Happy Anniversary!

My husband James and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary last week. When I think about it, I honestly don't know where the time has gone, I'll admit the wedding itself was a bit of a blur after all the build up to the day, yet here we are today a year later.

Traditionally the first wedding anniversary is gifted with paper and seeing as I love making anything with paper and card, I set out to make a few paper themed items to give to my dearest! I initially planned to make a "Happy Anniversary" garland but seeing as I didn't really have anywhere to hang it properly, I decided to lay it out on the floor instead. I have oodles of paper and card scraps as I'm one to never throw anything out - yes I'm a little bit of a hoarder - and I always find ways to use them. Fittingly I had some left over invitations from our wedding stationary (printed on gorgeous white luminous card) as well as some black card left over from our friends wedding stationary I made last year. It was perfect to use for the hearts and lettering.

Our logo for our wedding was a seahorse, so I cut out one from the invitations and layered with a '1'. On the reverse of each heart I wrote a couple of lines from the song that we played for our first dance (Kiss Me - Sixpence None the Richer) which surprisingly all fit on, so I keep telling myself it was meant to be!

I also made a 'love box'. I upcycled a black gift box I had in my stash of things which I recovered the lid, added stripes to each side of the box (with more scraps) and I finished the box by attaching a wired ribbon on the lid. Inside were more paper themed items I made; a love letter, quotes, the heart garland and some homemade bath salts. I know technically bath salts do not fit with the paper theme, but we both love a soothing soak in the bath, so I thought it was a nice little addition.

James, in keeping with the paper theme, gave me my first Moleskine! Yes I now can proudly say I have a Moleskine :) I know it's a bit strange in a way seeing that I have many, many sketchbooks in my collection, but I have never owned one until now.  I'll have to make sure that when I draw/write in my Moleskine they are treasured scribbles and doing that it is going to be a challenge in itself!

And to round it off is a photo of me in my new dress before going out to dinner at our favourite Japanese restaurant to celebrate. I bought the dress from Target for $10, a bargain considering the original price tag was $50. My purple leather mary-janes matched perfectly as did my glasses. I stylized the dress with a light cyan ribbon as I didn't have a proper belt to match, it still worked and I liked it so that is all that really matters.

Crochet Fun!

I thought I'd share some of my crochet creations I have made in the past few months, I have certainly had much fun making them.

Seeing as we take our iPods with us when we travel (whether its just to work or on holiday) I thought I'd make a couple of pouches for them and earphones, provides a nice soft buffer between them and everything else that goes in the bag. These were fairly simple to make, I didn't follow any pattern, just made it up as I went, by measuring the iPods, estimating extra space needed for the earphones and voila!

I've always needed a pin cushion and this lil beauty was grown from a couple of crochet boo boos. As I hate to waste anything I decided to make use of them; they were meant be for something else but didn't quite work out. The 'cake' part was originally supposed to be a head of a crochet toy that turned out all distorted, so I just stuffed it with hobby fill and tied off the bottom and then made the 'cup' from some wool that was left over from another item. It worked out perfectly and it takes pride of place on my desk decorated with '100s & 1000s' (map pins) and other needles and safety pins.

This is one of my favourite pieces, an original design. Daffodils are one of my favourite flowers as I love to watch them pop out of the ground in July/August and bloom through to mid spring. They are such a cheerful flower and always put a smile on my face. Unfortunately they don't flower all year round so I decided one afternoon to crochet my own ever-lasting Daffy. Again no pattern here, I just made it up as I went, tweaking here and there until the petals, stem and leaf was the right proportion and shape and I was happy with it. The only thing missing is the sweet subtle daffodil scent!

This is my most recent addition, finally finished this week after being on the go for the past couple of months. As I like to cart around a sketch book and pencils with me, I thought I'd make myself another pouch to put all these things in. The brief I gave myself was that it had to be large enough to fit an A5 sketch/notebook (the sketchbook in the photo is an A6), my beloved 'Flat Cats' pencil tin (which I've owned for more than 13 years ...), sketching pencils - as shown and colouring pencils (tins of Derwent pencils I have collected over the years). Although all of those thing are not going to be carried all the time, I just wanted to make sure they fit when I needed to. I randomised the sections/stripes of blue and red as well as the stitches (combination of double and treble crochet) to add visual contrast and add some texture to the piece, finished with scalloped edging along the top and red ribbon for the draw string.