May in Pictures: Summer Travels, Foxgloves, & My Little Ponies

Time to look back at what I got up to in May!

My May was a busy one, but I had some breaks from my ongoing flat renovation and was able to squeeze in some lovely Nice Days Out.

I spent a weekend in Bristol and Bath, enjoying some free events as part of the Residents Weekend (I might not actually live in Bristol but I have a Bristol-area postcode, which totally counts!) and meeting up with friends.

I've been back to Bristol many times since I moved away from the city over a decade ago, but this was the first time I'd been back to one of the areas I used to live in: Clifton Village. It was deeply weird being back in Clifton after so long, and to add the the weirdness I immediately bumped into someone I knew from University! Clifton was looking just as lovely as ever, of course, especially with the #wisteriahysteria in full swing.    

The warmer weather (and some gorgeous sunshine!) meant lots of opportunities for walks on the beach and exploring places like this wonderful local nature reserve. (I'm loving living here so much, you guys). 

  
On a trip home to see my folks, I spent the day in nearby Reading and explored the excellent Museum of English Rural Life which I'd shockingly never visited before despite going to school just around the corner. The main gallery is fascinating but I especially loved the archive upstairs where you can peek into cabinets jam-packed with interesting things, and this fabulous little gallery devoted to Ladybird Books (swoon). 

 

One of the joys of visiting my parents is getting to see all the wildlife in their garden, including the badgers who show up to eat peanuts most evenings.

It's also great to see my niece and baby nephew. My mum has been clearing out the loft recently, and sorting out lots of toys for the next generation to enjoy - including our My Little Pony collection. (Did you have any of these when you were a kid?). So many 80s nostalgia feels. 

Later in the month I combined another family visit with a day in London - I do love being back in the southwest but I miss all those galleries and museums and beautiful parks rather a lot.

 

I was delighted to spot those foxgloves when I'd just delivered my Foxglove Wreath to The Village Haberdashery that morning. The felt foxgloves were a real challenge to design, but I was delighted with the end result and everyone's kind comments. It's so nice sharing things and getting such a positive response in return. (Click here for the free foxglove wreath tutorial)

 

In May I also got back into reading Actual Books, after a patch of mostly reading Harry Potter fanfiction. I'll be blogging sometime soon about my recent reads (as you might have noticed, my New Year's Resolution to both read more and blog about it each month has not been going entirely to plan).

 

Another project that's not gone to plan: my 100 Day Project. Long story short, I got sick (ugh) and then I got a horrible attack of creative block (double ugh) as my blogger's block expanded to envelop all my creative outlets (ugggghhhh).

I hoped to jump back into the project in mid-May and made a start with a felt puffin (for day 12) but then life got in the way again, I was busy with messy decorating projects, have been generally feeling a little worn out, and am still suffering a bit from the curse that is creative block... which is all deeply frustrating.

At this rate I will probably have finished my 100 Days of Felt Stuff in a few years time (haha), but I'm hopeful I can get back into it soon. In the meantime though, hurrah for puffins!

 

This was a funny one because the sketch came together really quickly (and just how I pictured it in my head) but translating it into a 3 inch high felt bird proved much trickier. I felt quite exposed sharing it at the time, but now I'm rather pleased with him. I really need to remember how this kind of thing keeps happening, and to stop being so hard on myself when I make things I don't think are quite "perfect".

Want more colourful, crafty updates? I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me. You'll also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

My Childhood Sylvanian Families Collection

More treasures from our attic clear-out: Sylvanian Families!

I definitely collected Sylvanian Families more than I really played with them as a kid.

My sisters and I each had one family - mine were the grey rabbits. My parents used cardboard boxes to build us an apartment block style dolls house, with one vertical row of boxes each which we could decorate as different rooms.

We used carpet and wallpaper off-cuts and mixed our store-bought furniture (all lovingly, carefully chosen after much deliberation and on a limited pocket money budget) with homemade things.

I just loved looking at all the teeny pieces. A bookcase with tiny books! A bath with a teeny cork in the plughole! A sink with a tiny bar of soap! A sewing machine with little scissors and reels of thread.

Drawers that really opened! Charming old fashioned furniture like a dressing table and a rocking chair and a fancy rotary phone!

It was such a joy opening up a box and finding all these things... especially as I'd also kept some of the handmade furniture and accessories we'd made. I'll blog about those soon, they definitely deserve their own post.

In the meantime, check out my posts about other rediscovered childhood collections:

My shell collection...

... my badge collection...

 

... my sticker collection...
 

... and my eraser collection.

You might also enjoy reading about puzzles and games from my childhood, more childhood treasures, Fuzzy-Felt Fairytales and beloved kids books.

Fuzzy Nostalgia

Remember all those puzzles and games hidden away in our attic? Well, brace yourself for a bit more childhood nostalgia because...

 

... we found a box of Fuzzy-Felt!

What fun this stuff was!

We spent hours and hours and hours as kids re-arranging these little felt pieces and using them to tell all kinds of stories.

Sadly they don't stick to the board any more, and some of the pieces are definitely showing their age.

It feels totally wrong to just throw them away though, so I'm thinking maybe I should make something from them? Maybe combine them with some plain felt and patterned papers to make some nostalgic cards to send to my friends? Hmmm...

I shall add the pieces to my box of "random things that might be useful for a crafty project sometime" (every crafter has a box like that, right??) and see if/when inspiration strikes!

P.S. You might also enjoy these posts about board games, toys, books, erasers, badges and stickers from my 80s childhood :)

Making Boxes from The Gift Box Book

Remember the craft projects you did when you were a kid? Wouldn't it be nice to revisit some of them?

Well, that's exactly what I did recently when I made some boxes from The Gift Box Book...

I had this book when I was at primary school, and I loved it! So many pretty boxes to cut out and make and then use to store the sort of teeny "treasures" that only a kid could think counted as treasure.

I thought this book and all the boxes were long gone (if I ever thought of them at all) until last year when I rediscovered it at the bottom of a big box of crafty supplies. I had totally planned to make the remaining three boxes that weekend.... but life must have got in the way as the months went by and the book sat gathering dust on a shelf in my studio.

So, a few weekends ago, I finally got round to making the final boxes: finally finishing a crafty "to do" which has been on my list for over a year but also kinda since I was a kid (over 20 years ago!)

It turns out that making boxes is just as much fun as when I was small, though this time round I won't be using them for storing things like marbles and old coins and interesting looking rocks :)

This plain-shaped patterned box will probably be the most useful...

... but my favourite is definitely this fancy box!

I love the attention to detail on these boxes - even the bottom of the box has a pattern on it:

Sadly it turns out that in the twenty years since I last made boxes from this book, I have not greatly improved my crafty and/or organisational skills because I managed to lose one of the box pieces in between cutting them out and sticking the box together.  So, this ship box remains unfinished. Boo. 

 

I'd totally blamed younger me for this. "Oh, the top piece must have been on another page of the book that I didn't keep!" Nope, it's totally recent-me's fault - you can spot the missing piece in the photos I took of the pages last year. Note to self: don't throw away all the scraps from your projects until you've actually finished it and know for certain that the scraps are actually all scraps!!

P.S. Fancy making your own boxes? Awesomely,The Gift Box Book is still in print 30 years after it was first published. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA and the Book Depository. Please note, the Amazon and Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links.

You Never Know What a Blog Post Will Lead To...

It's just two weeks until Blogtacular - an awesome-looking conference for creative bloggers. I treated myself to a ticket last year and have been looking forward to it ever since (especially after it was announced that Grace Bonney will be the keynote speaker!)

With the conference looming I've been thinking a lot about blogging: why I do it, what I enjoy most about it, where I see my blog heading in the coming months, and so on. Despite an attack of imposter syndrome and occasional patches of blogger's block I've loved my 8+ years of blogging and all the inspiration, connections, friendships and unexpected opportunities that have come along with it.

One very unexpected thing that happened this month was that I did some decluttering, blogged about my childhood eraser collection... and ended up having the collection featured in Mollie Makes!

It is thrilling (if slightly surreal) to have one of my childhood collections in print in one of my favourite crafty magazines - especially as I originally wrote the blog post thinking "this is a bit of a random thing to be blogging about, I wonder if anyone will be remotely interested in this???"

I'm delighted that so many people will get to bask in the glory of my collection (haha) and I hope it sparks lots of nostalgic conversations about the things they all collected as kids.

It just goes to show that you never know what will happen when you press "publish" on a new blog post!

My eraser collection is featured in the current issue of Mollie Makes (#54). Click here for a preview and for stockist info.

Decluttering and Treasure-Hunting

I am sloooooowly recovering from a horrid bug which has left me feeling quite wobbly and rather foggy-brained... and without a lot of energy for working or making (or blogging). 

It is very frustrating not being able to charge through my To Do list like normal. In the meantime, to make myself useful I have been doing lots of time-consuming-but-not-terribly-complicated tasks like properly filing stacks of paperwork and tidying up boxes of supplies in my studio. My workspace is going to be wonderfully well organised by the time I get back to my regular working schedule!

 
I've also slowly been doing some more decluttering. After struggling to finish my Less 365 Project last year I've been amazed by the amount of stuff I've managed to clear out this spring (or, at least, add to the pile in the corner of my room that'll be getting charity-shopped once I've recovered from this bug!).

I've been keeping a list (because I am a giant nerd and I love a nice list) and have decluttered 73 things so far - some big (cushions, double-bed sized blankets, stacks of magazines, etc) and some small (brooches, toys from Christmas crackers, fridge magnets, etc). As always, it feels pretty fantastic to realise "I don't need/want/love this anymore!" and to be finding new homes for all these unwanted things.

As well as sorting through my own stuff, I've been helping my mum sort through boxes of old books, toys and trinkets tucked away in the attic years ago. These boxes are like timecapsules and going through them has totally transported me back to my childhood.

I couldn't resist taking some photos of these She-Ra: Princess of Power books - I read them sooooo many times! My sisters and I were big fans of She-Ra (and Jem & the Holograms, of course).

It's been fun revisiting these old favourites, but also weird re-discovering things I loved as a kid but had totally forgotten about until this week. Like these guys:

 

Keypers! Remember them? They came with a key and had a "secret" compartment to keep your treasures safe. Such fun.

My sisters and I each had one of these - mine was the snail. Here are the "treasures" I had hidden inside when it got packed away many years ago...

I'm rather looking forward to sorting through the rest of the boxes in the attic - I wonder what other long-forgotten treasures we'll find?

80s Child: My Eraser Collection!

My Less 365 project might be finished, but I'm still working on decluttering my space - slowly sifting the beloved, much-used "wheat" of my possessions from the no-longer-loved, no-longer-needed "chaff".

While working on my Less 365 project, I "decluttered" my childhood badge collection: taking a photo of the whole collection as a memento, then keeping just a few favourites with special sentimental meaning. I had totally intended to do this for some of my other childhood collections but not got round to it (oops). 

So, when I found myself at a loose end the other day what did I do? Took photos of my novelty eraser collection, of course!

I haven't counted them, but there are quite a few erasers in the collection!

I think most of them date from the late 80s to the early 90s, basically while I was in primary school and spending my pocket money on cute nonsense like this. I vividly remember buying some of these erasers while on a summer holiday at Butlins, some were obviously bought on school trips and family outings to museums and theme parks (several of which I'd totally forgotten I'd ever visited) and others were gifts from my mother, tucked into the pockets of our Advent Trees.

I especially love the comb and the windmill (it has plastic blades that spin!)...

 

... the smiley-face-in-a-box that I won playing croquet at a friend's birthday party and the treble clef I got when I was taking piano lessons...

 

... the retro telephone and those cute kittens...

 

... the interlocked rabbit and baby rabbit...

 

... and the rainbow clothes peg. So much cuteness!

I'm going to keep just a few of these that tug at my heartstrings - any suggestions for what I should do with the rest? I'd hate for them to just get thrown away, but I suspect that's exactly what might happen if I donated them to a charity shop.

UPDATE: the erasers have found a new home with a collector, hurrah! I donated the money raised to a children's charity - it seemed appropriate given that these gave me so much happiness in my own childhood :)

P.S. for more 80s kid nostalgia, here's a blog post about my sticker album!

Retro Cassette Phone Case for Mollie Makes

The June edition of Mollie Makes is out now and, as I rather excitedly mentioned the other day, my project is on the cover!

I designed a retro cassette phone case you can stitch from felt...

... there are also templates included for making an iPod and iPad case, and instructions for making either a tape with a felt rainbow or a pretty fabric "sticker".

 

Ooh look, it's me! It's always a bit (okay, a lot) weird seeing my face staring back at me from a magazine, but it's so nice to find myself on a contributors page with a big crafty name like Kirstie Allsopp. 

It was lovely to get my hands on a copy of the magazine, and to see the fab layout the team have put together. There are step by step pics too of course, but to see that spread you'll have to buy a copy ;)

Mollie Makes Issue 41 is out now, available from UK newsagents and supermarkets or online. The digital edition is available to download through Zinio, Google Play and Apple Newsstand.