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Sunday 29 September 2013

This Week I...

 ...finished the covers for these DVDs I put together of all my video files.
There's one of all my videos from university, one of all my family videos and one of all the videos of my friends which is 70 minutes long. We watched that one while we were at Centre Parcs. It was entertaining and a bit cringey in places as I think the earliest videos are from when we were 14.

It's a lot easier to share the videos with people, and I'll be more likely to watch them, now that they're on dvd instead of just random files on my computer. In a few years when I've got enough videos I'll be making volume 2 dvds!

Also this week my Mum and I went to a local school fete and I scored these shelves at the car boot.
I'd seen them at a car boot in the summer but they were asking for £5 each. Considering I didn't know what I was going to do with them, I just wanted them, I couldn't justify buying them at that price.
Then this weekend they were being sold for only £2. I couldn't pass up that bargain, even if it means the shelves will stay in the loft until I move out.

What's new with you?

Thursday 26 September 2013

Banana Muffins

My friends and I always buy too much food for things like picnic lunches, and shopping for Centre Parcs was no different. I ended up taking home the leftover, well travelled, bananas only to find that my parents already had a lot of bananas at home.


There was only one thing for it.
Banana muffins.

I used this recipe which I followed exactly, except for adding some mixed spice for an extra flavour. I left them in for exactly 30 minutes so the top has a nice crust.

I added sultanas to the last few just to try it out and they're a good addition so next time I'll add them to the main batter.

What do you do to use up brown bananas?
Any good banana bread recipes around?

Tuesday 24 September 2013

This Weekend I...

My regular 'This Week I...' post is a little late because I just spent the weekend at Centre Parcs with my home girls.

We did Adventure Golf, which was pirate themed! 

I rocked climbed.

We went to a roller disco.
The skates I picked out had light up wheels!

My friends kayaked. 

We went to hula-hoopa-size.
This is what hula-hooping 3 hoops looks like, but I got up to 5!

And to top it off we won the quiz on the last night!

How was your week?
Ever been to a Centre Parcs? What activities did you do?

Thursday 19 September 2013

Colour In Dresses

When I was taking the photos of my latest up-cycled dress it was really sunny. This isn't something I'd usually complain about but it made some of the photos really bright, so much so that the dress I was trying to show was completely washed out.
Which gave me an idea.
I printed out four of the brightest photos where the dress was almost completely white and coloured them in. 

 I was able to re-design the dress.
Straps? Why not.

Pink with matching shoes? Go for it.

 
 I think this one's my favourite. I like the neckline and the green to blue gradient.

So that was fun. It's like a fashion doll meets a colouring page.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Colour In Cards

For my friend Lizzi's birthday card this year (You know Lizzi. Helped me dye my hair? Yeah, her) I used the colour-in images I'd made previously. I stuck a box of crayons to the inside of the card with an additional orange crayon so she could colour in her hair.

When I told my sister about this, she wanted one too.
Her birthday is only a couple of weeks after Lizzi's so I got to work.
I used the same method as before - which you can read all about here - and used a photo taken off Facebook of my sister and her friends all costumed up.
The picture looked weirder with the faces drawn in, believe me.

And this is the finished card after it had been received and coloured in!

Sunday 15 September 2013

This Week I...

...made a lot of little cakes for a family gathering.
Delicious.

Aenoch Eagach 2 by Peter Goodfellow
After my dentist appointment on Thursday I went to the British Art Fair at the Royal College of Art with my Mum, as I got in free with my Art Fund card.
It was full of galleries representing their artists and trying to sell expensive art to fancy rich people.
I think my favourite paintings were by Peter Goodfellow.
Just as we were done looking around the fire alarm went off so everybody had to leave. Just a little bit of excitement to end the day.

And since my dentist is right near Oxford Street I popped into H&M before my appointment and picked up this dress for only £5.
Boom. Bargaintown.

How was your week?

Thursday 12 September 2013

Up-cycled Dress

This dress was another up-cycled project.
I love it!

 The dress started life like this.
It was actually my Mum's dress that she bought from a fashion show my school had.
My lower school. That's how old this dress is.

This photo also shows how long I've been meaning to do this project as it was taken in September 2011 right before I got my Mum to shorten it.
Then it stayed in my wardrobe for two years. Every so often I would think about it but never come to any conclusions on what to do with it.
Until last week.

 
I started by cutting the straps off the dress so it would sit lower.
I also added elastic round the middle so it would be more fitted.

I did this by sewing bias tape to the inside of the dress and threading the elastic through.

I found a t-shirt I never wear and altered the neckline to be more flattering, and then sewed the dress to it, re-shaping the dress where the straps had been.
Then I gathered the fabric at the front and sewed part of one of the dress straps over it.

I love how this dress turned out. I think it's so cute.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Mini Flower Pot Makeover

Here's how I transformed this boring little plant pot into something fancier.

This was a bit of a trial and error project as I started by making circles of Sculpey and adding them to the pot a few at a time but I was finding it difficult to get perfect circles and to cover up the join. 

Then I tried just rolling a long thin bit of Sculpey and looping it over the pot making lots of circles.
I stopped aiming for perfect circles and decided to go for a web/honeycomb/structure of bone situation.
I smoothed the Sculpey to get rid of the joins which kept making the whole thing too big for the pot.

I baked the pot for 10/15 minutes and then added more Sculpey where it had come away from the pot, and baked again. 

 I then sanded the Sculpey to get it as smooth as I could.

I painted the entire thing in white emulsion (which always makes me think of this song).
Initially this was all I'd planned to do but I decided I preferred it when the Sculpey was a different colour to the pot to create more of a contrast.

So I painted the holes using a cheap blue metalic poster paint, making is darker around the edges and using a sponge to wipe some of the paint away in the middle.

The blue made me think this little pot looked quite bathroom-y so maybe that's what it'll be used for.

Sunday 8 September 2013

This Week I...

...dyed the bottom of my hair pink!

I used this Schwarzkopf Live Colour XXL in Shocking Pink.
When I'd done a bit of research online a lot of people had used this and it happened to be only £4 in Wilkinsons.
I thought about getting a blonde dye to lighten my hair first as I wasn't sure any pink would show up without it, but I couldn't decide on one. It turned out I was fine without anyway.
The good thing about this dye is it comes pre-mixed in a tube so you don't waste any.
This photo was taken after my hair was dyed so you can see how little was used. This means I've got loads left over to do it again when the colour washes out.

 
I say I dyed my hair, but it was actually all the work of my glamorous assistant Lizzi.
She followed the instructions and painted the dye on with a brush and wrapped the sections of hair in foil.

Note the plastic poncho I'm wearing. I thought it'd be perfect for this. Much better than wrapping an old towel round me.

 
We left it for the advised 30 minutes then washed my hair in the shower.
This was an interesting experience which promoted me to keep singing, 'that's what friends are for!'
My shower isn't over a bath so I had to lie back on the floor with my hair in the shower tray and Lizzi stood in the shower with the shower head, trying not to get her jeans wet. She failed.

After blow drying my hair we found that the pink had worked, but we could probably afford to go a bit higher.

My Mum's comment at this point was, 'it looks like you've dipped the end of your hair in paint.'
Yes Mum.

 So we repeated the process which made the colour a bit deeper.
Lizzi applied the colour kind of randomly because I didn't want a straight across dip-dye.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's kind of a raspberry colour that looks different in different lights.
The box says it'll last 6-8 washes so we'll see how that goes.

How was your week guys?
What crazy colours has your hair been?

Thursday 5 September 2013

Rustic Wooden Photo Frame

 
 I made a photo frame!

 This project was good because it used up two things I've had for ages.
The first was this plain wooden photo frame I bought from Hobbycraft years ago.
It was probably on sale. I don't think I would have bought it if not.

 
The second thing I got to use up was some of these little wooden things that come with canvases.
I used some of them a while back with these garden fence cards but I've still got so many more.
I quite liked the rustic, beach shack type feel of the little planks around the frame so I went with it.

I used wood glue to attach the wood to the frame and left it to dry under some heavy books.

I picked out some wood stain from the garage and did some test pieces to decide which colour I liked better.

 I went for the lighter one and applied it with an old rag.
There were some parts where the glue had got on the surface of the wood so I had to sand the glue off so the stain would...youknow, stain.

Any excuse to show you my signed Ian Somerhalder photo

Then I popped a photo in the frame and it was done.
This was such a quick and easy project, and it's given me loads more ideas for decorating plain frames.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

New Painting

  
I finally finished my latest painting.

 
I say finally because for months it was left looking like this.
I just couldn't think what to paint at the bottom.
The photo of the sky was taken out of my bedroom window but I didn't want to paint what was actually there at the bottom because since a great big house has been built there the view isn't very appealing.
I thought about painting the sea, but I wanted something to contrast with all that colour, rather than just reflect it.

 
Then inspiration struck when I was making the dvd cover for my camping videos.
The photo I'd used had the same sort of sky so I based the bottom of the painting of the trees and field at the bottom of the photo.