Time To Be Out And About …… Me Thinks ………

As often happens during the year I'm really struggling at the moment to get any crafting done and in turn, get posts written to go with whatever I do, so for the next little while I think I will only post on a Monday, be it crafts, charity shop finds, objects of desire etc. I'm not ready to hang my Fiddle-Fart boots up yet, but the opportunity to have long weekends away at the moment, after soooooooo long in lockdown, is just a far greater pull.  I'm sure that once summer grows into autumn I'll start to panic about Halloween and Christmas and I'll be champing at the bit again!

So, last weekend the whole family stayed at  the Drayton Manor Park Hotel (Thomasland) and Park for Iris's seventh birthday, where Lu was way more excited than the little ones to have her picture taken, at breakfast, with the Fat Controller, such a lovely face! We also managed to fit in a day exploring the pleasures of Tamworth's finest charity shops, but sadly they yielded absolutely nothing, our money, for once, was safe!

However last Monday Evesham yielded sooooooooooo much, including this little fella found abandoned on the children’s shelf for 50p.  Now my gut feeling is, after some research, that this was probably the real 1960’s Danish deal, backed up by the number of watchers it had and how quickly it sold. If it is, I perhaps should have gone with my instinct and added a little more to the buy now price, however I am more than happy with what I got, considering what I paid.

Four retro kitsch, lustreware elephants - £1.25 the set

I also found a Super Badge-It Maker for £1.50 (no pictures sorry, too boring)  – complete with the badges (often missing), perfect for Iris and Bertie to make little fairing gifts for the end of the school year for their teachers. This badge maker has the facility to make three different badge shapes (I’ve had one before) and once the badges are used up, I will return it from whence it came, but £1.50 was well worth it as the refill badges, if you can find them, cost a fortune!

And my best buy of the week? Only this crocheted blanket for £4!  It’s mahooooooosive. It’s had a good wash with a ton of fabric softener and only one square needs a repair.  The ribbon binding is a little ragged in places, so I think its definitely got some age to it, however, I will leave it exactly as it is as it’s all part of it’s story.  I think this will be my sofa snuggling blanket as the nights draw in, so much more comforting and characterful than my boring old B M Bargains throw.

1988 Precious Moments “Wishing You Roads Of Happiness” - £1

And, as you read this I will be travelling back from a weekend in Portsmouth with Lu, where we will have taken in some much needed sea air, eaten a little candy floss, if we can find some, squandered a bucket full of 2p’s in the arcades and taken in the charity shops of Winchester and Chichester along the way!  Happy days!

My Re-Vamped Pine Shelves – A Sneak Preview, Not Quite Finished.

No, my £30 pine shelf unit is not done yet, the painting bit yes, but I now need to finish it all off with three coats of satin varnish.

It’s been undercoated ………..

……. followed by three coats of a deep turquoise paint, left over from my spare room/craft room a little while ago.

I was able to remove three of the shelves, which made things a lot easier having received the same treatment as above.

The lighter coloured paint for the back panel came from my lovely neighbour Kata, this left over from her main bedroom!  It was a touch too pale, so I mixed in some of my paint with it and it looks pretty OK.

This is how it looks now, the light isn’t the best. The back panel edges have been masked off and it’s just had one coat of the darker paint on the inner sides, with two more coats to go.  Is it going to work?  I’m still not sure, but I think if I can’t get used to it being in the lounge, hiding the side of the fridge freezer, after a few weeks, I think it could possibly fit/go in the hall, which is a bit on the bland side at the moment.

The colours give it a sort of Greek holiday feeling.  I came back from holiday three years ago with this bracelet, saying that I wanted my bedroom colour to reflect our annual Greek odysseys and my favourite colour.

https://www.facebook.com/GreenshopsPlaka

Thank to Covid our Greek holiday has been put back twice now, hopefully we’ll finally make it next year, 2022, when we have booked a return stay in Elounda in Crete. Lu and I have already planned an long evening in Plaka, just up the road, to visit the Green Shop again, which only sells, as you can see, what I would call turquoise.

……… and goodness ………. am I going to spend with very unfettered, gay abandon!

Leopard Print Birthday Card.

This card is A5 in size, using an A4 sheet of black card, scored and folded in half.

It’s Lu’s birthday coming up and she does love a little Bet Lynch leopard skin, so that’s the idea behind this card.

There’s no great shakes to it, just random gold and white letters from the various alphabet sets I have, mat and layered very roughly on black then orange card and arranged on a piece of leopard print card (from an animal print pack from Wilko).

Originally I was simply going to fold the A4 leopard print in half for the card base (as above) but it seemed to be lacking something, so I cut down the print a little and then backed it on orange, before sticking it to the black card blank.  To be honest, it works either way, it’s just me being anal with my mat and layering!

Framed Robot – I Love You To The Moon And Back

Rather than make Iris and Bertie birthday cards, I always try to make something in a frame for them to keep keep rather than a card that is usually thrown away after a while. This is the idea I came up with for Iris’s 7th Birthday ……. I know, where has the time gone?

The robot is made using a very small, wooden block  (The Works – from a mini Jenga type game £3 for about 53 blocks).  The mini reels came from Marc, I believe they originally came from LaBlanche.  I’ve had the mini thermometer for years, bought from a craft company in the U.S.

The moon was from some old jewellery pieces I had, the gold stars from a Poindland nail art set, as is the robots nose.  The robots mouth is a tiny piece of Halloween confetti!

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And finally, I hand wrote the sentiment using a white gel pen on black card which was then layered and matted on gold mirror card.

The sentiment is under the glass, while the other bits are pieces are glued directly onto the front of it.

It all came together without too much fiddle-farting, seeing as I didn’t have a clue what I was going to make that morning.  It’s something a little bit different as Iris is much more into space rather than princesses and flowery stuff, although she loves a bit of glitter!

Flying Scotsman Passing Through Evesham – June 12th 2021

So sorry for the lack of “proper” crafty posts these past few weeks, painting my £30 pine shelves for the lounge is taking an awful lot longer than I  had anticipated, plus I’m trying to list at least one or two things a day on eBay, bits and pieces I have around the flat or that I “find” in town……. and with all this lovely weather, who wants to stay in, especially after the year and a half we’ve had ……… and, to be honest, I’ve not got many ideas at the moment!

However, rather than leave an empty today ………….

…….. I thought I’d show you a couple of pictures of the Flying Scotsman, travelling from London Paddington to Worcester and going over “my” bridge on Saturday morning, just gone.

Events like this don’t happen very often, so we were all in the garden to watch ……….

……. and wave to all the passengers. I have to say, as a passenger, the view looking down from the bridge on to the marina is quite lovely and takes you quite by surprise.

Happy Days!

Half Term Crafts

Following on from yesterday’s post I kept a 10p Zombie Science Kit aside for Half Term antics with Iris and Bertie ……….

Not wishing to sound ungrateful, but I am really glad I got the kit for such a bargain price as think we all would have been a disappointed if I’d bought it at full price ………..

…….. and why I rarely buy kits like this anyway, they promise much, but I am not so sure that they always deliver.

We “made” the hand and kept it in the fridge overnight to set, leaving it looking like something bought home from Daddy’s forensic lab.

It didn’t fare much better when it was cautiously removed from its mould, because, as the day went on, the jelly appeared to shrink back from the bones.  It was all most unsavoury.  However, when we’d all had enough of looking at it I did manage to salvage said bones for Halloween crafting……….

However, all was not lost for our Half Term crafting as Bertie has suddenly discovered his crafting roots and I, in turn, found that having a craft room was a brilliant decision, with the little fella feeling free to go rootling in the drawers, even before breakfast, wrapped in his snuggly blanket to chose what all the bits and pieces he wanted to “make with”, bless his cotton socks.

He found a couple of wooden peg dolls and decided to make fairies and houses for them.  Thank goodness for Kellogg's variety packs boxes!

All of which displayed his characteristic attention to detail, including bubble wrap smoke coming from the mini cotton reel chimneys pots.

Beautiful …….. and all his own work, except for the doors which I cut to his very exacting instructions.The silver fairy and the green roofed house were duly taken to school, a present for his beloved (and very pretty) Miss Muitt and the other set proudly displayed in his bedroom. It’s taken a while, but I think I’ve made a crafter out of him, just like Iris!

In The Right Place At The Right Time ………. The Works

My apologies as there is not a lot of crafting going on at the moment, but I still want to keep Fiddle Fart rolling if I can   ……… so, to fill today’s spot I wanted to show you that some of my Christmas fripperies for our traditional Boxing Day Tut etc. are already in the bag.

I was in the right place, at the right time when I nipped into The Works in Evesham for a bit of a mooch and noticed a pack of sticky notes for 10p, which I thought would look rude if I didn’t purchase, but then I noticed that all the items in the central display were 10p each as well ………. so naturally I looked a bit closer.

In the end I spent three whole pounds, less than a large mug of my favourite spiced latte in Coffee #1.  The lady at the counter told me that her boss had told them to reduce all the out of date stock to get rid of it all…….. it was soooooo my lucky day, there’s enough for all my sacks, plus a few bits that I might chance on eBay, like the doggy coats.

Of the Zombie Science kit, (of which I got two) more later this week  …….. as I set one aside for half term shenanigans for Iris and Bertie.

This doesn’t happen very often, I am just glad it happened to me, I even managed to get two rolls of My Little Pony Christmas paper for 10p each too …… so when the time comes to get wrapping that will be in the bag too!