Hotel Chocolat (or not...)

Every time I've been in Hobbycraft I always looked in their direction of their baking section and saw some products that I wanted to buy but never did. Except yesterday, I did.

Chocolate moulds!

A "Belgian Seashell" mould and candy buttons (light cocoa and white)

The basic idea being you melt the chocolate, pour it into the mould, hit it on the sideboard a few times to get ride of any air bubbles in the chocolates and then put into the fridge to set for about an hour or so. But I wanted to try marbelling some chocolate to get that true "Belgian" effect. You have to be careful not to overstir the chocolates together otherwise you lose the marbelling.

Melting the chocolate over hot water

After marbelling - looking fairly good!

Finished! Not exactly marbel, but still really tasty!

The finished effect wasn't all that marbelled, but they still taste good! I think next time I'll have to try using a piping bag so that the chocolate don't get mixed together as I've trying to coax it out of the bow into the mould. Didn't take very long at all to make though!

Poison !

I finished this jigsaw a while ago but only just got around to uploading a photo of it on here. The design is called "Poison" by Victoria Frances. I love the image but it makes for a difficult, yet challenging jigsaw because of the similarity between the pieces. Still, it looks amazing finished and hung on the wall! I have two other jigsaws of hers along a similar theme =)

This picture doesn't quite do the image justice!

The Secret Project...Revealed!

Now that I've given the Secret Project to it's recipients, I can share it with you!

My friend from university, Kelly, and her other half, Jason, have just had a gorgeous baby girl. So I stitched a barnyard birth sampler (design by Dimensions) for them.

 

Finished - before framing

Close up: moo and spots

Close up: Oink I did this section first)

Close up: The announcement

Finished and Framed!

I think I started in February and worked on it some weekends and a lot in school holidays. I tried to choose a "neutral" design because we weren't sure whether Kelly was having a boy or a girl because Kelly chose not to find out until the baby was born.The design was easy to work through because I just did a complete rectangular section at a time and worked through left to right, top to bottom - leaving the name until very last! The animals and spot/stripe patterns are full cross stitches with some fractionals and the backgrounds are half stitches. I had to use a different number of strands for different things - most of it was in 2 strands, but the backgrounds used 3 or 4!



I'm really pleased with how this turned out - I hope Kelly, Jason and Tillie enjoy having it in their home!

Getting up to speed...

I finished that *secret project* I've been working on for ages last night - sooooo pleased with it!!! BUT: can't show you yet! Sorry!!

Instead, I'll share some pictures of things I've been working on in the time that I've not been blogging (during the house move and report writing bla bla etc)

This is a jigsaw I completed over the New Year. I bought it because I love New York City and this reminded me of the fireworks they have there on New Year's Eve (not that I've ever been at that time of year, but one day maybe!). Amazingly, it only took me 2 days to do - I only recently got round to framing it though. I just love the colours - think it'll look great in my lounge or hallway!

"Manhattan Celebrations"

I've also literally just finished this cross stitch hanging. It was a free kit from The World of Cross Stitching magazine, and I thought it would be a cute thing for my grandparents to put in their kitchen. The actual stitching didn't take me that long - when I finished I put sticky felt on the back to hide the threads, added a lace trim around the edges to give a "table cloth" look, put it on the hanger and tied the ribbon. The hanger and ribbon came with the kit, but I've no idea if you could buy more hangers if I decided to do it again?!

Always Time For Tea

Long time no see!

OH MY GOD it's been so long since I updated my craft blog. I've been so busy with work, house moving and more work and even more boxes. Fortunately, I have been able to get little snippets of time to work on craft bits! Mainly, I've been working on my secret project, which is another reason why I've not updated this blog for a while.

I've also been doing some free kits I've got with my cross stitching magazines. This one is a design by Madeleine Floyd which came with The World of Cross Stitching magazine. It came with all the materials to sew the card and the actual card itself - I just used double sided tape to make up the card (I would usually use my Collal glue but I've lost the syringe in the move :< )I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out - I'm planning on sending it to my Grandparents, as I realised while sewing it that I've never actually stitched for them!