I misplaced my storebought jar labels so I made these up with my zig pens and some computer laser printer type labels.

I added little baubles of different shapes to the christmas mincemeat labels


They're kind of a simplified version of the labels I made for my homemade vanilla extract, which is based on old apothecary bottle labels.


Hope you like them and they give you ideas for your own labels

These are pretty easy actually. I've decided trying to sew text onto a loose weave fabric is kind of hard to do neatly ever, even though I traced the letters on this time. This took maybe 2 hours. And the eyes came out better than I expected. Mostly backstitch, bit of satin stitch for the eyes, long stitch for the letters and hamster toes and the crazy whiskers.

and I like the cheeky little grin that came out of nowhere in my tracing 

I decided I'd try embroidering my 17pence (scary cheap) tea towel. What better than lolcats?



Original http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/15/i-made-you-a-cookie/
which I then traced in PaintShopPro and tried doing the laser printer normal print out and ironing onto the fabric thing... didn't work really well so I just got out my light box and a soft pencil and sketched it on and used the traced line outline and original photo to guide me.
I didn't print out the letters. Doing those freehand makes it look more cutesy, wonky and homemade (or stitched by a cat).

Stitches used... mostly backstitch, a bit of straight stitches for the whiskers and some of the parts of the letters, a few French knots for the various dots needed and two lazy daisy stitches for the black part of the eyes.
It took me a few hours to stitch, maybe an hour combined of doing a quick trace and printing stuff out and trying to get it to transfer (and failing horribly) then sketching out the design instead.

The weird pattern on the fabric is my ironing board cover showing through the incredibly thin and cheap fabric.

My next plan is ... I have another one of these tea towels and I really like the I HAS A CORM hamster so I've already traced and printed him out. I'll try to print out the text too so it doesn't get as sloppy looking as this one.

I've not been posting on here lately because I got sucked into photography again.
I started cyanotypes about 2 1/2 years ago because of an article in a photography magazine. After some googling and this page http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_cyanotype.html and chemicals from Silverprint, I got started. And took lots of pictures and got better and better.
So this year my goal has been to produce a portfolio. At the beginning of the year I thought a portfolio of 15 would be hard. My friend has set me a harder challenge - 40 images by the end of the year. Preferably out of 80. This averages out to 4-8 a week I think I figured out.
At the moment I've slowed down a little and this challenge was only set last week  But it looks like it's going well.
I decided to specialise in still lifes because I like them.

I did the "broadcloth" (view D) petticoat and the corset. I also went by the measurements on the back of the pack... I thought I wasn't a size 20 but, hey that's what the packet says for my measurements. It's too big in the bust area, I've tried fixing it with darts but it's not very good - it's just too big.
Sorry not the best picture, I guess. The petticoat is polycotton which was the closest thing i could think of to "broadcloth" and the corset is done in cotton drill. I didn't like the idea of putting elastic lace as the edging either so I also just turned the edges under. I would have preferred an extra yard of ribbon than the 2 yards suggested as it's a bit difficult to wiggle into without the ribbon coming out of the last set of eyelets.. unless I put tiny knots at the ends of the ribbon.
Sewing the boning in while the boning was in the casings with the zipper foot was  I hated it. I've started making a section corset based on the same pattern but as an underbust and I've now learned (by making fabric channels for boning) that a flat/normal presser foot is so much easier than keeping a zipper foot   from falling off the edge of the channels/casing.

I will say that this corset is slightly better than my store bought, steel-boned corsets as there seems to be better support on the sides of the bust so the shaping is better in that region.

I think this is an okay pattern to start out with to see if you like making corsets. That's all I bought this pattern for and it's fine as a taster course and if you only want more or less a fancy top. I wish I had thought to check here so I could have made it a size or two smaller. I'm probably going to leave this pattern alone and not make another after the modified underbust version is done. I'd personally prefer to start making fully lined, steel-boned corsets.

I do like the petticoat although it is a bit of a faff getting the fabric to ruffle (I did loose zigzag stitch over some crochet thread then pulled on the crochet thread to gather). I'll probably try making it again but with chiffon and maybe do two layers for extra fluffiness.

Just like how your make your little curly bookworm bookmarks... uses a heck of a lot of wire though.

This is my blue pumpkin birthday cake 


This is from my christmas cake, it's just the two little marzipan figurines.

pattern from OldTimeCrochet.com magazine, Autumn 2002.




originally the pattern called for baby weight yarn but i couldn't find black baby weight yarn so I did it in caron's simply soft in black

http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/donisfuff/croshawl.html

I was going to go visit my nieces then decided not to in case I haven't had chicken pox (they're all germy and pox-y!) So I sent my half-finished shawl along (which I did vaguely finish off ) with my husband to go visit them.
I got one good photo of it before it flew out the door.


I only got to measure the "spine" of it, which was 14". I was comparing it to a kids sizes chart to make sure it was going to be big enough for a 4 year old

This is what happened to the black kitty head that I did randomly in my brief crochet intarsia tute.
Just continued with the bluegreen yarn like you would do a scarf then folded it and crocheted the edges together. Crocheted a strap and sewed that on and tada, a simple little purse.


His nose is a little bit too dark of a chocolate brown and I can't embroider good eyes to save my life it seems