Sunday, 28 March 2010

Lazy sunday

At Christmas I saw an idea for melting down old wax crayons and making them into festive shapes to give them as gifts. I decided to give it a try today and dug out my big box of wax crayons and seperated the colours.


After searching for how to do it I tried the method of melting them in the microwave but I gave this up as they weren't doing much except causing sparks.

So I put the crayon scraps in old tins and put these in a pan of boiling water to melt them. This took a while and I had to keep pouring the mixture into the mould (a little plastic bowl the size of a ramekin) bit-by-bit as it took so long to melt (and got wax on my oven gloves in the process).

I left them to set for a few hours and then turned them out. They came out ok, but now I'm left with three big disks of wax that aren't as fun as they look. It would have been better if I had some interesting moulds to put them in, like heart or star shapes.

Oh well, anything to distract myself from doing my dissertation...

Saturday, 27 March 2010

Cougar Town

I absolutely adore this TV show, you have to check it out if you haven't already. I love the friendship between Jules and Ellie, and the show feels so much fresher and different than the run-of-the-mill brainless american comedies like How I Met Your Mother or Two and a Half Men.



The other day I watched a few epsiodes back-to-back and I ended up spending the rest of the day with my thoughts sounding like Courteney Cox's voice instead of my own, weird.

Useful blog

I found this blog of 'top 100 tutorials' is a good starting point to find how to make anything from bags to pincushions.
I had a go at the Kokeshi Stuffie and think mine turned out rather well.
Here she is with a box of matches because I made a little photo-storybook of her adventures around my house, which you may get the pleasure of reading if I manage to work out how to do it on here.

A throne fit for a queen

I noticed our old computer chair was looking rather worn out so I dug out some leftover curtain material and simply put it over the old fabric. It was easy to do, i just had to unscrew the back of the chair and then use a heavy-duty stapler to attatch the new fabric, et voila!
This project has got me itching to re-upholster some more so I'm looking out for a nice window seat or bench I can transform...

Oven Gloves


This is my first post so I thought I'd start with something good.
These are a pair of oven gloves I bought from Ikea and I have appliqued onto them some rather nice cupcakes and a bird.
I used felt and a blanket stitch, and added a few beads to the dohnut which I recycled from an old bracelet.


Inspiration for the bird came from this glasses case

Unfortunately I realised afterwards that when the oven gloves are hung on the oven the bird is upside down, but I don't think it minds too much.