What a bargain !

Yesterday I was in town for a hair appointment and decided to pay Laura Ashley a visit as I hadn't been in there for ages. I was looking at their remnant table and found the most fantastic bargain - 2 metres of their seaside stripe fabric for 50p !!! YES, 50p !! I couldn't believe it - it turns out the fabric was ex-display rather than end of roll and so it was classed as "used" fabric as it had a few small holes in it where it had been stapled to the display. But I don't care - I can quite easily lose the holey bits of fabric at that price !! I'm planning on using it for the fabric gift bags I'm going to make.

I also decided to visit a few of the charity shops on the look-out for wool jumpers. I managed to find 2 - one which was 100% alpaca wool, the most gorgeous rasperry red in colour and had been made in Nepal and the other was 100% cream mohair. I shall be sticking both of these finds in the washing machine on a hot wash and turning them into felt, which will then be made into some loopy brooches. What a good Saturday I had !!


Today the weather is absolute pants, so we're stuck indoors. Paul and Sam are playing the Spiderman game on the PS2 and Grace is slamming doors !! Goodness knows what else is going on down there - I shall have to investigate once I've finished this post.

Of course, the rain is great for the garden (but not for me because it means the grass is throwing itself out of the ground and I'm having to cut it once a week at the moment). Below are a few pics of the lovely flowers that are appearing in our garden. As I think I've said before, we haven't been in this house for a full year yet, so it's lovely to see what flowers are coming up.

I've also found some really great crafty blogs which I shall be adding to my favourites list shortly, and have been inspired after finding some rag-rugs and raggy brooches - both of which I am hoping to try out once the craft fair is out of the way.

The only problem with finding all of these lovely new crafts is the fact that I am rapidly running out of time to get things ready for the craft fair - if I had enough time I would try and recreate some of the lovely ideas I've seen, add my own little twist to them, and see if they are popular at the fair. But for the time being I have enough on my plate and will see what sells and what doesn't before I go producing new bits and bobs !!

Thank you to Tracy of Cupcakes at Home who left a comment on my last post about covered buttons - we obviously both love fabric buttons and I have decided to make some up and use them on some yoyo brooches that I'm going to make - so thank you Tracy !

Until next time xxx

I'm Back !!

Hi everyone !

Well, we made it back from Florida and boy did we have a good time !!

We visited every Disney Park, including the 2 water parks and also both Universal Parks. Unfortunately we ran out of time to visit Sea World, but we have done that one before and I don't think our little lady would have been able to sit still for long enough to watch all of the shows there anyway. Sam ad Grace were so excited to meet Mickey and Minnie (or Mimi as Grace insists on calling her). Sam was over the moon at meeting Spiderman and Buzz Lightyear, so I think Florida is definitely a hit with the children (as if it wouldn't be !!)

Unfortunately Grace got a reaction to the measles jab she had a few weeks before we went away so suffered with a temperature and a nasty rash for a few days, but she still had a good time.

To top it all I ate far too much food and spent far too much money !!

Why is it that everything is so much cheaper in the US. And I mean everything !! My dear hubby bought me an ipod shuffle and it was half the price it is in the UK. Also Crocs shoes - half the price again. I bought some for our 4 year old son and he is absolutely chuffed to bits.

And as for the crafty bits ... I visited a fantastic shop called Michael's. It has to be the biggest craft shop I've ever seen and I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

I managed to fill my basket in the first aisle, so decided it was better to exchange the basket for a shopping trolley. I bought brooch pins - a pack of 60 mixed sizes for around £3.00. Now, I pay anywhere between 10p and 50p (depending on size) here, so that was a bargain !

Also, buttons, ribbons, scrapbooking card (to make up some packaging for my felted items), gift packaging (as I'm going to offer this as an option on my website), fabric, craft books, gift tags and embellishments, beading elastic, beads etc etc etc .

I've only posted a few pics because it would take me forever to show you everything I bought. Needless to say it was a very productive craft shopping trip and I've got Mum on standby to buy replacements of everything when she visits again in June. I'm hoping that the craft fairs will be busy and that I'll need to buy extras !

I had an email from a lovely lady at Crafts Beautiful magazine whilst I was way asking if I would like to run an advert alongside a needle-felting article they are running in their July issue. Unfortunately the cost is quite high, but I have asked a good friend (and fellow blogger) if she would be interested in doing a split advert with me - so watch this space !

I have done the monthly draw today - and am just waiting for the winner to contact me with their full contact details. Once I have these, I will put her name here in the blog for anyone who's interested.

Right - that's it for now. I have to add to my stock pile (pic below) and get stitching with the hair elastics, keyrings and brooch pins !!

Bye for now xx