June & July in Pictures: Colour & Crafting amongst the Chaos!

I spent a hectic few weeks this summer living out of a suitcase, travelling back to my flat from time to time but mostly staying with my parents and helping them prepare to move out of our family home and across the country to their new house. You might have noticed that I rather dropped the ball on the blogging front (oops!) while all this was going on... but I still managed to squeeze in some crafting and other fun stuff in between all the packing and general moving prep.

So... what did I get up to in June and July?

My friend Kate visited Bristol and we met up for a day's sightseeing and photo-taking (you can read about her trip to the city here and here). It's always a joy to show people round my favourite city, and Bristol was looking pretty darn gorgeous in the summer sunshine.

I was nearly late to meet her in the morning, though, as I was busy taking photos of this fabulous wall! (Instagrammer problems, man...).

 

For my birthday one of my friends surprised me with this awesome "Making Things" print and I couldn't resist taking a photo of it surrounded by some of the crafty supplies I'd been using that week.

 

I made things with this wonderful marbled paper (click here to see what I made with it!)...

... and made lots of felt butterflies for June's "A Year of Wreaths" Wreath tutorial (follow that link for the free tutorial). 

 

The shiny new edition of my first book, Super-Cute Felt was published (prompting an Instagram post full of feelings)...

... with a free project from the book available over at MAKEetc...

 

... and the pear needlebook tutorial (delightfully) featured in Prima Makes magazine.

 

I blogged about some fabulous fog, my visit to Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, a trip to Lichfield and a magnificently quirky museum: the Birmingham Pen Museum.

 

I confessed to sometimes preferring unused skeins of yarn and embroidery thread to finished projects (there's just something so appealing about those soft loops of colour!)...

 

... and had a hilarious dream in which I went on a date... not to a bar, or a café, or the cinema, but to a giant branch of Paperchase! The way to my heart is clearly via nice stationery (or haberdashery!). Naturally, I couldn't resist obeying my subconscious and visited the big Paperchase on the Tottenham Court Road when I was in London a couple of weeks later. Mmm... so many colours...

 

I shared a photo of my much beloved Dorcas pin tin - which it turns out is something a lot of people have in their sewing kit, and treasure (maybe you have one too?). This tin belonged to my mum when she was at school. I also have a larger one which I inherited from my grandmother, along with the rest of her sewing box.

 

I do love things which are pretty but also practical... although sometimes I buy so many of them that they're not quite so practical any more. Like mugs - I definitely have way more mugs than I technically need but there are just so many lovely ones! This one is my current fave: a recent gift from a kind friend who knows just how much I love a pop of colour.

 

Finally, July turned into a month of colourful selfies as I visited the WALALA X PLAY installation (a maze of mirrors and bright patterns that's perfect for taking photos)... 

 

... then got inspired by Instagram's "Weekend Hashtag Project" photo challenge and ended up spending a chunk of a Sunday afternoon lying on the floor covered in blankets (which is a perfectly normal thing to do, right??).

That week's challenge was #whptalentshow, and I got thinking about how my creative talents are things I've inherited from my parents, and which were encouraged and nurtured by them when I was growing up. Which (naturally) led to me taking selfies while sandwiched between the blanket my mum knitted for me when I was a baby, and the blanket I'm knitting for my new flat.

 

(Psst - for more blanket-y lols, check out the outtakes!).

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.               

Paperchase Pretties

We went to Bath for the day last week, for a bit of shopping and a lot of pressing our noses against the windows of shops so expensive we didn't dare go in them for the sake of our bank balances!

The boyfriend picked up a few bargain charity shop books and I bought a new dress and treated myself to some lovely paper goods from Paperchase. I can never resist a branch of Paperchase.

Letterpress notecards covered in teacups (I'm so predictable!) ...


... and a Sukie postcard covered in birds:


I've got a trio of large Sukie handkerchiefs which we use for wrapping our sandwiches for packed lunches and picnics, decorated with patterns of moths, leaves and birds. The birdie one is definitely my favourite, and the more times I look at that postcard the more I think it would be a good idea to keep it and frame it...

Crafting 365 - day twelve - more accounts, more moustaches

Here are the moustaches I made last night ... some moustache disguises and some moustaches soon-to-be-stuck-on-cards:
The flocked wonder they have been photographed on is my accounts book. Accounts may be dull but my accounts book itself is a thing of beauty (on the outside at least!). I used to spend far too much money in Paperchase but boy was it worth it :)

My mother-in-law came round for lunch today. I was making moustaches. She now thinks me even more crazy than she did before, but she bought some of my recycled envelopes so I guess I can forgive her. Yet more moustaches this evening as I shall be zoning out in front of a Hercule Poirot mystery or two and unable to begin exciting new things. Zzzz...