabric, which I thought was the Empire State Building but then after a quick flick through my holiday snaps realised it is in fact the Chrysler Building. I have been to NYC only once and I loved it, it was for my first year wedding anniversary before mortgages, children and responsibility and it was just a wonderful trip with lots of happy memories. I will need to make something travel related with this I think...


Next up is this gorgeous blue birds fabric, which Lillia has selected as her favourite too...

Lisa also threw in this cute little flower, which I am going to pin to my work bag to take the edge off the drizzly London commute I have to endure four days a week...

To top it all off she also sent me a mixtape mini CD of happy songs which she called "Beautiful Day", which I have already listened to twice and which Lillia and I have danced to once.

I love swaps! Now I just have to get creative.

* when I say "colour scheme" it's more a series of fortunate accidental matches with some serious clashing thrown in.

Weddings and swaps

Things have been a bit hectic round here the last few weeks. My best friend got married on Wednesday in Cyprus and the weeks leading up to the big day were a blur of preparation. As well as this I was frantically and nervously preparing swap parcels for my two first swaps.

We flew to Cyprus very early on Tuesday morning, leaving our little girl with my mum. It was a big moment as we have never left her for more than one night before and this time we'd be gone for three so I found it hard, though Lillia was as happy as a lark!

The weather in Cyprus was sizzlng and sunny and we had much fun splashing about in the pool and drinking pimms before the boys all departed for the night. We spent most of Wednesday getting ready - the bride, the other bridesmaid and me - they are both really good at being girls and have lots of useful girl things like lip gloss, nail varnish and stuff you put in your hair to de-frizz it. It is a slightly alien world to me as I have never been great at being a girly-girl, but I enjoyed it very much, I used every pink and glittery bottle I could find.

The wedding was beautiful and so romantic and the bride and groom had a brilliant day. That's me on the bride's left with the brown hair...

Here's me and hubby, he was a groomsman and made the "best man" speech...

The happy couple...

It was all over very quickly. We we due to fly back late on Thursday and be back in the wee small hours of Friday morning but our plane was cancelled and in the end we got back seventeen hours late. It was a bit of a nightmare and reminded me why I don't generally fly! Plus we missed Lillia for a fourth night, arriving back after she had gone to bed. She was delighted to find us there in the morning though and although we are knackered it is soooo good to be home.

I had wanted to write a post about my swaps before I went but just didn't have a second. I took part in two - the first a general craft swap on the Here We Are Together blog, and the second a simple fabric swap from Parallel Botany.

As I am new to sewing crafts I was a bit nervous, and because I left things late of course I was under more pressure! I am not sure if either of my swaps have been received yet but I think a little teaser or two won't hurt.

For the first swap we are sending to one person and receiving from somebody else. I sent mine to Kristina who writes Growing a Better Me, though I am not sure if she knows she got me! She likes cats, black, teal, bright green and black. Here's a few teaser pictures...

For the second swap I exchanged fabrics with the swap organiser Lisa...



I really enjoyed the process of selecting suitable patterns and colours and reading through people's blogs to try and get to know them a bit. I really liked the wrapping and presenting of the swaps. I think that swaps may be a bit addictive! Plus of course there's the excitement of getting your little parcel in the post.

It's the end of a long long week so I am off to spend some quality time with little Lillia xx

Discovering felt

I've been incredibly busy with a million things this week so I have neglected my blog. Bad blogger, bad.

However it has been worth it as I have been having lots of fun with felt! My daughter had picked a pack of felt as her treat when we were out shopping and it reminded me of a post I had seen on the June at Noon blog. June had made cute little felt envelopes with felt letters and cards to go inside, and interchangeable addresses and labels. June kindly agreed to let me copy her idea and I spent a happy evening stitching away on the sofa...



I made everything as childlike as possible,though I can't say I originally intended for the addresses to look like child's writing - this was because I couldn't face leaving the comfort of the sofa to get a pen to write the names properly before stitching! But I like how they came out.

I made little postcards by stitching two pieces of felt together and popping some cardboard inside to make them stiff, this makes it easier for Lillia to push them into the envelopes...

I am hoping this will help her learn her alphabet and I am going to make more. She has already learnt L and D through playing with these, the letters represent who the mail is from, and we talk about the sounds they make - D is for Daddy and so on.



She has really loved these and she now wants me to make a post-bag to carry them in! Daddy has promised to make her a post box today which I am sure will involve a lot of glue and red paint. Thankfully I will be out most of the weekend for a hen night so I won't see the carnage.

Speaking of the hen night! I am bridesmaid at my best friend's wedding (in Cyprus!) later this month and today is the start of the hen weekend. We will be having wine tasting, massages, manicures and general silliness at her house all afternoon and evening.

Having discovered the joy of felt I made some gift bags for all the hens and the bride-to-be. The colour theme is pink and black...

Inside the bride's is some pink fizz, sweets, a "luxurious" (ahem) eye mask, an antique perfume bottle (spitalfields market!), a bath bomb from Lush and a few other bits. And yes that is a lobster you can see...because, of course, she has found her lobster...



Inside the hens' bags are face masks, sweets, mini fairy wands, bath bombs, stickers and bookmarks in the pink and black colour theme. I wrapped the bath bomb in tissue paper and held it all together with cute little bird stickers. I really like the love-birds one for the bride's bath bomb...

Well I am off to paint my toe nails pink and black! Have a lovely weekend everyone :)