Disco disco disco

I get way too excited planning party's especially my sisters!! She's planning a disco party and was just going to write out some invites so I decided to make some cool ones for her and think I succeeded! They're like lanyards to a VIP concert except it's a VIP pass to her party! Just something a bit fun and exciting to give to her friends! 

Summer Fun

I love volunteering and it's a big part of why I'm so happy! This summer I did a couple of different things, I helped at the Williamson Art Gallery running art workshops for young people aged 8-15 from the local community. It was really fun, we made coil pots and decorated them, also little animals out of clay and did some drawings with different materials including clay, charcoal and salt. It was really fun teaching the children how to work with clay and manipulate it in different ways. There confidence grew a lot over the four days and they all ended up with beautiful pots and drawings! Here's a couple of the animals I made.. 

I also helped out at the Pop up art shop ran by Wirral Methodist Housing. It was a really fun pop up shop allowing people in Birkenhead of all ages come into the shop and take part in different activities like making hats, boats and painting. It was a very successful summer and I mastered making the paper hat! 

At the end of the week there was a parade where all the children could bring a long what they made and walk through Birkenhead led by a piper and me dressed in a cardboard boat! 

Too Sweet

For my friends 21st I wanted to create something which was special and also a little fun a long with the more serious presents I'd bought her. So this is what I came up with.. 

It was really easy to make and really effective to look at! I started with a styrofoam ball as the middle, then made a whole in the bottom which would fit in some garden cane. I stuck on all the love hearts using a hot glue gun and then decorated the garden cane in ribbon. Filling a candle holder with sand allowed the tree to stay up right. I'ts really pretty and a very yummy tree! 

Getting a little creative..

I was given a 'new' desk, which was actually really old and in a terrible colour, so I decided to jazz it up a little. And then I got carried away so I jazzed it up A LOT but it was a wonderful few days!! I used my washi tape collection to add some funky designs to the side and middle, and then had the whacky idea of turning into a chalk board. It would just be really easy for when I'm sewing on my machine and need to write down some measurements if I had a chalk board to write it on quickly, so that's what I created! using chalk board paint (an ingenious invention!) I made a decent size of my desk into a chalk board.

 

I have a stack of magazine taller than my little sister in my bedroom which I have been collecting over the last five or six years, I love rooting through them when I need a bit of inspiration so I thought the perfect thing to do would be to use bits from the magazines to create an inspirational desk. So that when I'm working and getting stuck, I just look down and inspiration will flood through me. So I got a lot of different quotes from the magazines and some colorful pictures a long with random text. I like ripping up text and sticking them down because you get different sentences which weren't originally written so it can be quite fun to find different things. 

I'm in love with my desk, maybe it wasn't the best idea because since it's been done I just can't stop looking at it!! So so far there hasn't been much work being done on it, but hopefully there will be soon! 

Birthday Celebrations

I always struggle coming up with new ideas for Birthday presents. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself because I can never just buy a simple thing to give, I always need to make something special for that person. I think especially for close friends/family it's nice to make something so that you can show how much you appreciate them being in your life and most importantly make them smile! SO here's my creation this time.. 

I bought a photoframe from asda and then decorated it in washi tape, which is such a simple way to jazz soemthing up and so easily done! But you could use anything, old wrapping paper or even paint it! Then I tired some string around the back to give a washing line effect. One of my favoutire things is bunting so that's what I chose to do here. I made a template on word of some flags, then printed them off and wrote different messages on them which can be pegged onto the string. 

Then I made different messages for each month of the year, which my friend could open and peg on. I made some of the messages personal to our friendship, some were motivational which I hope that on bad days she can look at and it will help make the bad days a little brighter, and others were just a little bit of fun! 

Overall I'm really happy with this present, as it's personal and a little different. A lot of time and effort went into it but it was worth it to see the smile on her face when she opened it! Hopefully it will keep making her smile all year! 

Curtain Time..

We recently made the cloakroom into a downstairs toilet so I got the wonderful job of making a curtain! It's a pretty simple curtain, just to block out the main part of the window. I started by measuring double the length of the window and cut it out of the fabric.Then I hemmed all the edges so it was a lot neater. Choosing the curtain pole I measured how wide a loop would be needed for the pole to fit through and then sewed that. SO overall it took about half an hour to make and is really effective, so a job well done I think!

M.E Awareness week

It was M.E awareness week from the 11th-17th May 2015. As Welfare officer on the Student Union I thought this was a really important thing to raise awareness of because not many people know about the condition but it effects so many people.

 

So firstly we did made a video, I wanted to re-create some of the symptoms of M.E so I filled a jacket with sand by cutting the pocket lining and threading bin bangs into the lining then pouring sand into them. When the jacket was put on you feel so weighed down and exhausted that's what it's like to have M.E. We took the jacket round asking students to try it on and explain how they felt, we then turned this into a video which has had over 800 views on YouTube. The thing which is powerful with the jacket is that the students who tried it on can take the jacket off. But living with M.E is like wearing a jacket filled with sand 24hours a day with no break or rest.

 

A long with the video I also made giant M.E letters which I covered with peoples aspirations before I got ill and then their aspirations when they were at their worst. These show just how debilitating the illness can be. The letters are in the rotunda and a good visual way of raising awareness.

 

In the week I organised a cake sale for the Association of Young People with M.E where we raised over £60. Overall it was a really successful week which raised a lot of awareness.

Here's the link to the video..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqFe53xuTho&sns=fb