feature

Just a quick hello to say thankyou to They Draw and Cook for featuring my recipe on today's blog :) you can see my recipe for mince pies here. Merry Christmas to everyone, have a wonderful day :)

crafty

Let it Snow

Well, if you are living in Britain and are not living under a rock, you may have noticed that it's snowing. A lot. And when it snows in Britain, everything has to stop - trains, planes, roads, deliveries, the works. Which means I have plenty of time to go taking pictures of the snow and getting on with lots of crafty projects to keep me occupied! The bulk of the white stuff came on Saturday, which is when I took the previous picture. It's a photo of our front path covered in its blanket of ice white snow, which looks rather festive. Lovely to look at, not so lovely to go walking in.. might be time to invest in some new wellies I think.

My mother has been as crafty as me of late, and she has delightfully fashioned a heart-shaped Christmas wreath for our front door which is entwined with Christmas berries, spices and fairy lights.

Mum's festive door wreath

I have also been making gift bags this week - I got hold of some cheap brown paper bags from home bargains and decorated them with illustrations of Christmassy characters such as snowmen and reindeer, and added some shiny curly ribbons and luggage tags. These are for the children of family friends, and will be filled with luscious Gingerbread and chocolate goodies (when I have finished making them!) I also made one or two for my best friends to hold their Christmas presents, I think these bags would be just as fun for adults as they are for children.

Selection of festive characters - Reindeer, Snowmen, Gingerbread men, Robins and Christmas Trees.

All personalised with each child's name on a label, which says Merry Christmas on the reverse

Festive Snowman

Yesterday I had a go at some little chocolatey fairy cakes to match the gift bags. Each one is a simple chocolate fudge cupcake, decorated with snowmen and crisp sugar on some melted milk chocolate. I had great fun picking the decorations and the cases from our collection of pretty treats!

Sweet chocolatey treats

So it really has been a crafty few days. I ventured out into the winter wonderland and picked up some materials to make my boyfriend a birthday present (birthdays in January, the present buying doesn't stop!) and so that will be under construction in the next few days. Soon it'll be Christmas day, and I intend to sit back, perhaps with my Nightmare Before Christmas DVD on (how traditional) and maybe eat many Mince Pies. I am still waiting to see if my recipe for mince pies gets featured on the They Draw and Cook blog, fingers crossed it gets on there soon!

New Design

Just a quick post to say that my blog has a new design, and I would love any feedback or comments if anyone has any ideas about it. I adore hand rendered type and I hope to continue using it in my work, so I felt that it would be appropriate for me to use it in my banner. I also hope to put up some more drawing over the holidays if I get any time.

I am going home tomorrow for Christmas (yay!) which means my daily chalk will most likely become a daily drawing every day, bit of a change! I'm looking forward to having some amazing Christmas cheer and get some last minute presents bought when I go shopping with my mum. I also look forward to family time and some lovely gravy :D post when I get home!

catch-up

Recently for some reason I've been unable to upload photos so I haven't done a post in a little while, so here's a little selection of stuff.

I finished my first term of third year on Friday, the last winter term I will ever do in education, unless I do an MA of course. Pretty scary stuff! Have been working on a project based on the subject of burlesque and I have been painting, may put up a little thumbnail from that. And I also recently photographed a painting of Dolly Parton that I did in the first year of uni that I just never got around to blogging about. That painting is based on a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, we had to do a sort of mimicking transcription of a painting for that lesson, so it was Dolly with Kittens rather than Frida with Monkeys.

A thumbnail from the burlesque piece

"Self-Portrait with Cats" Dolly Parton painting

Yesterday was our little uni Christmas dinner, and me and my flatmate cooked up a lovely meal. It was a momentous occasion for me as it was the first time I truly mastered how to prepare proper gravy to my mom's recipe - really thick, gorgeously gloopy leek gravy. It made me so happy, I was very proud of myself! The lunch tasted amazing and we had a brilliant day. My Christmas presents included some amazing blingtastic earrings, a Katy Perry poster (I love her) and the amazing game Jet Set Radio Future that I used to play as a kid with my brother, brought back many memories. I also got an amazing fisheye filter for my nikon D40 from my amazing boyfriend Chris :) here's a few photos I got with it yesterday. (they showcase our deliciously tacky christmas decs quite nicely!)

Our Christmas lunch table, complete with mini Gingerbread Albert cottage and decorative centrepiece that resembles a unicorn horn

Bustylicious tree ornaments

Will probably be posting again soon as I have now got nothing much to do until I go home on Saturday, many random fisheye photos may follow.

crackle

Also forgot to mention the amaazing thing I got from Superdrug in Falmouth today! I saw this nail polish in what I think was Look magazine a few weeks ago, and it's a black nail polish that cracks into a pattern when you paint it over the colour underneath. It's by my all time favourite nail polish guru Barry M, and you can have a closer look at the product info here.

christmas

the tree

lovely busty ladies from TK Maxx

A view of Hedwig and the tree

Fiona the fairy and Philip the horse

beautiful glittery candles from Trago Mills

As you can probably tell, it's christmas at my house! There's never been a more creep-chic tree as ours. We have been making a small collection of decorations for the past three years, since we came to uni. The first was Fiona (the fairy on top of the tree), which I made out of felt and tissue paper in the first year of uni.

The second year brought with it the neon blue lights (seriously not fetching but they are bright and fun) and the lovely being that is philip. The horrid christmas pony courtesy of Millie Delacoe (whose amazing journalism/lifestyle blog you can view here, which will probably include more pics of the tree) and his name is Philip. We tried putting him near the door but the boys wouldn't let us, so with Fiona he now rides.

This year, we went a little overboard with ornaments. The busty christmas ladies are from a lovely amazing shop known as TK Maxx and the candles, golden swan and creepy christmas hat stars are all from the most amazing christmas heaven in all of Falmouth, Trago Mills.

Very excited to get to christmas now - I entered the They Draw and Cook holiday recipe contest last week with a recipe for mince pies (aha! which is why I cooked them last week...) and I can't wait to see if they put my recipe on their website. very exciting!