Heart-tastic

A touch of marcasite

I recently spotted this sweet silver marcasite brooch at a local antique fair.

It's started a trend in my accessories repertoire and it brightens up the lapel on my suit no end.  A touch of glammer in the office.

I've also been wearing it with my woollens too.  The marcasite happily glitters away and looks stunning on those dark, wintery colours.

I fear I may be starting a brooch addiction and its all thanks to this little marcasite leaf!

A little bag for a little girl

Here's an easy afternoon project.  Really simple little bag (around an A5 size 1/2" both sides for hemming). 

I used an A4 paper for my pattern plan, folded it and cut out a piece of material about 45cm length x 21cm width.

And a pretty piece of ribbon for the strap.

You will need:
Patterned material 45cm x 21cm
Pretty button
Pretty ribbon

 

Crafty Christmas Decorations

Its Christmas time and this year I'm having a stab at making a few of my own Christmas decorations.

I started with some Christmas bunting with some polyester red ribbon and some Christmas material.  I cut out lots of triangles with pinking sheers and sowed the triangles on to the ribbon on my sewing machine.

 At sewing class our teacher showed us how to do stuffed decorations with stuffing, some Christmas fabric and a little bit of ribbon.  It was so easy that I was inspired to draw my own stencils and make some more decorations for our tree.

I thought it would be nice to scent the stuffing so some have spiced apple, others have ginger bread and spiced orange.

 I was on a roll with these so I made one that can be used after Christmas is over too, scented with lavender.  Even though it wasn't with Christmas fabric it does look amazing in the tree. 

I think these would look great in all the off cut fabric you can end up with in your rag bag, maybe even a different fabric pattern on each side.

All you need to make stuffed Christmas decorations is a bag of stuffing (I got mine from Birmingham's fantastic rag market), some fabric and some ribbon.

Have fun making Christmas decorations!  I wish I'd made these with children.