A few months ago, my friend organised a charity night to raise money for St Ann’s Hospice (by the end of all her endeavours, including running the Manchester marathon, she raised over £6,000 which is amazing!) and I bid on a pet photo shoot. It went above my budget of £50 but the very next lot was a family photo shoot which I bagged for £60 – and I just thought I’d ask the photographer in question to avoid taking my picture and take snaps of the pooch instead.

Which he very gladly did! The weekend before last, we all wandered down to Walkden Gardens in Sale, Manchester (which you need to pay a visit to if you’ve never been before as it’s absolutely charming and definitely one of Manchester’s hidden gems) so that Miguel could have his close-up with photographer Drew. He was such a good little doggy and posed very well for about half an hour, after which he lost interest, but we got some really beautiful shots that I can’t wait to find frames for to put on my photo wall.

Here are just a select few of my favourites. I think we can all agree that Miguel looks especially handsome in his bow tie (which I bought on Etsy from The Petal and Bow) and he finally sat still in his Miguel T-shirt for long enough for us to get a picture of. He hates that T-shirt – every time I put it on him he tries to eat it – but we got a few shots. And the number 7 is on there because other half Tom is perhaps the biggest Eric Cantona fan of all time… I picked that up from Etsy as well – find a similar one on the Pink Romashka shop.

So that’s that for the time being. Back to designing handmade table lamps! Take a look at the pics and let me know what you think. Miguel is such a cutie, right? Handsome little chap!

Miguel in lights!

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This is just one in a series of upcycled vintage children’s books from the 1980s and would look absolutely perfect in any little boy’s bedroom or on the wall in the nursery of a new arrival. Perfect for fostering an adventurous spirit!

And don’t forget to have a browse of the other products in my Etsy shop – therein you’ll find other books like She-Ra and He-Man that have been upcycled in a similar fashion. And watch this space as vintage Rupert Bear is also set to put in an appearance in the next week or so.

If you’d like to discuss a bespoke commission, be it for a beautiful piece of wall art, a lamp, lampshade or something else, get in touch and we can have a chat about what you’ve got in mind.

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This week I’ve had a bit of a departure from making bedside table lamps and whatnot to turn my hand to making fun picture frames using pages from rare vintage 1980s children’s books. Some of my favourite children’s books in actual fact – Where The Wild Things Are, She-Ra and He-Man.

It’s been a lot of fun putting these together. You’d think it would be really simple but it takes a lot of positioning and repositioning of frames over different parts of the books in question in order to find a picture that looks good. Not everything works in a frame, even though it looks great in the book itself so there’s a lot of pondering and poring over the pages, trying to find the perfect look. My favourite of these three has to be the Skeletor one – he looks pretty badass. I certainly wouldn’t want to tangle with him!

The Max picture would be perfect for anyone with a little boy or nephew of the same name, or for someone who’s a massive fan of the Maurice Sendak book (and let’s face it, who isn’t?). And the She-Ra picture frame is really something of a statement piece, perfect for the strongest woman (or little girl) you know!

I’ve got a few more that need tinkering with before they go up on my Etsy shop but that should hopefully happen over the weekend so if you’re not partial to these three and want to see some others I’ve made, hang on till Monday when they should be up for sale. I’ve got some amazing vintage Rupert Bear  books to play with so come back in a few days if you were always a huge Rupert Bear fan. (Incidentally, my new little nephew is called Rupert so I’ll be having a lot of fun making him lovely pressies in the future!)

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A few weeks ago, a loving husband got in touch with me via my Etsy shop to see if I could do a little bit of embroidery for him. His wife’s birthday is coming up and he wanted me to embroider some cute little bunnies and bears (the pictures of which he provided) on some hankies as a present for her.

Naturally, I said yes and got to stitching. Usually I would use a filler stitch like satin stitch when embroidering but my hankies are quite big so the little characters had to be big enough to actually show up, which meant that satin stitch wouldn’t really work. I don’t know if you know anything about embroidery but satin stitch is absolutely beautiful when finished (and one of my favourite stitches, in actual fact) but you can only do it over a certain length of space. If your stitch is too big, the threads get quite loopy and they don’t cover the fabric particularly well.

So instead I decided to use a long and short stitch that was really easy and quick to do. Think of it like laying a brick path and you’ll find it comes together really easily. If you want to give it a go yourself, check out this video that I found online. It couldn’t be easier, right?

I really hope that my client’s wife loves the hankies as much as I do. There’s nothing better than giving someone something unique and handmade that they can’t get anywhere else. At the very least, you know that no one else will have got them the exact same thing! Hopefully he’ll get in touch to let me know how well they were received so I’ll let you all know if that happens.

And don’t forget – if you want to have a hanky of your own embroidered, get in touch and we’ll talk over some designs.

Till then, folks!

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These bumblebee hankies for my daughter Beatrice were beautiful. Communication was great & the handiwork impressive.

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Last year I was commissioned by the very lovely newly married Mrs Leanne Earle to do something to preserve her wedding flowers (a nice change from making handmade lamps, at any rate!). I used to press flowers with my mum when I was little but it’s been a fair few years since I had to do anything flower-related whatsoever so I wasn’t exactly sure where to start. After a quick refresher session on Google, however, I started drying out the beautiful white roses she gave to me to work with – quite ingeniously, I thought, by using a coat hanger to hang them upside down in my airing cupboard. I also pressed some in some heavy books so I would have some 3D roses as well as some flat ones to work with.

It took a good three or four weeks for them to dry (my kind of craft project!) and once they were done, I got to work. I found some chunky white frames to put them in and some pretty flowery paper that worked really well with the roses. I was concerned, however, that they would fall apart over time and I wasn’t sure how to prevent this from happening so I got out a bit of gold spray paint and gave them a quick spritz. This worked for two reasons – not only did I feel more confident that they would stay in one piece for as long as possible, but because the drying process saw the white colour dull to a murky sort of brown the gold spray paint really brought them back to life.

Leanne was kind enough to send me a few photos of the finished products in her house and I’m so pleased with how they look in pride of place with her wedding photos and books. Take a look and let me know what you think! And if you have any tips for drying out flowers so they don’t lose their colour that would be really kind.

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This Christmas (a long way off but still worth thinking about now, especially if you run a crafty business and want to get the jump on your competition this year) will see thousands of people around the UK sign up to the Etsy: Made Local craft fair in their local area. I’m in Manchester so I’ve just completed my application for a stall in the Edwardian Engine Hall at the People’s History Museum near Spinningfields. Hopefully I’ll be successful and you’ll all be able to come and see my handmade table lamps, moth curiosity cabinets, embroidery and other hand-crafted goods for your home.

This year’s event is taking place between December 1st and 4th, and I’ve applied for tables on the Saturday and Sunday, so if I am lucky enough to be picked by the Etsy team involved, come along and say hi! Even if I don’t get a stall, you can bet that I’ll be there anyway picking up a few unique handmade presents for my friends and family. I love supporting other crafty businesses and local makers, and there’s nothing better than knowing you’ve got something totally different for everyone under the tree – that no one else will have thought to buy.

If you’re an Etsy seller in Manchester and have yet to hear about the upcoming event, make sure you check out the link and get your application in by July 31st. Even if your shop isn’t open yet, you can still apply and it’s definitely worth doing if you have the time. I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed that I’ll be one of the lucky few selected. Roll on August 4th when they let people know!

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If you know me, you’ll know that this is no mean feat as I’m something of a hoarder and very rarely chuck anything. I always believe it’ll have value one day, or I simply can’t bear to part with it because I made it when I was six and I’ll really miss it one day. However, I was very proud of myself this weekend because I was really rather ruthless with the pursuit and threw out basically everything. There’s no room in my flat for it and it’s not fair of me to ask my mother to keep hold of it indefinitely – so out most of it all had to go.

I did find some rather funny things that I took a few photos of for posterity, like a self-portrait of myself aged about six (not a great likeness, I’ll admit) and a short story I wrote called Indigo Bones and The Temple of Gloom. No idea what that could be based on. My old school reports were quite amusing as well – apparently, I quite liked talking in class. I’ll put them up in a blog post later on this week.

I also had a great time going through all my old childhood books. It was quite strange looking at some of them as while I didn’t necessarily remember the stories I really did remember the pictures, so ended up getting a bit nostalgic and emotional. Bound to happen, I’d have thought! Anyway, I took loads of them away with me because I’ve got something fun planned for my Etsy shop that’s a bit of a departure from bespoke table lamps. I often need a break from making lamps because they take so long and sometimes don’t go quite to plan, which can be frustrating. It’s nice to have something to craft that takes less time but still looks just as good!

I’ll be back on the blog in a few weeks to show you what I’ve made and what I’ve got in the shop for sale, but for the meantime, here are a few snaps of some of the books I found. What was your favourite childhood book?

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