The Easter Bunny finally comes to Cairo :)

Labels: , | at 18:30

Blankee decided he was in charge of being the Easter Bunny this year as he was tired of the Easter Bunny not turning up for the past 5 years, and he used the molds from the wiggly fingers visit to Hobby Craft back in February to help him :)

We decided although this is a food related post it was still considered crafty and not entirely foodie due to the molds used so therefore is allowed!

Sweet supplies:
 Pastry brush, copious amounts of cadbury's and galaxy chocolate (500g) and molds.

Next: Blankee broke all the chocolate and melted the chocolate so it was of a nice runny consistency and painted the molds, then he placed the molds in the fridge to set for roughly 10 mins and brushed the eggs again. (He did this 5 times in total)

Then: Blankee not being one to sit around wasting time moved onto the creme eggs whilst the big eggs were setting...mmmm! He got the recipe from Hoiski Poiski and the instructables found here:


He only followed it for the fondant and used goldern syrup rather than corn syrup which ended up being very yummy indeed. He used the mini molds and coated these in chocolate and then piped in the fondant and placed in the freezer to set for around 10 minutes.


When the chocolate was nice and firm he then popped the chocolate carefully out of the molds and 'glued' the creme egg halfs together with...you guessed it more chocolate :) and placed some inside the larger eggs and glued these tofether too.


Finally: All that was left for this Easter Blankee bunny to do was to wrap up his creations with good old tin foil


 Blankee says he will be taking orders for next year should the need arise.

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Ribbon Ballet Flats

| at 09:38



This is completely inspired by/stolen from my favourite blog.


I got these flats for £4 with the intention of putting the ribbon inside to tie across the top but instead I just used the loop of ribbon that was already in the back of the shoe (which happened to colour match perfectly) to slip the ribbon through and tie at the front or side.


There was also a bow at the front that I just unpicked. Simple and super springy cute. Now I just need a nice mint coloured dress to go with them.



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T-shirt Bag

| at 20:48


Howdy Wiggly Fingees, Just a quick one today to show you another bag that I made out of an old t-shirt. It was a long sleeved children's T (age 4-5 I think). I cut the shirt along the sides so that I had the largest rectangle possible and then stitched a simple seam the edges and hemmed the top. The strap is made from the sleeves (stretch the fabric out before you measure the length of the strap otherwise it'll be reeeeaaally long!). I folded the edges over and sewed a straight line to make it neat and then stitched it onto the sides of the bag with an X shape. And here it is being shown by my handsome model...


Ooh, and he's also wearing the first pair of shorts that I made him (before I got all fancy with the pockets!).



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Soft Reversible Boxes

Labels: | at 19:37

OK so crafting and blogging my creation all in one evening! Pressure from the other wiggly fingers and Hoiski Poiski has resulted in some rather awesome reversible boxes. (Please excuse picture quality, direct from my ipod)

I am going to be creating these in different sizes so i'll end up with a set of 3 in each colour but will make the others later. OK so how did I make these bad boys?

Add caption

So firstly I took an old top and of course some of the left over material I had from the chairs in the lounge, incredible how far that stuff is lasting - talk about fabric consistency throughout the apartment!



And then I cut them into rectangles (10" by 13") the next ones I make will be larger so I can store more things in them. (20" by 26")

I used the flowery top as the lining and the beige as the exterior.






You can guess who helped cut these out.
Next I folded each rectangle in half, with right sides facing and stitched down both sides, with a 1/2" allowance. Then I pressed open each seam and measured approx 4 1/2" on the corner (this helped form the bottom of the box) and sewed across and cut off the corners.


However, on the lining box I left a gap on one of the sides of approx 1" to be able to pull all the fabric through on completion on the boxes. 


 Next I turned the lining right side out and placed this inside the exterior box (so right sides are together) and pinned both pieces of fabric together making sure to line up the seams. Then I sewed 1/2" all the way around the top and pulled the whole box through the little hole like so...



And then voila...just experimented with which way round I wanted the material, I think my favourite is the beige and you can just see a hint of the lining inside rather than fully folded over as a cuff.








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reconstructed/recycled t-shirt bag

| at 10:14

Because sewing and writing blog posts is a perfectly legitimate reason not to revise for my exams here's another project :)

I used this old children's long sleeved t-shirt and pair of trousers to make a bag. I wanted the bag to be big enough to carry a drink, snack and a couple of toys and be small enough for the small-fry to carry. I wanted to keep the wording on the front of the t-shirt so I made my main temple 8"x9". After cutting along all the seams I cut three pieces from the top in this size, two pieces at 3"x8" for the sides, one piece at 3"x9" for the bottom and kept the neck ribbing for decoration.


The same sized pieces need to be cut from the trousers with an extra 8"x9" to make a pocket with. I used interfacing to make the bag more sturdy and ironed it onto the t-shirt pieces, but not the trousers. I laid all the pieces out flat in the order that they needed to be sewn together, with the extra trouser piece in place of the front piece.

To make the pocket I folded the front 8"x9" piece of the t-shirt over about 2" and stitched along the edge, I then sewed it onto the green piece down the centre to make two pockets. To stop the fabric stretching I sewed some ribbon along the edge which added some much needed prettiness. I sewed all of the sides together including the lettered piece for the flap. This is how it looks right sides out. 
I repeated the whole process with the trouser pieces (these will become the lining of the bag) and ended up with two semi-bag looking things.


I sewed the two flap pieces together, right sides together and then placed the bags one inside the other and pinned them. I sewed the two together around the edge, leaving about a 4" gap in the front of the bag to pull the insides through and hide the seams.

Lastly I sewed the ribbing over the opening to close it and make it look a little nicer and made a strap from the leftover fabric. I sewed ribbon along the whole of the strap to stop it stretched and attached it to the sides of the bag.












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Shorts

| at 10:16


I now understand why there are so many blogs about kids clothes. They're just so satisfying to make! They're small so you don't need much fabric; they don't have to be fitted perfectly; and they can be awesome bright colours. I've whipped up three pairs of shorts for the small fry this week and he looks so cute in them (even if he was embarrassed when I suggested he wears them for non-uniform day)! I've felt more confident after each pair so started playing about with pockets. These patches were stitched on the front of the basic shorts, with bias tape around the top edge to make it more sturdy and slightly more like a pocket.


I've also been trying to find uses for all the school polo shirts that we're acquired over the past few years that no longer fit. This is one with the collar chopped off and brown ribbed jersey added around the bottom and sleeves. Hmm. Definitely a work in progress with the t-shirt.

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Recycled Children's PJs

| at 11:55

Ahren is going through a huge growth spurt and suddenly none of his clothes fit him. His 6 yr old clothes are all in a bag in the corner of the living room because I refuse to throw anything away and the storage boxes under the bed are full of clothes from the past 6 years. So the fact that we have literally run out of storage space and because Toby keeps eyeing up my various craft-materials/projects-that-I'll-finish-one-day and saying 'we really need to start throwing stuff out' has made me tackle them, starting with some old jammies (and this time I took lots of pictures).

I grabbed a pair of pyjamas that Ahren insists on wearing even through they're way too short...


and laid them out flat. I chopped off the cuff that was around the bottom of the trousers and measured how much fabric I needed to add to make them long enough. I cut enough to go around the bottom of the leg from the front and back of the top using the existing seam and just sewed it on the trousers to extend the legs. Not the prettiest but it works.

Then I took a plain white t-shirt and cut off the arms so that I could add baseball sleeves in another colour using the part of the tee that I cut out as a template.

I used a yellow ribbed jersey fabric that was a similar colour to the pattern on the jammies to make the new sleeves. I wanted long sleeves so I just used a ruler to lengthen them before cutting the fabric.


Next I copied one of the space invaders from the pattern onto some lined paper and cut out to make a template. I pinned this to the old jammies sleeve and cut out.



Then I stitched it onto the front of the t-shirt with my sewing machine (I had planned to hand sew it but it wasn't too fiddly with the machine because it was all straight lines).


And done! One happy 7 year old in PJs that actually fit him. Hooray!





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