Luna the Crochet Dragon

Just wanted to share my latest project with you. I got commissioned for the first time! My best friend Tanya from secondary school asked me to make her a purple dragon. I sent her some photos of crochet dragons and she chose this one:

Luna the dragon in her new home.

I took a long-awaited trip to London to visit her and we had a really fun weekend. It was filled with calisthenics, old chick-flicks, food, and a Captain Morgan's themed night out where we got loads of freebies. Tanya was the envy of her whole student flat and Luna got lots of love and cuddles; she's practically a house pet.

Confession time: I thought it'd be really easy to put Luna together on the train up there but it ended up being quite an involved operation with lots of sewing. So after 4 hours of bumpy public transport her tail wasn't finished and she had no eyes! Tanya didn't mind me finishing her off though and was fascinated by the whole process. I'm really proud of Luna and a little sad to give her away.

The pattern can be found here on Ravelry. It's in Spanish but is easy to follow with Google translate. For more dragon-ness I added some small wings from the crochet cthulhu pattern here where they have a nice photo tutorial.

This is the second time I've finished my crochet at the last minute, but I'll try not to make a habit of it. Also, just look at Luna's eyes, she's so cute!

Limpet x

Cardmaking Take Two

Friends and gentlefolk, welcome to the second edition of card making!

First of all we have a card to go with my "Your Father Smelt Of Elderberries" cross stitch from last week. It features the first half of the Monty Python quote in my favourite stampey stamps, a little pen hamster, and some elderberry foliage from my nature stash.

Next, an RSVP card. A good friend of mine decided she wanted an afternoon tea party for her birthday and sent out handmade invitations in the post. It was so lovely to get snail mail, so responding by email or facebook seemed too impersonal. I whipped up this little card with an open-able envelope and some shiny washi tape and popped it in the post right back to her.

This next one is a shameless rip-off of something I saw on Pinterest. Please don't judge me too much. The lava is made from some bubbly orange paper and the rest is just pen and coloured pencil.

I'm going to have to provide some back story now, so here goes. I started playing DnD recently, and my character is a massive ginger goliath with the mind of a child who thinks she's only 10 because she has ten fingers. Her name's Nini. Nini believes she was raised by rabbits, but they were actually just small Inuits wearing a lot of fur (but don't tell her that.) This card is for one of my favourite people; he runs the DnD group and is regularly vexed by Nini's antics as she tries to domesticate every animal we come across.

Making your cards is so easy and fun, that even I can do it. Until the next time I make cards good enough to show off,

L

Butterfly Box

First, I want to apologise for this Sunday post not being a Friday post. I tried my best but I was away from home and had bought the wrong camera cable with me. I don't know where this other cable came from, but it was one of those awful ones that are only for one thing and yet you have dozens of them. All the pictures were right there waiting but I couldn't get to them!

In absence of the photos for what I wanted to write about, and in keeping with it being Mother's Day recently, here's the birthday present that I gave my mum last year. It's a 15cm wooden cube with a photo on each face, except I did a little cross stitch for the lid.

Eggy Bread & Cards for Grannies

Crack an egg on a plate, scraggle it with a fork, soak it all up with some bread, season, and then fry it. You now have eggy bread, one of the best dishes ever invented (in my humble opinion.) I treated myself this morning by topping it with honey and blueberries, and what a glorious morning it was.

And now onto the card of the week:

Hilda is a tiny, softly-spoken, lovely old lady that we took out for a birthday lunch at the weekend. She's not technically my grandma, but she's like one. She's rather old-fashioned and always wears purple so this is a card for her birthday that reflects that. The flowers were cut out of a ragged Reader's Digest guide and the lettering is outlined in purple Sharpie. The trim is decorative sticky lace tape that can be found for pennies on eBay.

I don't know about you, but when I go into a shop to buy a card I end up staring at the selection for ages. The cards are either too clichéd or too pink or trying too hard to be funny. Don't get me started on finding cards for men either. I love giving home-made cards to people. They really don't take much time to make and make the other person feel that much more special, and save money too! 

Blueberries and birthdays,

L

Cardmaking Take One

(If you're stuck on the mobile version of this page (thanks Pinterest!) please click here for the web-friendly page.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you today a few homemade cards that have made the cut recently. I had a little stock-up of crafty things just after christmas. Such things I have never owned before, like stamps and various pretty papers.

Firstly something that's not technically a card but an envelope. When you undo the bow and pull the two heart halves apart, it opens out like a box! It doesn't have to be a heart of course, you could cut the flaps into any shape you like. Inside is a list for the mister: "52 reasons why (insert name here) is actually quite good." Because, you know, if you've just given someone a heart envelope then you can't make the title too soppy.

Here is the YouTube tutorial that I used to make this. 

Just add extra frontal card pieces, trim down the flaps, and add the ribbon at the end!

My uni friends and I don't usually exchange cards, but my favourite couple gave me and the mister one so I had to fix the slight awkwardness. I'm very proud of this little card and I got to use my stamps for the first time. There's a Sharpie dinosaur because what's more Christmas-y than that? Also we used to doodle them all over each other's paper.

Next we have a card I sent to my mum in the hope of receiving some post back to make me feel all special. She'd sent me a flip calendar with pictures from my childhood on that was very sweet. It also doubled as a "thanks for feeding me so much free food over christmas" card.

And finally a couple of birthday cards:

A cute collage panda, googly eyes, what more could you ask for?

I'm sure hippos would eat cake.

Well that's all for now!

Scissors and snippets,

L