Monday 21 July 2014

Tea or Coffee?


I'm making lavender stuffed sleep inducing pillows/sachets using some of my doily collection.  Inevitably old table linens and doilies will have stains - especially tea stains, so I thought I would try dying a few using tea.


Its an easy process - find a suitable dish or baking tin to fit the doily, add tea bag or bags, and pour on hot water.  Swish about a bit to release the tea from the bag.  Leave until you have the colour you like.  I left mine about 45 minutes then squeezed out the tea and rinsed them a couple of times.  I dried them flat on kitchen paper towel sheets, finishing off with my iron to keep them nice and flat. 


We only use loose tea for drinking but I had a gift box of Harrods English Breakfast teabags in the cupboard and as you can see the colour has turned out rather more of a pretty coffee shade than tea.


These two are hand crocheted - such very fine work!  They must have taken hours to make and really deserve a second life on show.  They are next to be transformed into pretty lavender sachets.  I hand stitch the doilies onto squares of suitable fabric, add a plain back, machine stitch into a square and fill with dried lavender and polyester filling.  Although rather a long process, its best to stitch down as much of the doily as you can so that it doesn't catch on something and tear.

My room is filled with the scent of lavender - lovely..... zzzzzzz!

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Pink Gooseberries


The soft fruit season is in full swing in gardens all over the country and I picked a small crop of gooseberries yesterday - I have only one small bush.  They looked so pretty in this vintage Pyrex Cinderella bowl.  The pattern is called Pink Gooseberry! 


I've been enarmoured with my new stamp set Bowl of Sunshine recently arrived from Papertrey Ink courtesy of my very good friend Yuki over there in The States (a million thanks once again Yuki!).  I just love the little bowl that looks like vintage Pyrex and thought I'd try to reproduce my gooseberries in ink.  However there's no gooseberry stamp in the set - do they even have them in North America?  I tried a bunch of grapes stamp instead, masking along the bowl's rim, and I think it does very nicely. 


I can't stop making cards with this set - its so cute.  Here's a few using the fruits that are in the set - apples, lemons and oranges.  I used vivid dye inks from the Adirondak Brights and Earthtones ranges on 3 inch square card blanks. 

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