In a flutter....

Avid readers of my blog will know that my daughters naming ceremony is looming (I promise there is only one more post with me harping on about it!) and I realised that it was the perfect excuse to get a fascinator...

This time of year is prime fascinator time and I spend a lot of time trying them on as I am one of the very few people who love hats and fascinators but also look okay in them... My husband despairs when he knows I have found a hat stand as he knows I will generally try on every one including the most elaborate ones... I love it!

Anyway, I have already decided what I am going to wear (I am still trying to loose my pregnancy weight so I have very few dresses to choose from anyway!) and have settled on one I bought in a sale which is dusky pink, knee length with hints of deep green and emerald green... So those are the colours I wanted to aim for.

Fascinators are expensive... So I thought - why not make one?!

I saw one of the local high street stores had a sale on and generally they have a lot of jewellery which is easy to take apart and upcycle into a head piece.

My hardest choice is usually what I want to use as the base to fix it to my head as my hair is very thick so hairpins are not a good choice. This time I went for a comb (different to the bases of my previous two fascinators!) with a butterfly on it. It was then just down to choosing some jewellery in my colour scheme and I settled with some feather earrings and a pair of correlated heart earrings as an embellishment.

When I got home I disassembled  my jewellery and started piecing together the head piece...

In previous projects of this kind I have used superglue to fuse the headpiece together but this time I thought I would use silicone glue to see if it didn't dry white which is the problem with superglue!

The silicone glue dried clear... And seemed the keep the rather heavy embellishment of the heart which needed to be glued twice as the feathers needed to be more sturdy!

The project (once I had tried out different ways to arrange the feathers) didn't take long to do although silicone glue takes 12 hours to dry fully...

So, I now have my fascinator and the elements of the afternoon tea are now coming together nicely... I now can't wait!

A head of royalty..

I am still neck deep in school production. But, as I keep reminding myself, I love doing this stuff and I am getting to do lots and lots of crafty type stuff as part of my job and there is simply nothing better than that.

One of the many eras which takes place in this play is 1485 and is a scene which takes place between Elizabeth of York and Cecily which requires Elizabeth to have some regal head wear.

It also needs to look pretty on a stage and match the massive white dress that she already has. And had to be easy to put on and remove. And not take loads of time up.

So I came up with a very simple design.

I measured the actresses head and then used a strip of ribbon to use as the main head band. I then crisscrossed the other strips of ribbon across the head (twiggy was in use again!) and pinned them in place.

Once I was satisfied I sewed the ribbon down until it was sturdy enough to hold its shape without the head.

I added the gems for a bit of sparkle under the theatre lights...

The headdress looks amazing on the actress.

Birdie perch

One of the many joys of living in York is that it is a crafters paradise. I wish I had more time and money to attend more workshops that many of the cities craft establishments host.

One I did manage to attend (a couple of years ago) was one held at an independent retailer called Birdies Perch. I simply love this place as it has the best cards and boutique-y bits and it is throwing distance from my place of work so it is a nice place to 'escape' to when some time out is needed. The staff are so incredibly friendly and make me feel like a valued customer.

After one of my many visits there they said they were running some trial craft workshops and was I interested. I signed on the dotted line! It was for decorating a papier mâché bird.

The workshop was led by one of the very talented people who work there who had made the base of the bird out of paper and wire - amazing idea - and we needed to choose the one we wanted to decorate.

We were then given acrylic paints, sequins, beads and parts of artificial flowers to decorate the birds.

The company was good and we all had crafty pursuits that we discussed... A nice way to spend an evening ... And look at the finished result!

Gartered!

In the run up to my wedding I realised that I didn't have a garter to wear.

By pure chance there was a simple pattern for one in the magazine 'Simply Homemade' that month and all you needed was a couple of lengths of ribbon, a length of elastic and some pretty embellishments.

The most tricky bit of this project for me was getting the elastic the right length sat needed to sit comfortably on my thigh but also not itch or be too tight - especially if I was planning to wear it on my wedding day!

Once the elastic was measured I set about sewing the thinner ribbon on the main ribbon and sewing the embellishments on.

The two lengths of ribbon were then sewn together and the elastic was then threaded through the ribbons and the elastic was attached together.

The lace was added as an extra.

The finished product was used on my wedding day - a little personal touch of mine - something that was a part of me that I had made myself!