November Monthly Favourites

I can't believe that it is almost December! This year has just flown by, the last month in particular don't you think? Although it has gone by really fast I do seem to have a ton of favourites to talk about.

At the beginning of the month H and I took a trip to a place we had been dying to visit for the longest time, Sketch. This London restaurant is special, weird and kooky in may ways. We ate in the Gallery restaurant, which is a mesh of several artists and designers collaborative process. Everything from the servers uniforms to the plates and menus have been designed to create a very unique dining experience. I'm sure this place is not for everyone, but we just loved it there. If you are looking to try something a little out of the ordinary I would totally recommend it. We are heading back for afternoon tea very soon.

I am a tea and hot chocolate lover but I also love to mix it up. One of my favourite alternatives is Peanut Hottie, it is like drinking liquid peanut butter! Yummy! And if you like Reeses Peanut butter cups try mixing this with hot chocolate for a special treat in a mug.

My new squirrel pen is just soooo cute, she sits on my desk in pride of place. A purchase from Paperchase on our recent visit, more of a novelty, but actually is really nice to write with too.

Orly bonder rubberised base coat is something I have been trying to get my hands on for a while, I couldn’t find it anywhere near me so I resorted to ordering it online. I wish I hadn’t waited so long. For me with my thin flaky nails, chipped nail polish was just standard.  However since using this even my chippiest of nail vanishes have stayed put. Game changer!

I love scented candles but I can really only burn them in my room where the cats don’t go. Our Bailey is fascinated and has burnt his whiskers and almost his tail on a few occasions, it is just not worth the risk of burning them all over the house as I would like too. We have LED candles for ‘effect’ in the lounge and things but you don’t get the fragrance. Recently I have been loving Glade air and fabric freshener spray and when I saw they had Christmas scents I just had to try. My fave is the Cosy Apple and Cinnamon, so now we can have the look and scent of candles without the risk.

We took our annual trip to Renegade craft fair in London last weekend and as you will have seen if you follow me on Instagram, we did some serious shopping. Some of my fave items (there are so many) was this cute little unicorn necklace from Eclectic Eccentricity and this Seasons eating calendar from Dear Colleen. The Unicorn is obvious but this calendar is awesome in lots of ways. It has been illustrated with gorgeous doodles of fruit and veg, each month has a recipe and when you have finished using the calendar part you can cut it away and use it as a shopping list for the following month’s recipe, Genius!

So December in 2 days, are you ready for Christmas yet? I am putting up my tree today, But I still have a bit of shopping to do, are you all done yet? Let us know in the comments who you have left to buy for, or what your favourites have been this month. 

Sammy xxx

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Live it: Paperchase SS15 Event

H and I have worshipped at the doors of Paperchase Tottenham Court Road for more than 15 years. Four floors of stationary, pens, paper and gifts who would not want to be a paper chaser? You can imagine our delight when an invite hit our inbox to head over to TCR and view their Spring/Summer 2015 line and have some Christmas crafting fun, we literally squealed.

Last Tuesday evening we made our way up to the crafting area at the top of the store and were met by the PR and some of the design team. after a welcome drink we headed over to have fun with glitter with the lovely Martine Arty. They have a bunch of workshops going on in the lead up to Christmas at the flagship store, head over to the #imadethis page on their website for more details.

We got to make Christmas decorations, basically we got to play with amazing paper, glue and glitter for an hour, it was awesome! 

Then they let us loose on the new collections. The lovely Puja took us around and talked us through some of the pieces. We are so excited to get our hands on some of these goodies. We don't want to spoil the surprise as we will be doing a post all about the collections when they are released so we have just given you a little teaser below...

Cockatoo tankard and it takes two to Mango! Yes!

A trip to the store would not be complete without a little shopping spree, so we headed down to check out the Christmas goodies and picked up more than a few supplies to keep us going until the next time we come and visit.

We would just like to say a massive THANK YOU to the guys at Paperchase for having us along, and for the awesome goodie bag!

Are you a Paperchase fan? What is your favourite piece of paperchasery? Or piece of stationary that you last bought?

Let us know, as usual in the comments below or on twitter @livelovemake

H and Sammy xxx


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Make it: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Baubles

It's Make it time again over here and this time it's a fun simple activity that the whole family could do to decorate the Christmas Tree, cos we all know it's nearly that time - if you haven't already put it up!

I saw these first over on Pinterest and just couldn't not make them, as they are just so cute.  I mean who doesn't want Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle baubles for their tree????

You will need:  Scissors, Ribbon (Blue, Purple, Orange and Red), double sided tape, self adhesive googly eyes and Green Baubles of course!

First, you will need to cut your 4 ribbons to the length that will go around your baubles, with a little overlap.  Then attach double sided tape to one side.

Wrap the ribbon around roughly the middle of the bauble and stick in place.

Next, get your adhesive eyes and stick onto the ribbon.

It really is that simple, repeat the steps for all four of your Turtles and you have your set.

Now, if you can't remember your turtles, I will help you out.  Raphael is Red, Donatello is Purple, Leonardo is Blue and Michelangelo is Orange!  Which one is your favourite???

These would make a great gift for the Turtle fan in your life and with the new film out at the moment, all my childhood memories are flooding back!  Gotta love the 80's!

H


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Make it: Super Easy Quilt

If you want to impress someone this year with a super easy, yet really impressive, gift this year make them a quilt blanket. Everyone loves snuggling up under a cosy blanket, they make great gifts and you can make them really personal by picking fabrics that you know the recipient will just love. I have to be honest, I am not the worlds greatest quilter, I think it stems from not wanting to cut up beautiful fabrics into little pieces just to sew them back together again. However this easy quilt requires very little cutting and you still get that lovely cosy blanket at the end of it.

I chose once again to use my some of my current favourite fabrics from Dashwood Studio to create this 'quilt' These are from the Retro Orchid collection.

You will need: 6 x 30cm strips of your choice of cotton fabrics (at least 110cm) wide, 150cm x 100cm of fleece fabric, Fabric Scissors, thread and your Sewing Machine.

Start by pinning and then sewing together two of your cotton strips. Pin them right sides together making sure you are sewing a nice and straight seam. You can use your machine foot to help guide your stitching. Then un-fold and pin and sew your next strip in place.

Continue until you have sewn all your strips together. Fold your quilt front in half length ways and mark the centre line with a row of pins. Then be brave and cut up the middle line you have marked, removing the pins as you go. You then want to take your two halves and flip one so it is facing the opposite way around. Line the two pieces up and sew them back together to create the chequered front piece.

If you have been neat, all your squares should line up nicely, if not don't worry too much, mine didn't, I think it adds a bit of quirkiness to the finished piece. It made it look more handmade! So next, is to add the fleece backing, I have not added any wadding to mine as I like my blankets to be a little more floppy and snuggly. Stitch all the way around the edge of your cotton and fleece. Make sure you leave a gap around 15-20 cm open at the end. Use this opening to pull the whole of your quilt right side out.

Folding in the raw edges, start at the opening and sew a line of top stitching all the way around the edge of your quilt about 1-1.5 cm in from the edge. And  you are all done, see I promised it would be easy!

If you can bear to part with your new cosy blanket it would make a great gift for anyone this Christmas, It would be so cute for a new arrival in baby colours and equally in fun boy fabrics for any Kiddos you need gifts for, a great alternative to more plastic toys. I am gifting mine to my Mother-in-Law who loves handmade presents and always admires the quilts in our home.

Who would you make one for this year?

Sammy xxx


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Who's Who: Ragged Life + Review

A couple of weeks ago we were asked along to a workshop at Tea and Crafting with Ragged Life.  We jumped at the chance to play with some fabric on a dreary Sunday morning and to find out more about what Ragged Life is all about.

Firstly we had a chat with Elsie who runs Ragged Life and so that brings us onto this month's Who's who.

Who are you?

Hi everyone, I'm Elspeth Jackson, rag rug designer, maker, teacher and fabric hoarder at Ragged Life.

What do you do?

I design and make rag rug homeware, fashion and art under the "Ragged Life" brand as well as running rag rug workshops in London and Hertfordshire. "Ragged Life" is all about being rough around the edges and unique so every piece I create is handmade using materials sustainably sourced from local charity shops and I love trying our different quirky designs. Over the years I've made everything from traditional rugs, festive Christmas wreaths and bold & bright cushions to rag rug photo frames, handbags and decorative letters - I even rag rugged up a tissue box once!

How did you start?

Every year my school used to put on a recycled fashion show for arts students to take part in. My mum had been making rag rugs for as long as I could remember so one year I bit the bullet and asked her to teach me so I could make a rag rug costume. It took weeks to make and weighed a tonne but I ended up winning a prize, so all was not in vain. From there I just kept on rag rugging and here I am today!

What's Next?

With Christmas coming up I've been keeping myself busy with Rag Rug Wreath workshops and Christmas present commissions. Our large rag rug letters have been really popular so I'll be rag rugging my way through the alphabet over the next few weeks. Longer term I'd really love to get together a whole load of people to embark on a World Record Attempt for the largest rag rug in the world. I just think it would look absolutely stunning. Watch this space!

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to the beginning?

Think big and act small. All your small actions will get you there in the end.

After our little chat we were able to get down to the fun of the workshop and start rag rugging ourselves. If you have never been down to the Tea and Crafting workshop space, we definitely recommend a visit.

There was a group of us crafters/blogging types to learn the skill of Rag Rugging and Elsie gave us a wreath or cushion to make and so we chose one of each to get us started.  Rag rugging is very simple as all you need is Hessian, spare bits of fabric and a latch hook.

First, Elsie showed us the Looped method.  Using long strips of fabric, roughly around 2cm wide, you hook the tail end to the front of the hessian and push it back and loop it at the front, hence the looped method.

Then it was over to the Shaggy method.  This is more of the traditional method that you see more often and involves smaller strips of fabric.  The handy gauge that Elsie gave us means that you can get all your strips about the same length and get more cut in half the time too.

This method is about getting the fabric hooked through a hole in the hessian, so that it has the two ends of the fabric loose at the front of the fabric.

Both of these methods are very simple and the looped method is more used for particular patterns and the shaggy method good for large expanses and wreaths for example.

Sammy and a few of the other ladies decided to do wreaths, it coming up to Christmas and all and went for the shaggy method.  What's great about this is that it is quicker and you can add all sorts of fabric to make something really striking, you can also use sweet wrappers to get some sparkle! Sammy chose her colours with her Christmas decoration theme in mind, so just wait for that.

A couple of us went for the cushion and I decided to try the looped method on mine, which appeals to my more ordered side!  I wanted to make a pattern in the centre of the cushion and so I decided on an anchor and using blue fabrics - of course!  I may use the shaggy method around the outside of my anchor, but not yet decided.

We had loads of fun at the workshop and met some new crafters, which is always nice.  We are both going to be finishing off our pieces soon and so I am sure we will share them over on our Twitter and Instagram feeds soon, so watch out for that.

Elsie also sells kits so that you can do your rag rugging at home or give it as a present, if going to a workshop isn't your thing, or you are further away from the classes.

The kits include: Latch hook, Hemmed Hessian, Wooden Rag Rug Gauge, Instruction Booklet, Instructional CD with Videos and a Pen.  They cost £9.99 and can be bought in her shop and will shortly be available from Sew Crafty too.

But for those who love a good workshop and are stuck for a present idea then just book yourselves on one of the workshops below: 

Thursday 20th November 2014 – Rag Rug Wreath Introductory Class – 19:00-21:30 @ Tea & Crafting, Camden, London. To book please head over to Tea and Crafting

Sunday 23rd November 2014 – Rag Rug Introductory Class – 10:00-12:30 @ The Coach House, Great Wymondley, Hertfordshire, SG47ER. To book please email raggedlifedesigns@gmail.com

Saturday 6th December 2014 – Rag Rug Introductory Class – 10:00-12:30 @ The Coach House, Great Wymondley, Hertfordshire, SG47ER. To book please email raggedlifedesigns@gmail.com

Sunday 7th December 2014 – Rag Rug Masterclass – 10:00-16:00 @ The Coach House, Great Wymondley, Hertfordshire, SG47ER. To book please email raggedlifedesigns@gmail.com

Wednesday 4th Feb 2015 – Rag Rug Introductory Class – 19:00-21:30 @ Tea & Crafting, Camden, London. To book please head over to Tea and Crafting

Phew, that's alot of information!  We loved our morning with Elsie and have definitely got the rag rugging bug.  Such a great way to use up some fabric supplies and as it uses smaller bits, you can really use up all those tiny bits and pieces that you have left over from projects, especially for the shaggy method.  Elsie recommended keeping old clothes and scouring charity shops for pattern and colours - we can imagine her place is full of fabric!

The patterns and styles that Elsie comes up with our amazing and really help to dispel that myth that rag rugging is for older people and just a bit, well, old fashioned.  Go check out Elsie's work and you can even commission her too!

H


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