Congratulations Emma and Ross!

Happy wedding day! I hope you're having a fabulous day.

Ok so this is the opportunity I have to take to apologise for not blogging for a while. After the last post I was asked to make these for a friend of a friend who is getting married today. They are a surprise present from Ross to his new wife, Emma (maybe about now - I'm not sure what time the wedding is!) and so I was under strict instructions to keep my mouth shut. Not the easiest of tasks for me so I thought it would be best not to blog in case I blabbed!

I was given a lot of guidance from Ross as he was pretty sure what he wanted from these three frames. They contain both of their individual wedding vows and the central one will include the logo that they have used on their invitations and other wedding stationary.

This made things a lot easier in some ways - but just sticking it all down as he had shown in the pictures wasn't quite as easy as I'd thought.

There were a few practice attempts to try to get the arrangements correct and to figure out how they were going to work

Emma's frame - could we include a bottle of the bubbles that will be on the tables at the reception?

 We agreed that this one would look better without. But the hearts in this one should be more floaty and hap-hazardly arranged - like butterflies escaping I was told.

Ross's frame - Do we like the arrangement of the table confetti? Could we add a party popper in the top corner and have it look like the confetti is exploding from the party popper...?

The party popper is a good idea but might need to be cut down a little to fit in the frame properly once the frame is covering the edge of the mount board...hmmm. One to think about and figure out how this might work.

And finally - how was the central frame going to work with the ring on the chain. I had got the logo sorted and decoupaged all of the pieces - thank you Ross for printing the letters out separately for me so that I could trace these easily to be able to cut the individual pieces out. The story behind this as I believe (sorry if this isn't quite right!!)- this was Emma's original engagement ring which was bought when they didn't have too much money and wouldn't go with the wedding rings when these were bought for the wedding. It is also slightly broken. I am told that Emma still loves this ring and wanted to keep it but it just wouldn't fit with the wedding ring she now has. So she was bought a new ring and this is a way of keeping the original ring.

I tried a couple of ways of arranging this frame as I wasn't sure how the chain would fit in the frame with the mount etc.

I still like Ross's design better though I think so there must be a way of doing this...

Here's how all of the frames turned out...

The central frame was done just as Ross had requested

Emma's frame with the floaty butterfly hearts as requested.

And Ross's frame

Hehe - the top hat on his name wasn't actually intentional the first time - I was just arranging the pieces and this is where it ended up. I liked it so I thought I'd stick with it!

And so here they are...

If I do say so myself, I do quite like these. I'm really pleased to have been a part of Ross and Emma's big day and I hope they like them as much as I do.

Crafty July

Ok so I think it is safe to say that July was a pretty busy month one way or another. I was on holiday for a week - we went back to Yorkshire - the same place as we went to earlier this year. It was fabulous and there are far too many photos to include in this post so there will be a separate post to follow including those photos.

I thought I would fairly quickly show you what I have been up to in July though - mostly a little photo montage this time I think.

I finished the baby blankets that I was making for the hospital and have given these to my friend now to be delivered shortly as soon as they have been washed and sterilised properly.

 I have also had a few requests for my items to be made for people at work. My supervisor asked me to make a 30th Birthday card for one of our colleagues.

 And after the success of the owls I decided to give a go at making some other animals. Hmmmm...what would I choose - of course it had to be a tiny tortoise.

ONe big happy family! I have also made a little pink tortoise as well to match the pink owl.

My husband decided that the little green tortoise would be perfect as his wooly work pet so this one has since disappeared as well.

Once he had taken this in he was asked if there was any way that I could increase the pattern and make a larger version for one of his colleagues little boys. This is what I came up with.

 I even made a tiny little tortoise logo to stitch to him as a little logo on his belly.

Unfortunately the only problem with this was that as I had just doubled the yarn and increased the hook size as my method of increasing the pattern, the little holes in him were just the right size for a 6 month olds little fingers to get in and start trying to pull out the stuffing. I have therefore got this creature back at home for the time being - I might have to try another method of increasing the pattern and re-make this for him so that little fingers can't get in there.

Finally, yesterday we went to my husbands' Aunt and Uncle's 25th Wedding Anniversary celebrations. I don't have a picture of the finished card but you get the idea from this image before it was all stuck down. The picture is the same one that we used in the making of out wedding invitations and stationary  - for those of you who received one. I might have to make a post at some point to show you these - a little reminiscent post for those who haven't seen the stationary that we made a couple of years ago.

They seemed to appreciate the card and everyone had a thoroughly lovely day - the weather even stayed nice for the BBQ yesterday. Thank you very much Aunty Sarah and Uncle Martin.

More photo's to come of our holiday and I will try to keep you all more up to date this month with what I've been making. I have a little surprise going on at the minute which I can't quite reveal yet but I'm sure there will also be more owls and tortoises to come. If anyone would like to order one then please feel free to contact me and we can discuss a colour scheme and get one sent out to you. My email address is at the top of the page.