Wedding Series 2: Beach Themed Thank You Postcards

To finish off our Wedding Series, we are featuring our thank you post cards. Of course I still wanted the thank you cards to reflect our beach theme for the wedding and I used my Craft Artist design software to create them. Luckily I have accumulated many different artist image collections for this program and managed to find some shell graphics to use. I also had a beach woodgrain background that fitted in perfectly. 

I added in an image of me and Conor and then also added our name and the date we got married (officially). I put the date inside a stamp mark on the top left of the card to give it that old fashioned postcard aesthetic.

For the back of the postcard, I kept it fairly simple, just using the shell graphics along the bottom and adding the old fashioned "Postal card" font at the top, alongside a stamp mark outline in the top left. That left plenty of space for us to write a personalised thank you message to each of our guests who attended.

Once I was happy with my designs, I uploaded them to Vistaprint and got them printed.

The perfect finishing touch to our beach themed wedding!

Wedding Series 2: Beach Themed Table Centre Pieces

For the wedding table centre pieces I wanted to use a few different elements that would all contribute to the beach theme we had chosen. I started to collect different pieces throughout the year as and when I saw them. I ended up getting the majority of the table centre pieces from The Range as they have a fantastic selection of beach/seaside home decor, plus they are very reasonable on price, helping to keep our costs down.

Unfortunately we didn't get a brilliant picture of the whole of the table centre piece arrangement at the wedding so I have a picture from a set up I did at home and have included a smaller image of the arrangement at the wedding.

So the main pieces were a glass jar (The Range), which came with some rope wrapped around the top and a star fish embellishment. I added some sand and shells at the bottom and placed a candle inside. 

This jar was placed on top of a large wooden slice (The Range).

The driftwood candle holder also came from The Range and I just added a tea light inside.

I created the table number bottles by using some bottles that I bought in Poundland which have the bottle top lights included. I then just made some labels to stick onto the front of them and then added some twine around the top and added a Starfish embellishment (Amazon).

I bought the large starfish from a trip to St Ives last year and placed two on each table around the arrangement. I added a couple of large shells, that I bought a couple of years ago at a craft jumble sale. I used these to place tea lights inside and scattered them around the arrangement. 

Finally I added some blue glass heart stones (The Range) to add a bit of extra colour and embellishment, plus they help to reflect light as well.

The venue added a burlap table runner and also a light blue sheer table runner across the tables which helped to add a bit of rustic beach charm, however I'm not sure if this was needed - but that was just a tiny detail that only I would have noticed!

For the top table we sourced a large rustic wooden tray from Amazon, which we filled with shells (from our stash at home) and also placed a glass jar and two driftwood candle holders inside. We wanted to keep it quite simple and needed it to fit in with the rest of the table centre pieces.

Overall I think the table centre pieces reflected our beach theme well and they are also home decor pieces which I can use after the wedding to decorate around my house.

Wedding Series 2: Flower Girl Beach Bucket

In our Wedding Series earlier this year, we featured the bouquet and buttonholes. However we forgot to feature the flower girl's beach bucket that we made for my beautiful niece Annabel to carry down the aisle. Unfortunately she wasn't able to be in the room with us in April when we got married due to Covid restrictions, so we were so happy that this time round, our flower girl could walk down the aisle with her bucket and scatter some flower petals (you could also think of them as pebbles - but real ones would have been to heavy to scatter on the floor!).

We found this bucket as a set of three from a gardening website earlier this year. The colour of the bucket was perfect and even though it had some embossed writing on the front of it, we knew we could cover that up with some twine wrapped around it. 

We added a starfish to the front of it and some wired pearl pieces - similar to those found in my bouquet.

We then added some tassels to each side of the bucket, using some seam binding that we coloured in a blue tint and scrunched it up a bit.

I think Annabel enjoyed holding her bucket during the wedding and it was the perfect accessory for our beach themed flower girl.

Wedding Series 2: Beach Bucket Favors

Up next in our Wedding Series are these fantastic beach bucket favors! When it came to deciding what we wanted to gift our guests in our wedding favors, I have to admit we went through a few ideas but none of them seemed to fit in with the beach theme very well. After looking through some more ideas on Pinterest, we finally found a miniature candle bucket which was just what we were looking for. Unfortunately these candles were from the USA and wasn't something that was going to be cost effective to ship. So we then started thinking about how we could create something similar. We did try making our own candles inside small metal buckets, however we discovered that these could leak whilst burning and I definitely didn't't want our guests to be burning leaking candles at home.

We therefore decided to use tea lights instead but needed something safe to sit them in for our guests to burn them at home. So we bought some small glass tealight holders to put the candles in. This way they could been placed inside a container and will burn safely.

We decided to use small garden peat pots as the bucket and pierced some holes around the edge to give out some light when the candle is burning. We then painted the peat pots in an off white and found a mixture of sand dollars and starfish to add on the front.

For the handle we used a wired twine that was also painted and on one side we aded a shell and pearl bead.

To finish off the favors, we added our guest names, using a small print out flag attached to one side. 

An extra treat for our guests were some sweet treats, in the form of chocolate seashells - very fitting for our theme! These were wrapped in small cellophane bags, tied with twine and positioned on top of the tealight.

I think these favors were perfect for our beach themed wedding and a gift that our guests can continue to use at home when they are burning small tea lights.

Wedding Series 2: Beach Shell Place Cards

The second part of our Wedding series is back! Our wedding celebration took place at the end of October and it was lovely to finally see the results of our labour over the last few months. 

To kick things off we are featuring the Wedding place cards today, which were inspired by the main Wedding invitations. We had used a shell die cut on the front of the invitations and when I was making the invites, I knew these shells were going to come in handy again when it came to making the place cards.

The shell die cut is from the Tim Holtz Seashells Bigz die (662706). The die also includes a corresponding embossing folder so that you can add detail to the shells once you've cut them out. 

Before I cut any shells out, I first needed to print our guests names on some textured white card stock. I measured the size of the shell and then used my computer to make a text box that is the same size. I then used a script font for each guest name and made sure it was centred in the middle of the box.

Once these had printed, I cut each box out and then lined this up over the shell die cut to cut it out. I then used the embossing folder to add the shell detail.

To finish the shells off I used a gold mica paint (Finetec Coliro Pearlcolors Vintage Set) and an ink dabber to gently add some gold around the edge, helping to add a touch of elegance. 

A simple but effective way to add our guest names to the tables, reflecting our beach themed wedding perfectly.

Halloween Treat Pockets

Happy Halloween! 

With all the hustle and bustle of wedding prep, I hadn't quite had time to create many Halloween makes this year, but I wanted to fit in a quick project to mark the occasion.

A quick and easy project to make are these little treat pockets, which are just big enough to slot a sweet treat inside! 

To make these pockets I used the Tim Holtz Gift Card Bag die set (662687) and Tim Holtz Frightening Faces die set (663090). This die set includes 12 faces so I wanted to make sure I used a different one for each treat bag. I also used the letters included with the Gift Card Bag set to add the word "Boo" underneath each face.

These bags were the perfect size to slot in some halloween chocolate lollipops that I picked up in Aldi a few weeks back. 

If you have some slightly bigger treats to gift this year then you could also use the Tim Holtz Treat Bag (663096) which provides a slightly wider gusset. I used the same method with the treat bags and popped some mini halloween biscuits inside a cellophane bag, finishing it off with some striped ribbon.

I hope you all have a ghoulishly good day and take some time to fit in some halloween crafting!

JoAnn Autumn Haul from the USA

We are so excited to share this post with you about our recent order from JoAnn craft store in the USA. About a month ago we found out that we could order from the JoAnn website and have it shipped to the UK for a reasonable price! I'm sure you all know as well as us that buying from the USA is never usually cheap with shipping rates at a crazy price which doesn't make sense for what may be a low value order in comparison. Alternatively a lot of USA craft stores and brands don't offer shipping to the UK which then makes it impossible to get hold of these lovely items!

Since we had been looking at USA haul videos lately we couldn't wait to start perusing the Fall and Halloween shopping category on JoAnn's website to find out what goodies we could buy! There were pages and pages of lovely home decor, craft items, fabric and more - so much to take in and choose from!

We did manage to restrain ourselves quite a bit and didn't end up purchasing as much as I thought we would, however this is only the first order!!!

So let's start with my purchases, I got a couple of kitchenware items and a home decor piece...

Hello Pumpkin Ceramic Mug

Just Enjoy Ceramic Mug

These mugs are lovely and chunky and can definitely contain a lot of your favourite hot drink come the Autumn time. They also look beautiful displayed out on your counter top ready for guests when they come over.

Hello Pumpkin Spatula Set

This set is excellent for those bakers out there when you want to whip up an autumnal treat. Additionally they look wonderful sat inside your utensil pot on the counter top.

Small Lit Amber Pumpkin

This small light up pumpkin is an excellent piece of home decor and looks great sat on top of a shelf or windowsill. When night time comes, switch on the lights and let this little pumpkin create a wonderful Autumn ambience.

So that's all that I included in my part of the order, let's move on to my sister's Autumn stash...

Hello Pumpkin Spoonula

As well as the same pumpkin spatula set that I bought, my sister also picked up this Hello Pumpkin Spoonula, excellent for cooking and baking this season.

Pumpkins & Leaves Mini Baking Cups - 100 pcs

If you love baking cakes then these mini baking cups are a must for the Autumn season!

As you will see below, my sister has already put these to good use!

For home decor, my sister picked up the following items....

Small Lit Pumpkin - Orange Leaves

This pumpkin is beautifully decorated around the outside with an embossed leaf pattern and also contains LED lights which you can switch on at the bottom to light up your room at night.

As you will see in the picture above, my sister also picked up a decorative sign to display...

Time to Get Cosy Autumn Wall Decor

This small sign looks great displayed amongst your autumn home decor and creates a cosy atmosphere.

Autumn Extra Large Flip Top Storage Box - Pumpkins & Love Fall

A fantastic piece of storage that you don't mind displaying around the house. It also provided a great space to place our glass light up pumpkins during the packing process and kept them from getting broken! Unfortunately the box did have a couple of tears around the edge of the lid but easily fixed with a bit of tape to secure in place. Not sure if this was caused during shipping or if someone picked a slightly damaged box in the first place!

Autumn Textured Throw - Orange Checks

This beautiful autumn throw measures approx. 50 x 60 inches and creates a wonderful backdrop across your sofa for a cosy autumn feel.

So moving on to a few pieces that mum ordered...

First up is a couple of pieces of Christmas check fabric...

Red Buffalo Check Christmas Cotton Fabric

Red Checker Plaid Christmas Cotton Fabric

As I'm sure you can imagine, this fabric will come in excellent use for Christmas sewing projects and I'm sure we will share with you any makes we have made with this fabric nearer to Christmas.

It's worth noting that the minimum order quantity for fabric is 2 yards.

Lastly mum ordered an autumn wreath that matched in with the colour of her front door.

However, unfortunately the wrong wreath was included in our delivery and therefore we are still waiting for the correct wreath to arrive, but I'll include an image and link below so you can see what it will look like. Once it has been delivered I will include a picture below, with it displayed on mum's front door.

Autumn Triple Berry Wreath 24" - Cream, Orange & Gray

So that sums up our first ever order from JoAnn in the USA. It is definitely worth checking out if you want to get something a bit different for your home and also it seems to be an area which UK shops are still struggling to provide. And if you do find shops that are selling these cosy autumn home decor items, they seem to be selling out in just days of discovering them! JoAnn is always offering great discounts on their products and even extra discounts at the checkout so make sure you look out for those offers to save even more money. In total it took just under 3 weeks for our order to get to us and we were updated every step of the way so we knew whereabouts our parcel was at all times.

We definitely think it's worth making an order, especially at this time of year when you want to get your hands on some lovely Autumn/Halloween and Christmas goodies!

Knitted Pumpkins

Today we wanted to share with you a brilliant make for the Autumn season which are these knitted pumpkins! 

Lately we have been getting a bit carried away (and almost obsessed!) with pumpkins and Autumn decor. We have been hunting for some great makes for this season and have also been perusing all the homeware shops for their Autumn homeware collections, especially Homesense/ TK Maxx.

Mum found this fantastic pattern to make knitted pumpkins from Handy Little Me and found some nice chunky wool from Wool Warehouse in a range of colours to start knitting some pumpkins. Both mine and mum's house have coastal influences so we wanted to create some blue pumpkins to co-ordinate with our decor. Mum also purchased some neutral shades and an orange for more traditional pumpkin colours.

I was so excited by these creations that I wanted to make my own and for the first time ever -  I learnt how to knit!

It took me a couple of evenings to finish it but I am thrilled with the result and proud that I made one for myself.

You may notice from the picture above that the stalk for the pumpkin is also handmade. Mum found a pattern for this from LuannDanzlDesigns on Etsy and sewed up these stalks in no time. 

To give the stalk a blackened edge, we used the flame from a tea light candle to carefully cinged the edges to get the look we wanted. You need to be extra careful when you do this as to not set the whole stalk on fire so make sure you use quick and gentle motions.

The blackened edge helps make the stalk look more realistic and adds some dimension. 

Once you have let it cool for a few minutes you can just use a few stitches around the stalk to secure your stalk in place on your pumpkin.

Alternatively if you are lacking in these sewing skills you can simply find a nice looking twig to pop in the top of your pumpkin.

Mum made my sister a stack of pumpkins and used a twig for the stalk of the top pumpkin.

We think these pumpkins look fantastic around the home and are a nice nod to the Autumn season. If you are a knitting pro then I'm sure you will make these up in no time. However if you haven't knitted before, such like myself, then you may want to have some guidance from a knitter or find a good YouTube video to teach you the basic stitches before having a go at the pattern.

NEW Christmas Workshop Day 2021

We are so excited to finally announce that we will be hosting an actual physical Christmas workshop in October this year! It has been such a long time since we last hosted a workshop and we can't wait to catch up with everyone and have some crafting fun!

To make this workshop Covid-19 friendly we have decided to host this workshop from a new venue, a church hall in South Godstone, so that we can space everyone out to provide social distancing. We will still aim to create the same cosy atmosphere with some festive music and a few sweet treats in-between!

In this workshop you will be making not one but two Christmas projects! Both of them will make excellent home decor around your house at Christmas time and add a wonderful hand made touch to your Christmas decorations this year. 

The first project will be a Christmas Reindeer Hoop...

This hoop measures approx. 5.5 x 5.5 inches and features a jumping deer against some woodland trees. Hang this hoop against a white "snowy" background and you have got a fantastic Christmas scene hanging on your wall! We have included some great embossing techniques in this project and will definitely create that wow factor.

The second project is the Snowy Scene Vintage Dome...

This beautiful light up dome is perched on top of a metal tart tin, reminiscent of vintage tart tin decorations. A snowy house scene surrounds the dome, encasing the snowy reindeer and woodland scene inside the dome. Place this decoration on a mantelpiece or shelf and let it light up your home this Christmas.

For more information about this workshop and details on how to book please check out our Workshops page on the blog.

We hope those of you that want to come can make it, but we do recommend booking as soon as possible to avoid disappointment!

Autumn Shopping Haul

Yesterday we had a fantastic day going shopping to see what Autumn/Halloween treasures we could find!

Recently my YouTube has been swamped with Fall/Halloween haul videos from the US and they have some fantastic product offerings this year, so much so that I wanted to see what our shops in the UK were offering right now - if anything? The shop on the top of our list had to be Homesense - the homeware branch of TK Maxx. They source a lot of their products from the US shops including TJ Maxx and Home Goods and from what we have seen so far from our neighbours across the pond I wondered if anything had started arriving in our stores.

So we headed to the largest Homesense store in our region - which happens to be in Tunbridge Wells.

We were in luck as they had some displays of Halloween and Autumn homeware at the front of the store. They also have displays of candles and autumn kitchen accessories in their relevant departments around the store so make sure you search the whole store depending on what area of the house you are looking to decorate.

In terms of decoration I picked up these beautiful ceramic pumpkins which come with a lovely scented potpourri bag inside. This can be taken out from the bottom if you prefer not to use it and then you could put some LED lights inside instead. They had these in a range of colours including gold, white and orange and at £4.99 a piece, they were a bargain!

If you are looking for Autumnal fragrances then I definitely recommend you check out Homesense/TK Maxx first as they have a very wide selection and at some very reasonable prices! Deciding on which fragrance you buy will take you the longest time to decide as there are so many to smell! For now I decided to go with a small candle that has a Spiced Apple and Pumpkin scent. I also got a diffuser that I plan to put upstairs in my house and this one includes an autumnal floral sprig which helps add a bit of decoration at the same time.

This next item was actually purchased in TK Maxx but you may possibly find one in Homesense which is this glass storage jar with a ceramic bat on the top. They also had some jars with a witches hat on top too so look out for these in your nearest store. These type of items are great for adding a subtle hint of halloween to your kitchen decor.

My sister also joined us on our Autumnal shopping trip and has recently shared with me some purchases she has made lately at TK Maxx and Homesense...

Joanne loves a good candle and has definitely picked up quite the selection this year so far...

Other purchases from TK Maxx also included this set of 'BOO' cushions...

Also these decoration plushies...

If you are looking for some kitchenware items, Joanne also picked up these decorative plates from TK Maxx too...

These plates are perfect for get togethers leading up to Halloween and help get you in the spirit of things for the month of October.

If you don't have a TK Maxx local to you then make sure you check out their Halloween page on their website and it's worth noting that they add new products almost everyday so always keep checking back to see what you can find.

The next purchase is from Hobbycraft who have started putting out their Halloween items in store and are also available online.

I found these adorable plush pumpkins in my local Hobbycraft and as soon as I saw them I knew I had to have them! They come in a few more colours to what you see above, I think there are also some available in black, purple and dark blue. The large plush pumpkin is £4 and the small pumpkins are £2 each. These pumpkins will look great dotted around the house, maybe stacked in a jar, placed on a mantelpiece or even decoration on your bed! The sales assistant I spoke to in Hobbycraft said their Halloween items were selling very quickly so I recommend visiting your local store very soon or purchasing online if you can!

The next item I want to share with you is not specific to Autumn but it will be a fantastic piece of home decor to display some Autumnal/halloween decorations in. We found this glass dome with wooden base in Primark's homeware section and at £5 we couldn't resist. The wooden base could easily be painted if you want it a different colour. Alternatively they also sold some that had a silver base as well.

Finally I just want to share a couple of bits that my sister found in The Range...

This Happy Halloween cushion is only £6.99 and was found amongst the regular cushions - so make sure you have a good rummage on your next visit!

Joanne also picked up this wicker tray and the Knitted Pumpkin Pick that you can see coming out of the vase. Both of these pieces look great set up on a coffee table with some of your Autumnal candles and home decor pieces.

So I think it's safe to say that UK shops are definitely starting to sell Autumn and Halloween items so if you want to start early we recommend visiting your local homeware shops soon to grab these items before they are gone! I'm sure we will be back soon with another haul blog post and hopefully some Autumn/Halloween crafting inspiration!