Bright Denim Corsages

Lovely Autumn is well and truly here so I've packed away (for the time being) the floaty Liberty floral fabrics I've adored using over the summer months to make way for the thicker and sturdier denim.  Denim is much more suited to accompany woolly scarves and wellies don't you think?

What's even better is that I've made these out of recycled denim!  I have been badgering friends for their denim cast offs so I can turn them into these gorgeous corsage brooches.

Each flower is unique due to the different shades of blue in the denims and how much wear and tear the denim has had in its jeans life.  I so love all those worn and faded bits.   

As I cut the denim out by hand from my hand drawn templates I've created the corsages have a lovely homespun quirky feel.  

Are you a fuchsia pink or sunshine yellow fan?

 I sew the denim flower onto a felt backing to give it some strength so that it won't lose its shape when you wear it.

Halloween Yummies

Now it's always any excuse for cake at chez nous and last year I made, what I thought was a rather fabulous Halloween cake, which was enjoyed by myself and my adult friends but the children turned their noses up at it.  It was a rich spiced ginger cake with black treacle, all spice and pieces of crystallised ginger with orange flavoured icing and a big spiders web design on top.  Delicious and Halloweeny and autumnal.

So not wanting to fall into the same trap this year and have my Halloween goodies snubbed by the girls we created some gruesome non bake yummies instead.  

Oreo Eyeballs
Carefully twist apart the Oreo biscuit so that the cream filling stays intact and on one of the biscuit halves.  I made blue and green irises out of sugar paste with a chocolate drop pupil pushed in pointy end down.  Using a cocktail stick I painted the bloodshot veins on the icing using watered down gel food colouring.

Although admittedly I did eat many of the "discarded halves"....shhhh!  I pressed a circle of white sugar paste onto the ones I didn't eat so they could be made into Oreo Eyeballs as well.

Dracula Chocolate Digestive Teeth
Carefully snap a chocolate digestive roughly in half.  Yes some will break as you do this and yes you should eat these quickly before the children get to them!  Shhhh again!
Spread the chocolatey side of each half with some red icing (icing sugar, water and red gel food colouring), line up 6 mini marshmallow teeth on the bottom half and top with the other half.  I used a mix of either shards of white chocolate or pieces of almond flakes for the fangs.  

Frozen Banana Ghosts

Far less gruesome but still very delicious.  Chop bananas into quarters (one chop across the middle of the banana and then slice each half length ways).  Insert a lolly or cake pop stick and freeze.  Once frozen dip into melted white chocolate and quickly before the chocolate sets add two chocolate drop eyes.  Boo-nana!!

Autumn Love

We are so lucky to have the beautiful Old Town Gardens so close to our house....in fact it is one of the reasons we chose to live where we do.  It takes on such different personalities at different times of the year but I think the crisp Autumn days here are my favourite.

So much to see, collect and explore.  Sometimes  we go for a walk and every other person is someone we know who we can stop and catch up with and then at other times, we can have the whole place to ourselves.

The puddles are brilliant to ride through on a quiet afternoon.

We recently enjoyed another sunny autumnal day at Lacock Abbey taking part in the Wizard School trail.

Lovely blue skies and glorious warm sunshine.

And "hello" to my shadow in the next few pictures...oops!

Cake...glorious cake....

There are a lot of birthdays in our family this month and birthdays mean birthday cake...yippee!

Miss E had a Pancake and Pajama themed party and so I created this sleepy cake with Miss E in bed with her Teddy Weddy and pink Rattly Rabbit.

Miss E always has a blanket to take to bed so this had to be part of the cake as well!

These Cookie Monster Cakes were just a bit of fun really for my birthday as I knew the girls would love them plus they were pretty quick and easy to make....and even quicker to eat!

Miss M had a Secret Agent party where we turned the house into a Secret Agent Training Academy.  Miss M had decided that this year she wanted cupcakes rather than a big cake.

I decided to mix in some chocolate cake bombs which were very popular and quite frankly a lot less fiddly than the secret agent cakes....and a good excuse to get out the edible glitter!

Summer Stalls

I enjoyed being at a few fabulous fairs over the summer and thought I'd share some photos.  This blackboard was mine when I was little, it's a bit rickety but full of charm and memories.

Liberty Fabric Twig Wreath

You may have seen from my previous posts, that I've been having loads of fun with Liberty Fabric recently and had collected quite a pile of cut off bits.  In a pile on my floor they looked too pretty to just throw away and I felt sure I could use them in some way.... ta da!

What's more, this wreath not only turns my Liberty scraps into something quite pretty but the twigs are from our garden too so you could say this is a re-cycling project in its own right!

I've added a few tiny silk flowers and some wraps of embroidery floss and completely adore this twiggy wreath....and I still have scraps and twigs so I can make some more...yay!

Liberty Fabric Brooches and Hairclips

I'm not sure what I enjoyed most about designing and making these Liberty Fabric flower brooches.....choosing the fabrics or hunting through my many Bonne Mamam jam jars which house my button collection, stored by colour...naturally!  Miss M loves going through the jars and just checking that no rogue buttons have found their way into the wrong jar and sometimes challenging some of my colour decisions!  We have had many discussions about when does pink become red or does turquoise fir better with the blue buttons or the green ones!  Food for thought?  Maybe I just need more jam jars?  

Each flower brooch is unique as I cut the petals out by hand then sew and gather to create the flower shape.  Top with a button and pop one of these little beauties on your cardy and smile x