Not Quite Christmas.

Another quick little post about something I've made recently to clutter my room up with!

I've seen many kits for making your own floral paper chains, but it's really just strips of overpriced paper so I thought I'd make my own. Only I didn't have any floral paper so I used fabric stuck to card (much more stable then as well, although quite heavy to hang up!) I also had to use staples to hold the strips together which aren't very attractive but you can't really see them when they're hanging up.

Listen To Me.

A while ago I blogged about something I tried out for my iPod earphones. Well they've just broken so I bought a new pair of Gumy headphones from Sainsburys (pink ones!) and have decorated them with hama beads using the same method I used before.

I stuck to a green and pink colour scheme so they'd match the floral skin I have stuck on my ipod (FYI you can customise your own from wrappz.com, super easy and very reasonably priced - I have one on my laptop too!)

Swing the Hammer.

A while ago I posted about the variety of nail wraps you can buy from Asos.

Well you may know by now that I'm not really quick to do anything (especially the amount of time it took me to get a film back from my Diana camera) but I've finally got round to trying them out.

The first ones were these Toonland nail wraps:

These are really, really cute but I found them a bit too thick and plasticy to fit on my nails properly. And because of where the image sits on the wrap it feels like they were upside down.

These doughnut and ice cream wraps were much more successful. They fit much better on my nails and because of the repeat pattern rather than a single image it's easier to get away with them not being perfect!

Another nail art craze I'm currently really into is nail decals, which I've gone a bit mad buying from ebay!

Cross decal from hailthenails

Peace sign decal from uk-quick-sales-2012

And just a cute little idea I painted just before I went on holiday (finished off with a layer of seche vite, they lasted the whole week!)

And how my nails currently look:

Diana F+.

My friends bought me a Diana F+ for my birthday back in January, but I've only just had the first film back. Oops!

I did find it really difficult to use though which was perhaps why I wasn't more keen to use it. I don't like how when you wind it on it doesn't stop on the next exposure like 35mm film cameras do, you have to keep your eye on it to make sure you don't wind too far. This is perhaps why I only got 4 photos out of the whole roll (two the same), as opposed to the 12 I was supposed to get!

I really like the look of the photos though so perhaps with more practice I'll get the hang of it! I just loaded another film, using the youtube video below for help, so I'll get using it soon.  I made a bit of a rookie mistake of putting the film in the wrong side of the camera, then wondered why it wasn't winding on! Fail.

Oh and in case you're interested I used Lomography Color Negative 120 film :)

Champagne and Caviar.

Ok so I didn't drink champagne while writing this or while doing my nails, this is just a review of the latest trend in nail art - the caviar manicure.

The original, from Ciate, comes in either Black, Mother of Pearl or Rainbow, and is pretty pricey at £18 for a bottle of nail polish and the beads. However, after reading around about this manicure it seems there's a much cheaper alternative!

Many people suggested just getting some tiny beads from a craft shop and using them instead, which is what I did. I bought these no hole micro glass beads from totallycharmed81 on ebay (not currently for sale, but there's plenty of alternatives if you search for them)

The methods for applying them vary but I used this one:

1. Firstly pour the packet of beads into a little bowl/pot.
2. Apply two coats of black nail polish to each nail (I once again used my favourite, Barry M)
3. Apply a layer of Seche Vite - you need to do this one nail at a time.
4. Before it dries, dip the nail in the pot of beads, moving it around a bit to make sure all of the nail is exposed to the beads.
5. Pat the beads slightly to ensure they really stick to the nail.
6. Leave to dry for a couple of minutes.
7. Using the top coat, apply a small amount to the very tip of the nail - if you o the whole nail the colour comes out the beads so just do the tip!
8. Ta da!

(For some reason I only took a photo on my phone :S)

I think these only lasted about 4 hours on my nails! They were beyond irritating, I was trying to cook dinner for 9 people and they just kept falling off (my friends were blissfully unaware that they were eating them!) They did look pretty cool before they fell off though, but not so great when there were big gaps of beads missing :S so I just took them off - easy enough with standard nail polish remover, and I managed to save most of the beads, which are now silver, but I mixed them in with the others so you'd never know.

However, I think I would use them again (going to have to really - I've got so many beads left!) but maybe only as a feature nail. Or get beads in one single colour then paint the nail the same colour so it's not so noticeable when they fall off.

Quiz Time.

On this blog I've talked quite a bit about Action for Family Carers, the charity I volunteer my design services for. Well they've now given me something else to work on - a poster for a quiz night.

Below are some ideas.

Idea 1

Kinda expected I suppose to incorporate a question mark into a poster about a quiz night, but this uses the colours of the charity's logo and keeps it quite simple - something I think is important to a small charity.

Idea 2

This idea also uses the same colour scheme, which I also previously used in the posters looking for fundraising volunteers.

Idea 3

This is just a different colour scheme to the idea above; it uses the same colours and circle motif as previous posters I designed for the jumble sale.

(On a side note about the jumble sale, posters for this are now up in various supermarkets and other locations around Essex. Exciting!)

Idea 4

This was was just a bit wacky! Thought I'd try something different but I don't think I like it very much.

I don't know which is currently my favourite, but definitely not idea 4! Any thoughts?

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away....

I've always thought Galaxy nails look amazing but also really difficult, so I thought I'd have a go. And although they didn't quite come out how they look in other photos, they are actually quite easy to do.

So this is the process I used. First off was choosing which colours to use, from reading around it seems you can use pretty much any colour you want, and going by my nail polish collection I had quite a lot to choose between! There were 115 in there at last count....

So I eventually decided on these colours (as you can see I like Barry M!):

So you start off with a dark base colour. I used Barry M Black:

Because the glitter nail polishes I have didn't really seem right I also painted a layer of Gypsy Night from Topshop Nails:

Then using one of those foundation sponges I dabbed on three separate colours, in no particular order:

Barry M Bright Purple

Rimmel 60 Seconds Sky High

Barry M Matt White

The glitter I used was Technic Carnival, which had a few too many colours in it and the flecks of glitter were a bit too large, so unfortunately it did ruin the overall effect:

Finished off with a layer of Seche Vite, my all time favourite top coat!

(Pre-cleaning! Oops!)

Crafty Creatives.

Anyone who's anyone in the crafty world right now is talking about the Crafty Creatives monthly box. I'm not saying I'm anyone, but I have subscribed to these amazingly cute little boxes - a box of craft goodies delivered every month!

I obviously can't be anyone because it took me two boxes before I finally got round to blogging about them....my bad. But they really are wonderful, each box has a theme (first it was floral, then nautical) and there's ideas in there as to what to make but it really is up to your imagination.

I won't say much more seeing as I'm a bit behind and so many other lovely people have blogged about the boxes, so I'll just take you through what I've made so far :)

Warning: picture heavy!

Cheeky look inside the boxes - just bursting at the seams with crafty goodies!

BOX 1

Close up of the contents - I'm not going to list them, but if you do want to know head on over to the Past Boxes section of their website for full details.

This brooch was part of the kit that comes in each box. It was a bit fiddly but with some help from the video tutorial on the Crafty Creatives YouTube channel I figured it out.

I used a little of the leftover fabric to make this little stitched bird image - an idea I'm hoping to develop into something I can sell in my Folksy shop, Wishcatcher Crafts.

I used some of the floral tissue paper as the backing to an ornate rose gold frame I bought a while ago from TK Maxx but which has been sitting empty on my bedside table ever since.

This was a bit random, but the little glass flower beads came in the box and I mixed them with some other beads I have (I love the tiny little heart ones!) to make this cute little garland. It's currently hanging off my headboard...I'm very limited for hanging space in my room at the moment with all my other crafty experiments hanging up everywhere else!

So that's it for box 1 so far, plenty more in there to play with though and I'll add more photos when I have them :)

BOX 2

Close up of the box, again check out the past boxes page for more info.

 

This bracelet was in this month's kit. The starfish came separately but I thought they'd make a cute little addition. It's quite bulky on my wrist, so I think it would work better with slightly thinner rope.

Another random experiment but it incorporates several elements of the box. I got my dad to drill holes in the driftwood, de-threaded then re-threaded the pearls along with the coloured and fish buttons, and finally the wheel pendant. Then just a little of the paper string to finish it off.

The garland/mobile thing is currently hanging up in my mother's "secret garden", which is a work in progress. There's a load of little tealights dotted around in lanterns, which we finally got to light last night as it was warm enough, and it really does look lovely. I'll blog some more about this later on - the wooden bunting from this box is also going to feature in the garden.