This Weeks Pinterest Finds

So True!(I found an image like this online, but it was tiny, so I remade it in photoshop, feel free to reuse it yourself)

I might start to make my cool Pinterest finds a weekly feature, I find so many great things on this website every day it would be fun to make a highlights post regularly. If you are on Pinterest you can follow me here, or if you would like an invite to join just leave your email address in the comments section.

Strawberry Pillows from The Purl Bee

I think these strawberry pillows are super cute, the pattern looks a tad overly complicated though  as the just look like a giant version of these key rings that I made last year. I'm tempted to adapt my pattern to a larger scale and make some. They would be nice gifts for my nieces.

London Mummy Vintage Skittles

These vintage skittles from London Mummy are from a list of 101 projects to make with fat quarters, which is great as I have tonnes of small bits of fabric and it would be fun to work on some new projects.

Ink Guide Monkey House

At long last here is a proper guide to understanding stamping inks, there are loads of them on the market and to be honest I didn't have a clue what I was buying. This is a long read but well worth the time.

Mixed Media House Necklaces by Junk Garden

I stumbled across this lovely shop with these amazing necklaces.  I love her choice of papers and colours, and there is nothing as cute as a mini house. I'm sorely tempted to buy one, although long necklaces tend not to suit me because of boobs, the necklace tends to hand weirdly.




Cherry Dollface has great vintage hair and make-up tutorials, I definitely have to give some of these a try, although I strongl suspect they will look no way near as good, I also love her tattoos.



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Limerick Pop-Up Shop Opportunity

I'm REALLY(insanely) excited to announce that I will be heading a craft co-op pop-up shop in Limerick City Centre. This project is being enabled by Creative Limerick(through the Limerick City Council), a scheme that allowed galleries like Occupy Space Limerick and Raggle Taggle to open. The shop will be run as a collective, with the people who sell their work there taking turns working in the shop, which will be led by a core team of organisers. I will be heading this group and doing lots of the ground work to get the project up and running. As with all creative things in these fiscally challenged times it will all be run on a voluntary basis, but money will be made by selling our own work.
We have been promised a city centre location, but the venue is as yet to be fully confirmed. Some of us have already met to discuss the logistics of running this shop and have talked about certain key issues. We have decided that people will pay a minimal monthly contribution towards costs and upkeep, but not pay commission on their sales, but we don't have figures for this at the moment. People will also need to pay towards a once off fee to help outfit the shop. As with any other co-op the more people we have selling their work the better.

So if you are a Limerick based crafter or artist, or if you are a graduate from the art colleges here in the city and you would like to sell your work in our shop we would love to hear from you. Please click on the above images to download and complete the application form, then just email it onto limerickcitycrafthub@gmail.com, please have your application forms in as soon as possible as we are trying to process all forms during this/next week. Also please include 5-10 photos of your work, or a link to a relevant website where your work can be viewed. If your are reading this and you can think of someone who might be interested please let them know, we really want to spread the word about this great new project.


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What I'm wearing: A Vintage Dress

I've been rather sick with a horrid stomach bug for about a week, so cabin fever led me to do things like tidy the house, scrub my bathroom, dye my hair and paint my nails...it's amazing what boredom will lead a person to!

I've had this dress for over a year and I've never worn it, part of me loved it, but the other half thought it was a bizarre hybrid of something my mother wore in the 80's and a Star Trek(natives from a peaceful and earthy planet)dress. But I tried it on again recently and realised that the side that loved it won out and and that I would wear it soon. So this is it's first airing!

Dress: In a bag of vintage dresses that I got for free from a friend of a friend...for free!

Belt: Came free with this blue top I got in A-Wear, it's awful with the top, but nice with this dress.

Boots: A charity shop €10

Wow that's an incredibly cheap outfit!

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How-To Button Wine Glass Charms

Can I just preface this how-to by saying I won't be using my retro app again for photographing step by step guides, after uploading them I realised that I got a pretty blurry account of the project, so apologies now for the fuzziness of the pictures....

I saw this cute how-to on button wine glass charms, and thought I would give it a go. It turns out the link isn't a how-to at all, just a finished picture telling people how easy they are to make....which they are, after a while that is.
What you will need:
Snips or a tough scissors
Flat buttons of various sizes and colours
Wine glass charm rings
Wire(I'm not sure what gauge I used, I just had some laying about the studio)

Glass charms are usually sold in set of 6, with each one having their own distinctive pattern or colour, I picked out red, yellow, blue, green, purple and pink and chose complimentary colours for the top buttons. I know this sounds really silly but I had no idea what the purpose of these charms were until last year, it's so people don't get their glasses of wine mixed up at parties, each person gets their own colour, what a smart idea!! I'm obviously not a grown up and I need to go to more dinner parties, I should have copped onto this yonks ago!

It took me about a half hour to figure out how to do the wire wrapping,(in the end I gave up on trying to go through the 4 button holes) and I broke a few buttons, but when you figure it out it's really easy after that. Cut approximately 6" of wire, weave your wire through the buttons, leaving about 1" one one side at the back.

You'll have to use your imagination here to picture that I've twisted the wire together with the pliers, make sure the end of your wrapped wire is tidy.

Push the twisted wire against the button so that it's flush against it, then loop around your longer piece so that the loop pops up about 2mm over the top of the button.

Leave about 1" of wire sticking out from the bottom of the button and cut. Again we put on our imagination caps to see that I've wrapped this piece of wire tidily with my pliers around the base of the loop, tucking in the end of the cut wire.

Then simply put your wine charm ring through the loop that you created, and repeat 5 more times to get a set of button charms you can wow all your dinner party guests with(just make sure to tell them that you learned how to make them on this fantastic blog!)

Quite simply as cute as a button!
Update: Since I scheduled this post I've added a jump ring so that the buttons sit better on the wine rings. Also I will be listing a bunch of these sets in my etsy shop when the postman arrives with my rings, I made loads of sets the other day, it was button heaven!

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Crossed Words

Some of you may know already that I'm running a second book stall at the moment instead of my craft stall at the Milk Market. Well as a promotional tool I'm now giving out these nifty crosswords that were compilled by the very intelligent John. They will be given away free at the stall from this weekend onwards, and in a selection of old man pubs throughout the city. Or you can click on the image here to download and print it.

I love crosswords, I used to do The Irish Times Simplex one every day for years when I worked in a newsagents in Dublin. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting down for an extended cup of tea/pint and letting the world roll by while trying to drag random words out of the recesses of your brain.

If any of you finish it please let me know! The answers will be included in the next issue, this is going to be a fortnightly venture.

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Polyvore: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by nicedaydesigns featuring canvas boots

I'm quite excited by the trailers for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I loved the books and I own all the original Swedish films on DVD, it looks like David Fincher has kept pretty close to the text, but to be honest I don't know if the new Lisbeth Salander can be as good as Noomi Repace(although I'm mightily impressed by the creepy lack of eyebrows).

Anyhow I made up this Polyvore board in homage to this amazing heroine.

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How-To Paper Collage Bookmarks

Yet again I found a great tutorial on Pinterest, this how-to by SEI Lifestyle is for making magnets, which is what I intended to make, but as I started working on the I changed my mind. I made bookmarks instead since I'm now running a second hand book stall, and I thought they would be nice to have if someone was buying a gift.

 I ended up not using some of the above items, so here is my revised list of what you will need.
Kraft Card 12" x 12" sheets
Lots of scraps of fancy patterned paper, I have tonnes of this left over from cards.
PVA glue mixed half and half with water.
A brush or sponge
Brown aging ink
Scissors
Pen
A corner cutter
Sewing machine
Varnish
Card for a printer

I grouped my scraps of paper into coloured themes, this gives a more cohesive look especially since the papers are all in clashing patterns. I have been saving up these scraps of paper for years, I have loads of it, so I'm delighted to find a use for it.

 Cover your 12" x12" sheet of Kraft paper with you glue mix, then lay out the scraps of paper, gluing the backs of each of them too. Try to think about what colours sit well beside each other, and also add interest by ripping some of the sheets in stead of having a cut edge. Also try to remember that this large sheet will be cut into smaller strips, so try to layer up using lots of small bits(but not too many either or will never be able to sew around them all)

Allow the sheets to completely dry out.

On the back measure out 6" x 2" strips and cut up your sheet using a scissors. I then used my x-cut corner punch to round the edges. After cutting up the strips I decided I wanted to back them on something more substantial, so I cut out 7" x 3" strips on Kraft card to sew my collaged pieces onto.

Since these were going to be bookmarks i wanted add quotes/saying to them. So after a bit of Googling I came up with a few short lines. I used photoshop to lay them out in long narrow strips in a font that I liked, and then I printed them onto some glossy card.

I carefully used my sewing machine to sew around each of the paper scraps, take your time at this bit, it's fairly tricky. I sewed the coloured paper onto a larger piece of Kraft card, do all my central stitching. When this was finished I sewed around the edge onto a second piece of Kraft card. What this does is hide all the unsightly stitching from the central panel and sandwiches it between two pieces of Kraft card.

I then used some brown stamping ink to age the edges and add some more interest and texture. When this was done I varnished the bookmarks back and front and waited for them to dry.

Hey Presto! they're done. I'm pretty chuffed with how they turned out, and I'd really like to adapt this method to other projects too.

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What I'm Wearing: Desigual

I fell in love with this coat when I first saw it, thankfully I was shopping with my mother at the time and she convinced me to splash out the €100 for it. Normally they cost well over €250, but I got a great bargain in the January sales last year in the Kildare outlet centre. It's a Desigual coat, and I'm obsessed with their clothes, I just can't afford to buy them.

Shoes: Doc Martins €110
Tights: 200 Denier Pennys €4
Long white long sleeved t-shirt part of a dress set I got in Choice for €30, very handy under top to have for layering.
Grey Dress at the Friday Flea Market in the Milk Market €6
Long sleeved cardigan in FCUK sale shop for €20
Scarf free from my sister -in -law
Coat €100 in the Desigual shop in Kildare Outlet Centre
Hat in Claires part of a 5 items for €10
Necklace from Topshop €3


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What I'm Wearing-Primary Colours
What I'm Wearing-Block Colours


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