No. 17 - Pay it Forwards

{as Blogged here - but i thought it might be time to start catching up with this blog.......}


At the beginning of the year I decided to take part in the Pay It Forwards my friend Lizzie put on her FB status and I had replies from Helen, Helen and Rach on the blog and Sam and Lisa on twitter. Sam moved into a new house in January and I made her a little something then and its been a long time coming but I finally got my act together and got the rest of my Pay It Forwards gifts in the post this week. Hopefully they should have arrived with their recipients by now {if not then it might not be a surprise any more, oooops}. I also popped a package over to Lizzie last weekend, just because I thought she might like it too.

I decided that I was going to put a little package together of some things I thought might be fun to receive rather than sending just one thing. Plus, this way it gave me an excuse to try out some bits I had seen and couldn’t see a reason to make otherwise.

So this is what each recipient got;

*I saw some super cute doorstops in a shop in Bath and though – Hmmmmm, with this new sewing machine of mine I can easily make those. So I did. Not quite as professionally as the shop. But I bought some grosgrain and some stick on Velcro, and using some samples and ends of material I had I crafted some doorstops.

I made them by turning the fabric right side in, and sewed a band at the top, wider than the Velcro is. I then sewed the edges of the bag together. Then to make them stand up I created a flat bottom. I am not sure what that is called but you can see what to do here. I then sewed on the grosgrain as a little handle and covered where this was with the stick on Velcro. Voila. Done.

They have been delivered flat, but once filled with some rice or gravel they work a treat. As they were made from samples and ends, the one above is just one of the designs I made.

* I also made some cute little button earrings from some pairs of matching buttons I had. Again, all the gifts are different as I didn’t have more than one set of matching button. I finished them off by packaging them up on one of my classic moo cards.

*Next I bottled some ‘homemade vanilla into some 100ml plastic bottles. I made some rum vanilla extract earlier in the year, but it hasn’t been quite the vanilla success I had hoped so I’ll be keeping it for me. So I had to make some afresh with a vodka batch for the Pay It Forwards. It wasn’t started quite early enough for the recipients {I didn’t check the rum one early enough} to be able to use right away, but in a couple of months it’ll be perfect. And as the vanilla matures and gets used, it can be topped up with more vodka and vanilla and left to infuse again.

*And I also added a recipe card with a recipe for my favourite banana bread recipe on it. The recipe cards are postcards I had printed from moo. As one side is a shiny postcard I had to buy a new super fine marker to write on them.

Everything was then packaged up in some tissue, tied with bakers twine and then tagged with, you guessed it, more cards from Moo, this time some ‘Handmade with Love’ cards that are made from their free business cards offer {Google it if you fancy some}, with the bit that tells you it’s a free card craft knifed off and the corners rounded {and because I cut the free bits off, I have a stack of 15% off at Moo.com codes – if you want one, leave me a message and I’ll send you a code}.

Each package is a bit of a lottery as all the bags and earrings are different and I wrapped them, sealed the envelopes and then stuck on the address labels, so I am not sure who received what but I hope they like the package they get. 

It arrived

My Blurb book made it. 


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No.8 365 - A year in photo

365 

I did it. I made another Blurb book - this time of my 2010 Shuttercal 365. It's been cool to look back on the year and make some sort of record of it. I know the Shuttercal does the whole recording the year thing, but this is like a wrap up of 2010. 
Each month has a DPS consisting of the months Shuttercal and a shot from that month, and then there are 14 pages in the middle which are taken up with shots from the year, not in much order, but ones I liked. 


I used the Bookify web programme as I cant download Booksmart {thanks to my antivirus not switching off}, but it worked pretty well, and although you don't have as much control or page layouts as with Booksmart, I think that it's done the job pretty well {and to be honest, it probably made the process about 100% quicker as I couldn't faff as much}. 
With regards to the size and style - I went with the small square book with 40 pages, partly because the images of the month calendars I got from the Shuttercal pages weren't very big, and would be pixelated on a bigger page, and also partly because of cost!  I have the book on order now so I'll be sure to post when I get it back in the flesh, so to speak. 
If your thinking about making a book, Astrid at Hei Astrid has some great tips on making Blurb books {she is a Blurb book aficionado}. I second her suggestions to keep your photo libraries organised - this is the first year that I have organised my images as the year has gone on, and it has made it super simple to find my pics for this project. And, I like her like Blurb - its a simple site to use and having used a couple of other sites in the past, I think their printing is of a higher quality. I cant wait to get the book now. 

Cushions - How to.

At the request of Nic's Notebook I have put together a little 'How-To' about the cushions I made. I am new to this sewing game so I'm not very technical I'm afraid. 
I also didn't take any pictures whilst I was going along, so I hope it makes sense. 

1. Once the cushion inner {IKEA Granat} had been bought I laid out the fabric on a flat surface and marked round the cushion with pins to get an idea of how big it was {if you put them side by side, the ones I made aren't quite the same size because of this. Maybe I should have used a tape measure? }
2. I cut out one piece of fabric the size of the cushion for the front of the cushion. 
3. I cut another piece of fabric the same width as the cushion, but made sure it was about 8 inchs longer than the cushion was in length. This piece of fabric was then cut in half to make the back of the cushion.
4. These two pieces of back will eventually overlap so I folded one of the raw edges on either piece over {it was actually the edges I had just cut when I cut the longer piece in half.} and sewed it to form a neat edge. 
5. The I pinned the right sides of the fabric together, so it was now wrong side out. I made sure the two back pieces I had just sewed overlapped by a couple of inches, trying to make sure that the outside of the flaps was about in the middle of the cushion. Because the flaps at the back are overlapping and were the same size, one of them hung over the edge of the seam a long way. The other fitted about right. 
6. Now I sewed all the way round the cushion to form a square. 
7. Once the edges were sewed - I trimmed the edges close to the seams so that the corners looked better and turned it the right way round. 
8. There you go - cushions.  

No. 2 - Making cushions

Apologies for the bad image quality - it's the camera on my phone :(

In case you missed the post on my main blog in which I tell you just how spoilt I was for my birthday - I got a bright pink sewing machine from the girls. I love it. 
The bright pink sewing machine was threaded up on monday night, and last night {after a trip to Ikea to get parts of a friends birthday gift, where I also picked up cushion inners} I finally put it to work to make the cushions we have been wanting for our front room. I'd seen and consequentially bought the most amazing fabric in Ish on Sharrowvale Rd in Sheffield, after we'd decided that the room needed some colour {it has been a mix of beige and brown for a long time now} and I think, now they are done they're just what we needed. That beige sofa and beige throw are pretty plain. 


I haven't quite ventured into putting zips on the cushions, as I have heard from a very adept sewing friend, that they're quite hard to do, but I am pretty happy with how they have turned out. I mean, how wrong could I go sewing squares. 


Lets see how I get on when I am trying to make something a little more adventurous.......