Christening's and 1st birthday fun!

It has been a busy month with a Christening and 2 first birthday's!

My nephew's birthday involved a teeny bit of crafting - I made him a patchwork ball as he loves balls and thought it a fun project to try. The results are a quirky ball that isn't exactly 'round' as such but serves it's purpose for a 1 year old - alas I forgot to take a picture of it. I used various materials, most of which were left overs from his quilt which he had at birth so that was a nice link!

I also got Handmade by Bex involved to make him a personalised frame for the wall in his nursery:

My Goddaughter also had her Christening this month and I had a personalised frame made for her too:

I think you'll agree that they are beautiful. She is the Queen of Felt so do take a look at her website www.handmadebybex.co.uk or facebook page!


For my Goddaughter's Christening I also gave her a little box of trinkets so that we can do some crafting together in the future:

Some of the bits of material are from her quilt that I made when she was born and some bunting I made her, it's not for now but for the future.

Her Christening card:

For her birthday (which came 2 weeks later) I spent ages deliberating what to get her. Eventually I decided that as she was only 1 and would be getting so many toys etc. I would get her something for the future. I decided that each birthday I would give her a charm that she could add to a bracelet and eventually where when she was older. I had a friend of my sister-in-law's make it who runs a jewellery shop up north. She did such a great job, unfortunately I forgot to take a picture but it was  a heart shaped charm with 'HOLLY' stamped on the front and a '1' on the back - perfect! Check out her things, she happily takes commissions and is really reasonably priced:

www.kirstytaylorjewellery.com                           I'll try to get a picture of the charm to upload.

I also had a crafting present plan from March 2012 which I had seen in my Handmade Living magazine. It was a small muslin stuffed toy hare (which you can buy for very little from Calicocrafts.co.uk). The article showed lots of different things you could do with the hare like knitting clothes for it, using fabric pens to decorate it and embroidering it. I decided to embroider it and after a few days of practising the key stitches, I got to work. It took quite a while but was really rewarding and I've developed a really enjoyment of hand-stitching. Here are the results!:

 Unfortunately I didn't take any close-up shots of the stitching but hopefully you get the picture. The writing took the longest but effective stitches like the 'lazy daisy' below (flower shape) was really simple to do. I used a temporary marker pen to mark out my designs before I started to stitch - definitely recommended though by the time I had finished the 'temporary' lines had still not totally gone so I'm hoping they have by now!! It's probably best to try on a sample piece as they instructed - I was just too eager to get going!!