Think happy (yellow) thoughts

After a busy half term I've been itching to get to my desk to make this scrapbook page which has been rattling around in my head. I've been inspired by Julie Kirk's yellow series "A Month of Sunrays" over on her blog and then when I saw this fantastic yellow chevron paper in the latest Quirky Kit, I knew the page I wanted to make. The paper is from Amy Tangerine's line with American Crafts. The line with hearts on was cut from the bottom of the paper too.

And as for this gorgeous hearts washi tape... the bag of embellishments in the Quirky Kit was sealed with this little piece of tape and so I very carefully peeled it off to use it on the layout. I think I need a buy a roll of hearts washi tape now though! If you are looking for ideas on how to use washi tape, check out MelStampz's blog post here - It's amazing!

A peek at a scrapbook quilt

Issue 4 of Scrap 365 has just arrived and I'm excited to say that it features a scrapbook quilt by me. Here's a little peek at the quilt.

Crafting Sun-rays

We've had some lovely days of winter sunshine recently with clear blue skies and frosty ground. It seems like a great time of year for some sunny yellow crafting. Julie Kirk is running a month of yellow inspiration over on her fabulous "notes on paper" blog. Julie has lots of suggestions for yellow scrapbooking, cardmaking and wearing yellow too.

I've joined in with a bit of yellow card making this week. I have recently finished two Maisy Mouse cot quilts for friends who have had baby girls and I wanted to send some cards with the quilts. The top card uses the lovely bright colours from Cosmo Cricket's Delovely collection.

The card below uses more Cosmo Cricket papers from the Togetherness collection with some Material Girl stickers. This card is for a family who have a little boy and now have a baby girl, so I think the birds work really well.


Here's one of the Maisy Mouse quilts which was inspired by a pattern on the Moda Bake Shop blog. It's a great place for fantastic free quilt patterns. I'm particularly excited by this one here and I hope to be attempting it later in the year.

More yellow on the back of the quilt...

I've made another quilt similar to this one before, but I still love it.

New things and exciting news

First of all some exciting news, I've been asked to join the team writing for Sewing World magazine. Hurray! It's lovely to have an excuse to buy more fabric!

With all the magazine projects and workshops that I've been doing lately I decided to treat myself to a few new things. I am not a fan of shopping (unless it's craft shopping or course), and I particularly don't enjoy shoe shopping much. I think I'm too practical as I do stop and look at beautiful shoes, but I can't imagine when I would wear them so never buy them. I found these boots after a chat with a friend and they are from Josef Seigel and they were in their online half price sale (hurray again!). The colour is interesting and I really like the stitched detail so they appeal to the practical me and the decorative me.

I have never coveted a tea towel before until I saw this one in the Emma Bridgwater catalogue before Christmas. I thought I had dropped enough hints before Christmas but I didn't find one wrapped up under the tree, so I was very pleased to find it in their January sale (can you tell I'm a bit of a bargain hunter). I haven't used it to dry dishes yet. Will I? I'm not sure yet. I like it so much I could almost frame it.

My ultimate sale bargain this year was a new duvet cover from the beautiful shop Anthropologie. I get their catalogue in the post every now and again but the prices are so out of my league that I usually just look at the very pretty and stylish pictures for inspiration. I was so excited to find one of their patchwork duvet covers for £25... reduced from £278!

Stamp Carving

I have seen some really interesting examples of stamp carving this week. I am tempted to have a go at this technique. I even have the right v-shaped tool left over from my lino-cutting A-level days. There is an adorable tutorial over on the Mollie Makes blog here.

Julie Fei-Fan Blazer is running a stamp carving class at the moment too. I love Julie's style. There's a Flickr pool from her class too, to see the fantastic work from the students. I am very tempted with this class, but have quite a lot on at the moment, with half term coming up soon too. Julie's classes remain available on her blog even after the "live" class has finished so I think I'll save this one for a bit later in the year.