Birthday cake - 30th Nike trainers!

Ok - this was a bit of a disaster but the thought was there ;)

My husband is completely obsessed with trainers - a complete 'sneaker freaker' to quote one of the many publications he has on the topic. For a wedding present I commissioned a painting of his absolute favourite Nike trainer by Liverpool urban artist Dave white who is amazing AND such a lovely guy!

So for his 30th birthday cake I thought I would make some 'cool' Nike trainers....like I said didn't all go to plan - they ended up looking a bit like baby booties - and so all our friends started asking me if we had any news...oops!

St George's Day Bake & Brew

St George's day at my old office called for lots of yummy treats, pimms and plenty of red crosses on white flags! Our bake & brew sale raised hundreds of pounds in the end for charity. I made strawberry jellies with fresh strawberries, in disposable wine glasses. I set plastic spoons in each and tied with red and white ribbons - yummy!

Christmas gifts 2010 - Baubles!

Here are my attempts at making home-made Christmas gifts (on a budget)!

I made little goodie bags that included a personalised bauble and some chocolates (chards of chocolate blocks covered in various toppings - I melted white chocolate and covered in dried berries, milk chocolate with white and dark chocolate sprinkles, dark chocolate covered in chopped pistashios). As you can see here I have a spurs fan and a little boy that LOVES Tigger!!!

I decorated the baubles with acrylic paint, permanent marker, silver pens and glitter - soooo very camp and Christmassy!!

Christmas table decorations 2010

Ok I know it's almost June - but I'm so behind on getting posts up...I'll get better ;)

Each year I always make the table decorations for our family Christmas dinner. I don't normally take photos of it but I bought my husband a posh digital SLR last year and so I took some snaps. Instead of name cards I put family photos on mini card santas - and the center piece is a collection of pomanders, oranges decorated with cloves in various patterns, with silver ribbon and beads. It looked gorgeous and smelt amazing!!!!

80's Party invite!

So....for my 30th I had a joint party at a local pub with one of my mates. It was hilarious - I wore a genuine 80's jumpsuit in turquoise - complete with shoulder pads! Here is the invite that I emailed to all and also printed onto postcards to put about the pub.

Blitz Party invites

One of my bestest friends in the world is celebrating her 30th birthday with a 1940's 'BLITZ' party and she asked me to do her invites!

I did 2 A6 postcard sized invites, one on cream card (with the 'you can do it' poster - modified to look like my friend) with accommodation details on the back, the other I printed on plain kraft card to look like a ration book, with the party details on the back. I used plain kraft envelopes which I also printed some mock stamps including a small red poster with the 'keep calm and carry on phrase' thsi time changed to 'keep calm and party on'. She's got some great feedback from her mates and it should be an amazing party!!!

Hen do - pink things!

...oh no there seems to be a theme to my creative outbursts - weddings! But I thought I'd get all my past projects out the way and then I can upload all the new and exciting stuff I have yet to do....

So here is some decorations I made for my sister in law's hen do. She had a meal in a local restaurant and invited her mum, aunty and grandma along - so no there were no willy's to be seen. However she is a bit of a princess and loves girly pink stuff, so I made straws, coasters and badges for everyone - fun, inoffensive and importantly PINK!!!

Hindu wedding cake stand

I can't believe it is my good friend's first wedding anniversary this weekend- how time flies!

I was asked to make them a specific cake stand for their 'english' wedding party. It is based on the hindu symbol om. They wanted something really unique (but affordable!) and so I suggested making it out of sheets of corrugated card that were die cut and then stuck together. I found some gorgeous handmade orange/red/gold paper to line the outside sections.

Here is is pictured as work in progress and also completed with some flowers I had at home. It looked fab with their wedding cake on it!

To this day it is still in the lounge with candles on the plate area!

The finishing touches

Ok - last one on my wedding... the finishing touches were the menu's we made again using recycled card, printed and placed on small easels that I painted white (they only cost 99p each!!). We themed each table by old school sweets (being that we were by the seaside!). I got some enamel pots from a local garden store and filled each one with drumsticks / flying saucers / popping candy etc. We didn't do individual favours, opting to donate a lump sum to Parkinson's Society instead on behalf of our guests.

For my bridesmaids I sourced these gorgeous bags and filled them with sample size make-up and toiletries I got from a brand outlet store. For each I tied a thank you tag with pink ribbon. They loved them!! ...ok I'll not mention my own wedding again ;)

Wedding cakes

I might as well get all this wedding stuff over and done with - before you think I'm obsessed with my own event! Like I said, we wanted to keep it low key and also keep costs down, so we decided to make our own cupcakes. Luckily for us our best man was a chef and so we insisted as part of his duties he was to help us make our wedding cakes. I also managed to source some pretty cupcake wrappers off the internet - they looked so gorgeous (even if I say so myself) and tasted devine!

Wedding invites

Ok I thought i'd keep the momentum up so for my first showcase of 'creativity' I thought I'd upload my wedding invites. I now realise that I don't have the best photos documenting the huge production line that existed to get these things done at the time, but here are a few that I did take. I have since bought my husband a fancy camera so might re-shoot for posterity!

We are coming up to our 2 year anniversary so it was around this time of year I was finishing off invites, table plans and what have you....I think I did pretty well not to get too stressed by it all and my close friends tell my honestly that I did not turn into a 'bridezilla'!

It was a relatively low key event, in the beautiful hotel - The George in Rye, East Sussex. They produce sumptuous meals using local produce; which is something we like to promote as much as possible. We decided to do as much as possible ourselves, including the invites, cake, dessert and I even bought my wedding dress second hand. It goes to show you that you do not have to spend a fortune to have a lovely day!

To match our 'down to earth' theme I used 100% recycled kraft board for the stationary, printed it using my trusty inkjet at home and then embellished with sequins - well you've got to have a bit of bling!

I did a slight tongue-in-cheek pop-up to suit the fact that my husband and I are not too serious about stuff, and to reflect the ridiculous situation we have when we stand side by side (I am a mere 5ft 2in, and him 6Ft 4in!) I included the bride standing on a stack of yellow pages!

I'm going to dig out some of the other stationary and also the homemade cake we did! - Oh I am really enjoying reminiscing about my big day!

Better late than never

I set up this blog in a bid to be more social network savvy. As you can see it has taken almost 2 years for me to write my first post - not a great start. However I feel it must be a case of 'better late than never' as here I am actually putting the digital version of pen to paper.

Rather than use this blog to document me and my life - it really isn't news worthy (I'll leave that all to those such as my fab sister in-law who puts me to shame with all her adventures!) I thought I would use it to document my sporadic creative outbursts, away from my day to day design job.

Over the past year or so I have made a few invites for people, a cake stand for a close couple's wedding and last Christmas I received my very own sewing machine!

In a bid to have a 'hobby' to answer people when they ask me 'what are you into' I'm going to put my spare time (ha!) to good use, and I will upload the evidence for the world to see....oh that's all a bit frightening!

We'll just see I guess!