Craft Swap: Sammy

Another new feature for 2016 that we are very excited about, Craft Swap!  We were wanting to find a way to inject more creative thinking around our projects and try and include more of our friends to join in the fun too.

I really enjoyed the limitations of the copper wreath project I did before Christmas, in the way that the lovely guys at Turtle Mat sent me a small selection of supplies and by adding just a few bits from my stash I made something awesome.

So we have decided to start a Live it. Love it. Make it. Craft Swap.  The idea being that two people will gather together some crafty bits and bobs from their stash, then swap them with each other. Each person will then use them to create one or more handmade items.  We will share ours and our friends stash swaps and their creations on the blog over the next few months, in the hope that it will inspire us all to use up some of those bits we have been saving and give away the stuff that others can make use of.  We are so excited to kick off this new feature and we hope you will enjoy it too!

Lets get started with the goodies that H gave to me last month.

H swapped me: a glass jar, a test tube container, some patterned paper, a sheet of glitter paper, a necklace chain, a wooden pendant, some pink wire, a heart peg, red flower stamens, a gold succulent craft kit from a copy of Mollie Makes, a plain paper note book and some small wooden scallop charms.

And here is what I made...

My first idea was to use the glass jar and the gold fabric from the magazine kit to make a scalloped collar to go around the jar to make it in to a pretty vase, then I used this simple paper flower tutorial with the paper from the notebook, the wire, staples and some glue to make a cute bunch of everlasting blooms to put in my new super cute vase. This quick simple project would make a great mothers day gift, don't you think? I kept it clean by just using the white paper, but you could also use patterned paper to create a more colourful bunch of flowers.

My second make was with the patterned paper, I used this paper folding tutorial to make some of these fun ornaments. I love these so much, I am going to make a ton more in different colours and hang them up in my conservatory roof, they will look lovely in there.

My third and final make from this swap was this necklace. I loved the wooden elements together, so I added some jump rings from my stash to attach the scallop charms to the necklace chain. Then using some metallic thread, again from my stash, I used the holes in the lager pendant (also a free gift with Mollie Makes I think) to create a simple design. I attached the last of the scallop charms to the bottom of the large pendant with a scrap of smaller chain to complete the necklace. 

So as you can see I didn't end up using all of the swap bits this time, but they have been put into my stash for other projects. 

We would love this to become something that everyone can get involved in, if you have a friend that you can do a swap with we would love to see your makes!  Tag us in your pictures @liveit.loveit.makeit on Instagram and use the #lilimicraftswap so we can see and share them with everyone. 

If you are a blogger and would like to get involved in our craft swap please get in touch via email liveit.loveit.makeit@gmail.com so we can feature them here or pair you up with another blogger. 

We hope you like this idea as much as we do and that it might encourage you to have a go, even if you just dive into your own stash and get inspired! Next month you will get to see what H made with the goodies I gave to her, so be sure to keep a look out for that one. 

Sammy & H, xxx

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Love it: Cuttlebug Die Cutting Machine

At the beginning of January I made a sneaky purchase with some of my Christmas money and bought a Cricut Cuttlebug machine. I already have a Silhouette Cameo (which I use a-lot) and have had a Sizzex bigshot in the past but I donated it to H's work as I used to find it was a little cumbersome and therefore didn't really use it.  I love my Cameo but I wanted to do some work with foam and felt and due to the way that the silhouette cuts, you can't really use it well with felt.

I had heard great things about the Cuttlebug and loved the look of the compact design, what I also loved was that they brought out a limited edition one in stylish vintage green! It always helps to have pretty craft tools right.

I had some dies left over from when I had my Bigshot, I was a little annoyed to find that I needed to buy an extra 'C' plate in order to use them in the cuttle bug as it only comes with an 'A' and two 'B' plates. However some of my existing dies worked just fine and it came in the post super fast, then I was able to use all of them.

I had heard things about plates slipping and curving after time, but so far I haven't had any problems with either of those things.

If your not sure what the dickens I am talking about or what a die cutting machine does, it's basically a mangle with two rollers that uses metal dies to cut through paper, card, foam and fabrics.  You insert your material and a metal die in between the plates and the rollers push down with even pressure to cut and emboss the shape of your die in to the material.

As I said I particularly wanted to use it for cutting foam and felt, both of which it does beautifully. The only downside for me is that I am limited to the dies that I can buy ie. those that others design in fixed sizes. I think I have been spoilt with the freedom that comes with the Silhouette design studio software of being able to cut any design in any size. Having said that there are hundreds of dies out there and lots come with multiple size options.

The Kirsty Allsopp model does come with a few dies and an embossing plate but I did buy a few new dies as well of course, I think my favourite has to be this two part bow one from dimensions, this triple butterfly and the roll up rose.

As you can see I have been going a little crazy with the bow one!

This heart one will be really useful for Valentines and beyond and how beautiful are these feather ones. I bought my cuttlebug and all these dies from Crafts U Love which is one of my favourite places to buy craft supplies online.

All in all I would highly recommend this model if you are thinking of investing in a die-cutting system and can't commit to an electronic one. I love that you can use almost all of the other systems dies with it and for me the compact design means I am far more likely to keep it on hand and actually use it on a regular basis now. I am looking forward to trying out using it for some faux letterpress projects too as I have seen a few kits that you can use with these machines. Keep your eyes peeled for when I share my experiments.

I hope that helped if you are on the fence about getting one of these. Have you ever had a go with a die-cutting machine? Ever been fascinated to try one? Do you have one that's your favourite? Let me know your recommendations for places to buy dies from too please, I am a little addicted! I am looking for some good alphabet ones next.

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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Makers Month: How we wear:.. Handmade

This month has been so much fun introducing you to some of our top designer/makers.  We thought it was only right to share a few of our favourite wearable things that we both have in our collections from some more super talented folk.  I love that we both ended up sharing pieces of jewellery, which is funny because we both usually make our own. It just shows that we are both magpies when it come to a pretty necklace...or three.  The ring that H featured is one that she made herself at a class at the London Jewellery School. It is a great place to learn Jewellery making you can take courses in lots of different techniques from beading to stone setting.  So if you are interested in learning more head over to their site. You never know you could become a designer/maker yourself.

Bird Necklace - Alison Lush

Bow hairclip - Hatastic

Ring made at London Jewellery School

Brooch by Lucie Ellen 

Necklace by Custom Made

Necklace worn as a bracelet by Benu

Do you make Jewellery? What wearable handmade pieces do you own? Or are there some pretty pieces we should have on our wish list? Tweet us a picture @livelovemake or #livelovemake, we would love to see and hear about more awesome crafts people.

Have a lovely weekend and pop back on Monday for a Liberty fabric tutorial.

Sammy xxx

 Live, Love, Make, Like, Share, Follow, Tweet, Pin, Add, Enjoy. 

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Makers Month: Folksy Finds

Cuppa Tote bag by Hello Dodo / Hedgehog earrings by Ginger Pickle / Custard Cream Brooch by Laura Lane / Waistcoat baby grow by This is Lullaby / Flying ducks by Prince Design UK / Best of British print by We Laugh Indoors / Union Jack Pillbox hat by Maynard Millinery

I think Folksy gets the raw end of the stick sometimes when comparing it to other sites of it's kind. I am going to confess that in the past I have not been a frequent visitor to (or even a fan of) the British handmade market place Folksy.com, always heading for Etsy or Not on the High Street as my 'go to' for all things designer/maker. I feel I and many others have been doing the site an injustice.

I have in the past felt that it was a bit 'village craft fair' or 'Homemade' as opposed to 'Handmade' (there is a difference).  However I have been scouring the site lately for home grown UK talent and have been very pleasantly surprised!

I was always under the impression that the site was full of 'Folk' style crafts, but knowing that some of my favourite makers have recently opened shops on Folksy made me take a closer look. They are in very good company, there are some absolutely beautiful hand-crafted items available.

I have spoken about presentation before in my 'What Will it Take to Make Crafting Cool' post earlier this year and I still feel that poor photography lets a lot of Brits down when it comes to showing off their products on many of these sites.  However I have discovered some really great new makers to add to my ever growing Wishlist.

Do you sell on Folksy or Etsy or NOTHS? I would love to know your thoughts on why you like where you sell, Why you chose that platform etc. Let me know in the comments below.

Sammy x

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Makers Month: Choosing a Craft

Embroidery Hoops

We have been asked a few times recently and struggled to answer a question that I'm sure a few of you would also have difficulty answering ''what is your favourite craft?''

Over the past few years of co-running this blog, I have realised more and more that I find it so hard choose! how do I choose and I know Sammy feels the same.

String Art

I always default to saying that printing is my favourite craft, but I honestly don't have the space to set-up my printing stuff in my house-share, so I don't actually end up doing it as often as I would like - I do try to shoehorn printing in at work though!

For my job I spend a lot of time making up samples for the workshops we run and so I feel that I am constantly making, but most of the time I am not making things I like would like to be making for myself. They do, of course, turn out to be pretty cool, even if I do say so myself!

Some of my makes at The Lightbox

We are both bloggers who love crafts rather than designer/makers in the sense that we do not sell the things we make, I think I would find it hard to choose what to make and sell. I am interested to find out more from any of you who are designer/makers..

Did you get in to making as a hobby that grew in to a business? or did you choose something you want to make and then stick to it or did you change your focus after a while? or even, do you make other things in your spare time any-more or is it all about making stock now that you have a business?

Wrap Bracelet

I used to love Jewellery making and card making, but now don't do it quite so often, mainly gifts for friends.  I guess, for me, it comes down to having quite a creative job in the day, sometimes I just want to hang out with friends rather than make stuff for myself. I always wondered how Designer/makers cope with falling out of love with their craft? Does doing it as a business take the joy out of it for you?

Kindle Pouch

I have a pile of sewing ideas and projects to do and if it wasn't for the blog, I wouldn't get half of them done. Having the blog gives me the permission and drive to do something about all those ideas I have running around in my head, so I suppose it would be the same if I was making things to sell.

I'm just not sure I could commit to one style or genre of craft to make all the time to the exclusion of all the others that I like. I am sure that is why both Sammy and I love blogging and running the odd workshop because it lets us do all sorts of crafts and utilise all of our skills. It is also why we always find it hard to answer that question, What is your favourite craft?

Our new answer is 'all of them'

As always we would love to know what you think about this, Are you a designer/ maker? Do you have any answers for us? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us with #livelovemake

H

 Live, Love, Make, Like, Share, Follow, Tweet, Pin, Add, Enjoy. 

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Live it: Tea and Crafting Workshop

We all love to find a new creative space, right?  and that is just what we did when we got invited to a do a workshop at Tea and Crafting in Camden.  This workshop space is quite a new one and with so much on offer, it has definitely made its mark on the London Craft scene.  Jane, who owns Tea and Crafting is not new to us here, H took a class with her way back in 2012 for the infamous Loom Knitting post over at Craft Central.

But now she has very much branched out on her own in the vibrant area of Camden, inviting along with her a variety of tutors to give people the choice and inspiration that a craft space needs.  The workshop space is in the hub of Camden Market and is only up a flight of stairs - or lift if you prefer from the market entrance near the infamous Camden Lock Bridge.

The space itself is very much themed around all its classes.  There is a sample for everything they do, so that you can have a look at what you next want to do.  Each time they do a workshop the space is laid out differently and so you could never sit in the same place twice!  They run workshops from embroidery and paper cutting to crochet or Millinery, and so plenty of different things to try.

We were invited to try the Machine free motion Embroidery Class, which just happened to be run by another friend of ours, Nic, so good to catch-up at the same time.  I hope this didn't make her more nervous, it definitely didn't show if she was.

We started with a cup of tea and told to help ourselves to cake - they were already onto a winner with us!

Then, Nic explained what we would be doing, which was to applique on some fabrics onto a tea towel and then machine embroider over the applique to make it all pretty.

We had some templates sheets to look through to get an idea of what we wanted to do, you could also do your own idea, which Sammy did.  We then traced/drew onto Bondaweb and chose our fabrics.  I went with a rocket and rainbow theme and Sammy went for cameras.  We then Ironed on our Bondaweb, cut it out and positioned onto our tea towel before the fun could start with Machine embroidery.

We then got down to the serious business of learning how to Machine Embroider.  Nic showed us how to change a foot on a machine and what the foot looks like, so that you can have a little knowledge when you get addicted to it and need to go and buy a foot the very next day - just me then?  

The advice was fast foot, slow hands.  You need to keep the machine running at a fast pace and have smooth slow movements with your hands moving the fabric.  We all had a go on some scrap fabric first so that we didn't go wading into our final piece straight away.  Nic suggested we try and write our names and so we could get a really good feeling for what to do as it was such a recognisable image for us to do.  I was very impressed with my first go and my name was actually legible!

Then, down to the business of going around our image, choosing whether we were going to go once over each shape or over sketch the design.  I like the over sketch design and so chose this for some of my image.  Nic, then took us through some hand embroidery techniques, so that you could have a try at adding those too.  I was off on a machine embroidery whirlwind though and so kept it all on the machine.

What do you think to our efforts?  Sammy had done a bit of machine embroidery before, but I had not and so definitely got the bug for it.

We both really enjoyed the class, there was enough of the fun and informative to keep it really relaxed.  The space is really calming and inspiring, so it could keep you coming back again and again to try something new each time.

We would recommend Tea and Crafting if you are looking for a new workshop to try.  They also run crafty Hen parties and afternoon craft tea parties and so you can go with your friends too.  If you do go, let us know what you think and show us what you made via Instagram or Twitter using #livelovemake.

H & Sammy

Disclaimer:  We were invited to Tea and Crafting to try out one of their classes.  We were not asked to give a positive review, but it just so happens that it was really easy to give one.