How to feel glam at a wedding

Well.... for those of you who also follow me on Facebook, I apologise that you'll already have seen these pics and have heard me getting excited about this earlier in the week, but I am now the proud owner of a one of a kind, handmade fascinator, designed & made by me!

I'm really really pleased with it as I went on a one day course last May and made this one under the one-to-one guidance of the tutor:

And then I made a couple more that same week (they were for Seren and a friend of mine - all for a wedding the following weekend!)

Seren - my ever willing model!

'Scuse the slightly blurry pic - in a rush to get to the wedding!

But since last May I've not made any headwear at all, so to have remembered all the stages and achieved something so profesional looking has absolutely made my week!

Ok, enough blowing my own trumpet! I'm off to see what's been happening on the Handmade Monday blogs :-)

Super Sweet Blogging Award

I've got to thank not one, but two of my lovely Blogging friends this week as both of them have nominated me for the 'Super Sweet Blogging Award' which is really nice and surely means twice the amount of cake???

So thank you Ali, from Ali Bee Creations and Sarah from The Lilac Dragonfly :-)

I have to answer 5 questions and then choose a Bakers Dozen of other blogs to pass on the award to.

So the easy part first... the 5 questions:

1. Cookies or Cake?

Hmmm I think it would have to be Cake.

2. Vanilla or Chocolate?

Always Chocolate!

3. What is your favourite sweet treat?

Chocolate - in any situation! Although my husband is always scandalised that I can eat chocolate with alcohol, which is quite wrong in his eyes!

4. When do you crave sweet things the most?

When I'm awake!

5. If you had a sweet nickname, what would it be?

I don't have a nickname at all, but I always find one from Gavin & Stacey very amusing - Sugar Tits, though I'm not sure I'd want to answer to in a public place :-)

Now, the harder part... to choose 13 other bloggers to receive the award:

Free Spirit Designs

Mythillogical

Handmade Harbour

Witchway Beauty

Aisling Designs

OkiFolki

Erica Price Designs

You Sew Should

Isle of Shalotte

The Feminine Touch

Creating Trouble

Handbags by Helen

Goodnight Boutique


As for what I've been up to this week... boringly I finished off a couple of orders that were just replicas of previous orders, so not too exciting photo-wise, but I'm working on something for easter.... An Easter Bunny wreath, which will be available in my Etsy Store next week:

Can't decide on the positioning of the bunnies yet

And a sneak peek of what I'm working on this week coming...

Can you guess what it is?

I'll give you a clue, it's for me, I'm going to a wedding in a fortnight and my dress is red and black..... Yup, it's the Sinamay to make a fascinator! Looking forward to showing you the finished results next week, but now I'm heading over to Handmade Monday to check out what everyone else has been up to.

PS. This wonderful coaster that I bought from my lovely Etsy friend Dayz who runs the fantastic store Cheeky Geeky rather sums up how I'm feeling today!!

One of many gorgeous coasters by Cheeky Geeky

Oh and PPS. I promise a pic of the Daffodil Brooch this week didn't I? Now available here I've already had two very happy customers receive theirs!

Now I'm really going over to Handmade Monday!

6 Nations Rugby Felt Rose Brooch

I'm feeling a bit guilty this week as not only have I not done much crafting, due to half term, but I've also not posted since last week's Handmade Monday post.

I am going to try and blog more frequently, but in turn it involves remembering to take some pictures as I'm pretty sure the blog posts are more interesting if there's something to look at!

One day I'll get more organised :-)

In the mean time, this week's post, which is for the Handmade Monday link up over at Wendy's wonderful Handmade Harbour blog is about the 6 Nations Rugby.... I promise there is something crafty in there too though!

We are quite a big rugby supporting household - my husband is Irish, the kids were born in Wales and I support England, so there's always chaos, shouting and arguing here! This year my Dad and my Hubby were lucky enough to score tickets to see England v Ireland in Dublin (last weekend) so the kids and I stayed at home and watched the match on telly trying to catch a glimpse of Daddy and Grandad.

As the kids' England tops were too small to wear, I decided to kit them out in white tops and make them both an English Rose badge/brooch to wear.

Here's me in my England top:

Here's the work in progress shot whilst watching the rugby (trying very hard not to stab myself!):

Seren wearing her badge with pride:

Patrick refused to be photographed wearing his, so here's a pic of the finished item:

These are now available in my Etsy Shop and by midweek I'm hoping to have a daffodil added to the shop too as a couple of Welsh friends have pointed out that it's St David's Day in a couple of weeks and they'd like something patriotic to wear!

Have a great week - I'm heading over to Handmade Monday now to catch up on all my crafty friends' adventures. Simmi xx

The Kindness of Strangers

I had a real surprise last week - I received a phone call from a lady who asked if I was the woman mentioned in the local paper who is running Teddy Bear Making Workshops - something else I bravely (crazily?!) said I would do along side the Children's Craft Parties I told you about the other week... here....

Anyway, I said yes, and asked was she interested in joining one of the classes, but no, she had plenty of experience making teddies as she used to run similar workshops, but that sadly she couldn't sew any more due to arthritis in her hands and that she had a bunch of patterns that she no longer needed, but couldn't bear (geddit??? Sorry!) to throw out and would I like them?

Would I???

Of course I lept at this very generous offer and said I would be straight round.... well, I wasn't expecting quite as much as she had to give me...

Two FULL boxes of soft toy patterns

Vintage teddy bear making book

teddy bear pattern collections

Another vintage teddy bear creations book

I was absolutely bowled over when I arrived at this lady's house and she presented me with these two enormous boxes of patterns, supplier lists, trade magazines and journals - I was like a child in a sweet shop!!

Not only that, but she wouldn't take any money from me for them. She just wanted to help someone else trying to make it in the 'craft world'.

So I can honestly say I have really experienced the kindness of strangers and I feel so so grateful.

I know it's not a proper handmade post, but I just didn't think such a lovely gesture should go unnoticed. I am posting this over at the Handmade Monday link up but keep your eyes peeled later in the week for a more 'handmade' post! 

Have a good one xx

Work In Progress

For this week's Handmade Monday I thought I'd do more of a pictoral post than anything else as I haven't got anything finished to share with you today.

I took a pic of a Work in Progress from my working week - making an R2D2 hat as part of a commission

As you can see there's also a Campervan with 3 wheels half done and there's a couple of other half finished bits hiding in my craft box - I'm terrible for starting more than thing at once!

(Thankfully though they did all get finished in the right order!)

Then this afternoon I was quietly sitting at the dining room table cutting out enormous letters for a commission (I've been asked to make a 5 foot name banner for another craft business so they can use it at craft fairs and it's all in this gorgeous hot pink colour! Not sure how I'm going to show you the finished pics of something so big, but that's a problem for next week) Anyway, I was sitting there quietly on my own when my 4 year old daughter Seren came up and asked if she could do some cutting out too, so on some of the scraps I drew her some flowers and she sat next to me happily cutting for ages:

I love the look of concentration!

And then of course the peace was shattered by my 2.5 year old son, Patrick coming up and asking if he could cut out too. Here he is sitting opposite Seren watching carefully to what she's doing and within 20 seconds of this being taken he was pouting because it was 'too difficult' and back to the telly he went!

Hope you've all had a lovely weekend :-) I'm off now to check out the other lovely blogs at Wendy's link up party on the Handmade Harbour website.

St Patrick's Day Parade

Today I'm revealing the first in the line up for the St Patrick's Day parade here at Grace's Favours HQ:

He's been made to the same dimensions and exacting standard as our normal Campervans, but he comes with a removable Shamrock Top Hat Brooch:

I've been trying to take some more interesting, lifestyle type shots, but I'm not sure I've got it quite right yet...

There will be some more entrants to the parade next week and hopefully my photo styling will continue to improve!

To buy this lovely fella, pop over to the shop

Children's Craft Party

Waaaaaay back in December, I rashly agreed to run a children's birthday party at ZigZags in Coleford - obviously I was distracted, as entertaining a group of 9 year olds given I have no experience of what they can do and might like isn't something I'd usually have agreed to quite so readily!

However yesterday afternoon rolled around scarily quickly and so on I ploughed.

The girls had decided they wanted to make things for their teddies. What exactly was up to me.

I had a bit of a play with some of my the kids teddies and came up with two options for the girls to make - waistcoats or bags for their teddies.

What I should have done was come up with things that I could draw templates for so that the girls could each have had a template to work from. As it was, the 2 Mum's who stayed to help and I had to spend the first 45 mins going round each girl in turn and cut out their waistcoats because of course, all the bears were different sizes!

No-one seemed to mind, but I think next time (Nex time? Brave? or possibly just silly!) I'd try to plan activities that meant they could get straight on without everyone having to wait get started.

Despite my initial nerves and misgivings, the party went really well, the parents were happy, the birthday girl and her friends were all very happy - phew!

So, here is the result of 11 girls beavering away for an hour and a half:

They looked fab! Because I've taken the pics on my phone you can't see all the detail, but they'd really gone all out and decorated their bears' accessories brilliantly! (and now I've got the Jungle Book song, 'The Bear Necessities' in my head!)

And then after they'd gone, I turned round and this was the scene that greeted me! The chaos they left behind:

And this was after the Mum had done a good 5 mins of tidying up!!!

Still... I'm feeling brave (silly?) so I've said to the lovely owner of the shop that I will do more parties if she gets any interest. What am I letting myself in for?

As usual, I'm linking this up to the lovely Handmade Monday party over at Wendy's Handmade Harbour Blog

Tutorial....How to Make an Orange Candle

All my lovely Facebook fans, will know that I posted a pic of a recent make on Wednesday morning. This make was slightly different to my usual makes, in that it consisted of an orange and some olive oil!

I saw this first on Pinterest and for once when I said I'd seen something cool on Pinterest and described it to my husband, he'd actually already heard of this one!

So here's what you'll need:

An orange (any size)
Olive Oil
A knife
Matches (at least 5 in my experience!)

First of all, making sure you go through the skin only and not the flesh, carve all the way round the middle of the orange like so:

Then ease your thumb under into the slit and slide your thumb round the inside of the orange peel, so that you peel the skin away, without tearing into the skin.

Then you need to gently pull the peel off the orange flesh, like this:

You need to do the same for both sides, so that you have two empty orange peel halves and then you need to pour a little bit of the oil into the side of the orange peel that has the 'wick'

I've trimmed a bit of the 'wick' off as it was quite long and might have scorched the top half of the orange:

Then, although a bit of the top half of the peel has come away with the flesh, I've cut a bigger hole in the top so that again, the flame doesn't scorch the top of the orange

 Then it's time (once the oil has had a chance to sink into the pith) to try and light your candle. I usually find that I'm too impatient and haven't left it for long enough to soak up the wick properly, so it takes about 5 attempts to light!

Once lit, put the top half of your orange on:

And turn off the lights, to get the full effect!

 It should last for about half an hour, depending on the size of orange & how much oil you've used

Gorgeous!

Hope you enjoy and I'd love to see pics of ones you make.

Craft fail!

But it's sort of come good - thank gawd!

Well, what with all the lovely snow we've had this weekend in the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire)

The view out of my dining room window

My daughter Seren (aged 4) announced on Friday morning, over breakfast and talking about snowman building, that her gloves didn't fit and could I please make her some more to go out in, TODAY! Talk about pressure!

So I drew round her hand, enlarged the template a bit and off I went. Here's the first attempt:

Possibly the right side for a doll!

That'll teach me not to make the first attempt out of the final material you want to use!!

So take 2:

Fine finger size, but the wrist opening would barely fit a newborn!

By this time, I was sweating, cursing, running out of thread and material.... the kids were champing at the bit to get out into the snow and my husband was getting bored with trying to keep them entertained inside, so I decided that mittens were the way forward. That's when I realised I didn't have enough of the original, more interesting material :-(

So out we went with Seren sporting these, tucked into her coat sleeves as I'd not had time to russle up any elastic!

The kids' first snowman

Not very happy with them though, I spent most of Friday night embellishing them, so they now look like this (still missing the elastic though!)

I'm quite happy now with them (though it would have been a lot quicker to sew the patterned bit on first!) and thankfully Seren loves them... but of course now Patrick wants some (in pink to match his sister's, of course!)

This week is the 100th Handmade Monday so keep your eyes peeled on Wendy's lovely blog for some wonderful surprises :-)

Giving up the Day Job...

... Means that I can do all those really exciting things like:

- The laundry
- The weekly shop
- Go to Weight Watchers
- Tidying the house.....

But it also means I can spend more time doing cool things like making these gorgeous baby booties (these are actually for a friend's baby, but they will also get listed as a made to order item in my shop):

 and then embellishing them with rockets and planets :-)

It is SO nice to be able to say 'I LOVE my job'!

Now I've got to get on with my tax return - I've been putting it off!

But in between I'll be catching up with everyone over on the Handmade Monday link up :-)

Too early to be thinking about St Patrick's Day?

Photo courtesy of Luxpresso.com

Happy New Year!

I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year - any sore heads out there today? I'm feeling a little delicate after a great evening at our place with some good friends, homemade curry (well, as the diet started today we thought last night should be a decent blow out!) and lots of yummy wine, champagne, toffee vodka and Baileys!

So as with all good hangovers, we've been talking about future plans and the usual resolutions and I started thinking about all the exciting things I can do with my business now that I am able to dedicate all my energies (when not being a wife, parent, housekeeper, chauffeur, cook, cleaner.... you get the picture?!) to it.

So I started thinking about Valentine's and St Patrick's Days... I think I will plan some new product lines which have the same items at their centre, but each will focus on the different celebration... so far I am thinking about VW Campervans and VW Beetles as the central items - they are certainly some of my best sellers, but I was also thinking about Mini Coopers and possibly Morris Minors.

Photo courtesy of Skybluefreelance.info

Photo courtesy of Classicandperformancecar.com

What other vehicles do you think would work well in felt?

The lovely thing about the car/campervan range is that they can be personalised, which is great for gift giving and they're a bit different which thankfully seems to appeal to folk!

Anyway, right now I have to get my house guests up (for the second time - they've all had to retire to bed for the afternoon!) and find something for my kids to eat for dinner.... ahhhh the life of a working mum :-)