I'm Guest Posting Today!

I'm guest posting a tutorial over at The Silly Pearl today! 

Here's a sneak peak of what I'll be making...

So head over to The Silly Pearl and check it out :D

Whip It Up Wednesday: Doily Flowers

I've been a busy little bee making decorations for our upcoming engagement party :D

Do you like my bouquet of paper flowers? 

I'll use these to brighten up the food and drink table along with a few other decorations.

Just because I love you guys, I'm going to show you how I made all the different flowers :D
Let's start with the doily flowers!

What You Need:

~ Per flower ~

* 1 wooden skewer

* 1 doily

* 1 or 2 beads for the centre

Scissors and a glue gun

What To Do:

Take your doily and cut it into a spiral, like so:

Now, I used double sided tape to make this flower but after a couple of days it came unstuck! So I recommend you use your hot glue gun instead. Just be careful of your fingers getting burned!

Place a dab of glue on the back of the centre of your doily spiral and pull the end around as far as you can to create a small 'cone' shape.

Place a dab of glue on the outside edge of your cone and pull the loose part of your spiral around, building up another layer of your 'cone'. Continue this until you've built a nice large cone shape and used up all of your doily spiral.

Now you should have something that looks like this:

Right, grab your wooden skewer and glue gun a bead or two onto the pointy end. I used a wide hole metallic bead and a gemstone chip on the very end.

Snip a little hole in the centre of your doily flower and thread your skewer through.

For extra strength you might like to run a ring of glue around the underside of the flower, where it meets the skewer. I found this useful on my other flowers :)

You're done! Make yourself a stack of them for a pretty arrangement!

You might also like to check out these tutorials for more paper flowers:

I Am SO Lucky And You Guys ROCK!!

I've been a very, very, VERY lucky girl lately!

First off, I won this lovely bracelet! It's pretty in photos but it's absolutely gorgeous in real life! So let me say a huge thank you Bry of Reenie Jae Creations for hosting the giveaway and another huge thank you to Lauren of DoodleBoop Designs for donating the fab bracelet that lucky me gets to own :D

P.S. Bry and Lauren are both super talented and have Etsy shops! 

Bry's is here and Lauren's is here! You go girls!

After that - would you believe I won another giveaway!? I certainly couldn't believe my luck!

This time it's thanks to the gorgeous and talented Nicole of Craft My Soul!

Check out my amazing new goodies - but promise you'll excuse the dorkiness of the photos ;)

Three lovely hair pieces (hair clip - headband - hair clip):

And a gorgeous brooch! Which for now at least I'm using as bag bling!

What a haul! I'm super lucky! Nicole is also very talented so when you've finished checking out her blog, check out her Facebook page too!


Thank you beautiful people! <3

Whip It Up Wednesday: Birthday Card for Nan

It's that busy time of year where we have lots of birthdays in our family, as well as things like Father's Day, and that means lots of cards! Hopefully I'm not boring you too much ;)

This card is for my Nan's birthday. She lives a 5 hour drive away from me so I don't get to see her anywhere near as often as I would like. I hope she likes her pop-up bouquet card!

This idea comes from Martha Stewart's site, where you can also find downloadable templates if you so desire. This is the original version:

 I like to make things up as I go, so here's how I made mine.

First we need to make seven flowers. For each flower, you need one square of coloured paper. I used squares approximately 3" x 3" in purple, blue and yellow.

Fold your paper in half, then half again, like so:

Fold in half diagonally, like so:

Then take some sharp scissors and cut the end so it's rounded. 

When you open it up you should have a flower shape!

 

Now cut out one petal. Pop a bit of double sided tape on one of the petals next to the newly created gap, then stick the petal from the other side of the gap onto it. This gives you a 3D flower!

 

Now make 6 more ;) You need 7 in total.

To assemble your card, take one flower to use as the central flower and on the back of each petal use a small piece of double sided tape to attach it to the petal of another flower. You should have something like this when you're done:

Now use small pieces of double sided tape to attach the tips of adjoining petals where shown in this image:

Now you should be able to fold it down flat along a the centre, like so:

Pop a piece of double sided tape on the middle petal (the middle petal on my yellow flower below), and then close the card around it to attach. Repeat with the other side of your bouquet so that both sides are secure. 

If you want, cut some leaf shapes and fold them in half to give a 3D feel.

Attach them anywhere that they don't get in the way of opening and closing your card :) 

The inside is done! It's up to you to decorate the outside ;)

Happy Wednesday!

Just Sharing - Party Jars!

Happy Tuesday everyone! I've been busily crafting decorations for our engagement party and thought I'd share tonight's effort. It's so simple that you won't need a blow by blow tutorial to make your own!

Cute party jars! Just pop an LED tealight candle (not a real one, we don't want to burn the paper!) inside a cupcake liner, inside a nice clean jar and use your trusty glue gun to decorate the jar with vellum paper and rick rack in a "bunting" design! Tie a ribbon or (like me!) a "cord" of crepe paper around the top of the jar and you're done! A party in a jar! :D

Whip It Up Wednesday: Lemon Margarita & Vanilla Cupcakes

For our engagement party we've decided to do a "Cupcakes and Cocktails" theme - yum! 

Here's an idea that combines the two!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Lemon Margarita Icing

This uses an adapted version of  this icing and this strawberry stuffed vanilla cupcake recipe, without the strawberries. I did intend to use strawberries but I'm FAR too lazy to cut a cone out of each cupcake after they're baked so I can shove a strawberry in. I should've at least put the strawberries on top, but alas, the strawberries were eaten long before I reached that stage... I'm rather fond of strawberries.

I did experiment with baking a strawberry inside a couple of cupcakes, but it's really not that impressive. For the sake of sharing from experience, this is what it looks like:

And the texture of the strawberry is squishy :-/ Perhaps more appropriate for creepy Halloween cupcakes ;)

Anyway! I used the exact vanilla cupcake recipe that the Food Network used, and here is my adapted icing recipe (original here) - my version is lemony instead of limey. It's also quite strong but very tasty!

What You Need:

* Rind and juice from 1 large lemon

* 1/2 cup room temperature unsalted butter

* 1 cup of caster sugar

* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 2 tablespoons tequila

* 1/4 tablespoon milk

* A few drops of green food colouring

What To Do:

Put butter in a big mixing bowl and cut it into small pieces. Add vanilla, lemon juice and rind and tequila. Mix with the electric beater until combined. Gradually add sugar and milk. Add food colouring and keep mixing until everything is evenly combined.

Now you can ice your vanilla cupcakes! Top with a strawberry or glace cherry for an extra punch of colour!

Enjoy!

New Things in the Store!

Just added a couple of new pretties to the Hazel and Honeysuckle MadeIt store!

There are lots of lovely little clay stud earrings, this is the newest set:

There's also the ever popular Dahlia ring or perhaps

a sweet wooden bead and Swarovski crystal design is more your taste?

Head over to the MadeIt store and see if something tickles your fancy! <3

Whip It Up {Sunday!}: Scrap Buster Father's Day Card

It's Father's Day today! So I thought I'd share the card I've made for Dad this year :) 

You can adapt this to any occasion, it's really easy and it's a great paper scrap buster!

What you need:

* Lots of strips of colourful, co-ordinating paper in various thickness

* Small rectangle of vellum paper

* Slightly larger rectangle of colourful paper

* A "base" card

* Scissors (normal and decorative)

* Glue

* Gold pen for embellishment

* Split pins / brads

* Foam photo mount stickers

What to do:

Make up your "base" card if you haven't already. I wanted mine to fit inside a standard envelope, so I slipped the edge inside the top of the envelope, scored across where I wanted the top of the card to be, folded it at the score and trimmed off the excess.

Now cut your scrap paper into lots of strips. I like thin strips, but vary the thickness a bit for added interest. I also like to use different textures and types of paper if I can. Make sure you have enough strips to cover the front of your card.

Now, glue them on! I did mostly horizontal strips. First a layer of the longer, thicker strips then on top of that I added a few of the thinner and shorter strips. I also ended up doing a few vertical strips.

Let it dry then trim off the overhanging paper.

For added durability and longevity, I gave the front a thin coat of matt Mod Podge. You don't have to of course! Or you might like to be different and use gloss!

Now to embellish! I took a piece of vellum paper and wrote my message in gold marker.

I trimmed it down, then using my decorative scissors cut a piece of scrap book paper to sit behind the vellum paper so my wording would stand out. These two layers will be attached together using split pins, and I find it's easier to put the split pins through if I pop holes in the right spots first. Use the tip of some sharp scissors or an awl.

Attach the pieces, then place some foam photo mounting stickers on the back.

Attach this to the front of your (now dry!) card. You can stop here if you want, but I went ahead and added  a few swirls to the card with my gold pen for extra interest.

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there!