Anyone want my Christmas fabric scraps?

There's around 100g here, 3 1/2 ounces and they range from 'hmm, what can I do with that' to 'oooh, that's big enough to make....'

This wodge of triangles is really quite substantial, there's lots of these!

If you'd like them please comment below with your paypal email address and I'll invoice you.

The price is £2 plus postage which depends on your location and is listed below.

Thanking you, pleasure doing business with you! (assuming someone snaps these up!)

UK: £2 + £2.70 = £4.70
Europe: £2 + £2.90 = £4.90
Rest of the world: £2 + £3.90 = £5.90

This is £2 for the fabric plus the postage. I have no idea who's setting postage fees.... posting to europe is only £2.90 when posting to the UK is £2.70...how does that work?

p.s. if you're local to me here in South Wales, you're welcome to collect these from me or when I'm at a craft fair to save the postage making them just £2. Bargain :)

I love old stuff, vintage, retro, whatever. Old. I like it. That's why I like you.

I also love that you're reading this thinking, she thinks I'm old?!

Course not, I didn't mean you, I meant you!

Anyway, onto the dude of it.

A while back I bought a coffee table for £5 in the charidee shop here called Too good to waste. It sells old stuff cheap.

I thought it'd be perfect to go with our settee and armchairs which are very 70's. But it was orange.

Don't believe me? Here ya go.




Orange isn't it. Told you so.

I love the shape of it though so I decided to sand her down and varnish her dark. In my mind I had a dark walnut colour but I chose dark oak in the shop so that's what we had.

So we got her outside, unscrewed the legs, unscrewed the leg plate things and got to sanding. I did the underside and Dus did the top. This was my first time sanding.....eee!

Essential pre-DIY drink preparation

Scraggerdy clothes, pink marigolds, Dus' pollution mask. It's a good look!

The area all around the working area was orange with sanded off varnish, icky! What's that? You think I posed for this photo, you don't believe I really did sanding?


Aha, how's that for proof! I thought Dus was taking photos, didn't realise he video'd me. At the end you can almost hear him say, "Good work Baby". Cute huh?

Anyway, so it was all sanded and lovely and so then I started varnishing. I did 3 coats of dark oak then three coats of clear. Just to be sure.

I forgot to take a photo of it sanded so here's a couple that I took just as I realised and before I'd finished doing a whole first coat!



It was quite nice sanded but I wanted it dark, dark I tell you!

Due to the fact that it rains here most of the time, and that week it rained EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I had to varnish it in the house. Plastic on the table and newspaper on top.

Thou shalt bake cake for thine husband whilst coats are drying. (There's white chocolate stars in the jam in the middle). Serve said cake on a suitably manly handbag shaped plate.

Okie doke then, the big reveal.

Tadaaaaaaa!!!!

It's not raining today, it's been finished all week but I had to wait to take it outside to take photos! I did run up the garden to see the thermometer though. 1 degree C at ten to eleven. That's 33 degrees F. Brrr!

And because we all like a good before and after:


And then in the interests of keeping it real, here's a photo of it before I emptied it to take it outside to take a photo of it finished.


One day I'll get around to re-doing my settee too!

At our church we like to be social. A lot more this year, which is amusing as someone pointed out we lost our social deacon at church in March!

Anyway, so we thought we'd have a girl's night in and a boy's night in at church. Us ladies would stay downstairs in our recently renovated, fancy pants small hall and the boys could use the projector upstairs to play the X box.

Our Pastor came down at one point during the evening and asked his wife what to do about spilling his glass of cola. I said he should ask Dus, he's good at clearing up messes (he lives with me right?), our Pastor replied that Dus doesn't care, he's too busy pummeling the baddies. LOL! Good stuff boys! *eye roll*


Anyway, here's me and our Pastor's wife, Helen in our jammies. She's so cute and makes you feel special and wanted even if you've been a right pain in the bum!


Yes, those are Christmas pyjamas I'm wearing. *Sigh* Not living up to this Scrooge persona very well am I? Good job Helen's wearing her 'girls night in' jammies. Lizzie wore her Eeyore Jammies but I forgot to take a photo of those.

p.s. I didn't ask Helen's permission to post this photo, I'm hoping she's so annoyed I have to resign as church secretary and take the next year off :D

Remember I showed you a pic of my batch sewing I was starting? A few people asked to see when it was finished so here are the pics.

I made 19 (ran out of Christmas fabric) lined, drawstring bags by In Color Order. You should know that everytime I type Jeni's blog name I want to sneak the 'u' into colour.

Regularlo ones with all different fabrics and ribbons. Liz loves that farmyard fabric!

And just because it's Christmas time (not yet, but soon) I made some Christmas fabric ones too. I kinda made the sizes on these up based on what fabric I had. I'm not buying anymore Christmas fabric ever. It's like normal fabric but twice the price!

I lined these with red felt for a snuggly feel and a bit more stability.

Now don't forget that although the tutorial for this bag is freely available, if you wish to make these to sell you should purchase the pattern with it's licence. You can purchase it in Jeni's shop here and at the moment she's having a 25% off sale for Thanksgiving and you can find the code here.

I made these to sell at craft fairs so I've purchased the pattern so that credit where credit's due eh.

Happy crafting!










p.s. did you notice that I've turned my name into Scroogantha during this 'festive' period? I kinda like it!

It's a while since I've written a post that's lost me readers so I thought it was high time some of my controversial nature was released publicly. I can't keep showing you my glossy, well finished public exterior without letting a bit of me shine through right?

Apparently I'm a Scrooge.

I was reading the Moments blog written by Liz and she asked about Christmas spirit or whether it's too early. Bear in mind it was November 15th. I commented that it was too early (and some other stuff which will come apparent further down) and she called me a scrooge.

{Via}

A scrooge! I guess that's a fair comment.

So here's my views on holidays. I may update you during the next month or so, letters from a Scrooge or something seasonal like that. Grinch maybe? That's probably a good one too.

Ok bullet points are maybe easiest.

1) I hate decorating for Christmas. I call Christmas decorations dastardly dust catchers. We put them up a week before Christmas and take them down shortly after new year. Christmas is one day, there's no need to spend the whole of December adding and adding and bedecking just to show you've got the Christmas spirit. Who's judging? You?

{Via}

2) I hate the need to show people how much you love them by buying them a ton of useless presents just so they'll look all pretty piled up under the Christmas tree. That my friends is purely selfish, look how generous I am-ism. (I added the ism to make it sound like a real thing). I would far rather buy people things that they want, whenever I want. Obviously I buy for Christmas, it's a great excuse to buy presents. But not ridiculous bath sets that they won't use but look pretty all packaged up in plastic and some shiny shredded stuff.

Anyone remember the year these were THE gift to get?

3) There is no such thing as the 'magic of Christmas'. We each have our own spirit within us, we can choose if that spirit will be kind, giving, loving, welcoming etc, all the things that retailers try to sell us as the magic of Christmas. Why wait all year to share the magic? Show people they matter to you all year round!

4) I sometimes have a massive urge to dress up like Cindy Lou Who and stand in the town centre at Christmas time shouting, Christmas is not about this! Go home, spend time with your family, stop getting into debt, don't be a weakling!

I don't think I've got the hair for it though.

{Via}

5) Christmas to me is this: Getting up with the excitement of going to church, singing the songs about our Saviour's birth, coming home and celebrating that birth. Sure we do some traditional things like give presents but we eat what we want to eat (more on that later I'm sure). Seeing the joy on my husband's face when I've given him a present that he loves that he didn't really realise he needed.

6) Our Christmas dinner last year was homemade pizzas and it was the best Christmas dinner I've ever had. We woke up, made the dough and left it rising while we went out to church. We came home, made our pizzas (in itself a fun task) then opened a pressie or two while they cooked.

We kinda figured that if Christmas dinner is meant to be special, why not make it our favourite meal, something we really love to eat. So we did.

They tasted delicious no matter how they look LOL!

7) Some of my learned friends (Google & Wiki) tell me Jesus wasn't even born at Christmas time, we're just taking the Pagan festival and using it to celebrate His birth. In theory then, anything other than remembering Jesus has it's roots in the Pagan festival right? I'd be interested to know what traditional things we do (Except giving presents, the three Kings did that right?) are rooted in Jesus' birth.

8) I refuse to wear a tacky 'Jesus is the reason for the season' badge. My faith and Christianity should be able to be seen by others throughout the year by the way I conduct myself and live my life, not by a pin badge.

9) I will be wholeheartedly taking advantage of the holiday season by attending some Christmas craft fairs. Just because I think decorating the house in November is ridiculous, doesn't mean I should miss out on selling my wares to those who have presents to buy.

10) Dus and I like to ensure that things fulfil their 'Christmas Destiny'. Remember on Friends when Phoebe gets all upset that the brown trees don't ever get to fulfil their Christmas destiny? No? Well that's kinda the gist of it.

One biscuit left on a Tuesday night? Better eat it so that it can fulfil it's Christmas destiny.

One pair of hot pink shoes left in a size 4? Better buy them so they can fulfil their Christmas destiny.

Got it? Good, you can use that too if you like.

So there we have it, I'm a Scrooge by today's standards.

Dus playing with his Christmas marbles last year

You should note that Dus likes to decorate, he fully gets into the 'spirit of Christmas' so really, to the outside world, my scroogeism is well hidden.

You should also note that for all my scroogeism, I proposed that this year, instead of a badly catered for church Christmas party in a venue that didn't really care about us, I volunteered to cook Christmas dinner for 40 45 50 A rapidly rising number of people the Tuesday before Christmas at our church. Surely that shows the true meaning of Christmas? If they think they're getting turkey though, they've got another think coming!!


So come on then, tell me what Christmas traditions that you have or do that can be related to celebrating Jesus' birth?

Hello all my friends from over there =========> (this arrow points to America)

Happy thanksgiving day y'all!!



And a warning that tomorrow I'll be posting a controversial post about Christmas. Consider this your 1 day warning about whether you want to read it or not. You probably won't like it!

This Sunday I'll be at the Penarth Christmas fair, pop down to see me if you're local!


Be there or be a scrooge!

There are many, many, reasons to love my husband, but every now and then I'll log some for you so you too can love Dus, my husband. Aka Dusband.

Whilst browsing Pinterest (as you do) I came across this photo of a baby in a giraffe outfit.

{Via}

So as any childless woman would say, I asked Dus if we could have a baby and dress it up in this outfit.

Dus replied yes, as long as it's not famous baby.

Famous baby?

To clarify....I'm allowed to have a baby and put it in a giraffe outfit. I'm allowed to photograph it and post it on my facebook or blog. But if I should dare to think about submitting it to another blog (as I did with my messy craft room on My Life and Kids) then I'm crossing a line and he might get his grumpy pants on.

Dus

Seeing as I've never known Dus to be grumpy in our (almost) three years of marriage, this threat doesn't scare me too much.

One giraffe baby coming right up!!! And that's why we love Dusband.

batch sewing addict.

The first time I make a pattern I can restrict myself to one as I don't know how it'll turn out. And then?

I bust out the whole afternoon of cutting and end up with 12 gift bags cut out ready to be sewn.


*sigh* I think I have a problem with batch sewing!!

So I have a friend. Her name is Nia. She's very, very, very talented.

Click the picture to see this in it's whole

She's Welsh. Most of my friends round here are, something to do with living in Wales maybe.

Cartref is home in Welsh, Click the picture for more detail.

Nia has skillz. Check out her tangles.

Cwtsh is Welsh for hug, it's a special kind of hug, a safe place kind of hug. It's Cwtch in English and Cwtsh in Welsh. Click the picture for more info.

Here's her story: Way back in 1993 I was studying my Art GCSE.I saw one of my friends doodling and liked what I saw.

18 years later, I stumbled upon the art of Zentangle and realised that I had been doing something similar many years before.I picked up a pen and a piece of paper and started to doodle some tangles.I thought about what I would do with my rediscovered art and one thing that I could not seem to find online was anyone doing tangles in the shape of letters, words or names.

What are Tangles?: Essentially 'tangles' are the unique patters that you can see within my images. They often begin with a line or a shape and develop as the pen moves. When I 'tangle' I usually don't know what the finished piece will look like, so I'm constantly surprised when I step back and look at the final image. I hope you will be impressed by the elegance, movement, flow and stark contrast within my Tangles.

Time to Tangle: I am often asked how do I go about creating my tangle pieces. I usually start with an outline sometimes in pencil and sometimes directly in ink. Depending on the image I am working on, I will then divide the image into sections and begin drawing the repeate tangle patterns. If the image is small it is less effective to divide it into even smaller sections, so smaller images have less sections of different patterns. I usually ink in the images as I go. I tend to work from left to right to avoid smudging!
Nia's got a special offer on her etsy store at the moment which I wanted to share with you. There's still time to have something posted to the US but Nia's willing to do digital commissions if you'd rather print at home, just use the contact seller link.

Pop over and check out her work, it's amazing!

I post about Lizzie's elephantide habit, you all say run with it.

Who am I to digress from your orders?

We brought Liz back a present from our holiday....


An elephant magnet, oh yes. More to come I'm sure...you're all such a terrible influence on me!!

Phew, who knew there were so many beautiful photos to share!

Here's part two of the pattern testers for the Stella Pleated purse.

Ok, first up is Liz who's blog and style I love!



You have to click over to see the lining for this bag, it's a gorgeous blue. She features all these super cute dinky sewing accessories that her readers have made and everytime I pop over I just feel so inspired to make pretty things!

Liz's giveaway is running til Monday 19th so you've got time to enter!


Next up is Susie who sews in her sunroom. I love Susie mostly because when preparing for Hurricane Sandy she moved her sewing machines and her daylight lamp. Those are exactly the things I would move too lol!!


I'm in love with this teal colour and want to steal this bag for myself! Don't let on though, Susie might get a bit weirded out!

Susie's also not done a giveaway yet so if you want to pop over and follow her blog then when/if she does, you'll be the first in the know!


Next up is Mary's bag and although I don't have a blog address for Mary I have to share this incredible embroidery with you. Mary wears her bags flap in so used the flat expanse of the back for the main design then embroidered the flap too.


And here's the back, I'm a big fan of peacocks so it's no wonder I'm rather taken with Mary's bag!


Next up is Sally, a teacher. Whilst the fact that she's a teacher did fill me with fear when she first volunteered to test for me way back in June for the Bow Pleat pattern, she's been very kind to me and only used her red pen a few times! (I'm joking, I think red pens are banned now for self worth reasons). Anyway, Sally wasn't very well for this test so although she didn't give me pages of bullet points of corrections (only partly a joke, but always very gratefully received) she did manage to finish her bag and post the pics for me.


I'm thinking us bag makers are drawn to blues!


And finally, there's Nancy, the lovely Nancy. I've never known anyone called Nancy before, I kinda like it. Nancy first tested the Rosie Patchwork bag and now this one even though her mum was visiting. Wait, mom? Yeah, Nancy wouldn't say mum.
Ok, enough Nancy love, she'll be getting weirded out.

Here's the inside of her bag. The outside is pretty too, but I love the lining most!


At the time of writing I don't have a blog address for Nancy but I've emailed her to ask and if she has one I'll post it for you then.

No, wait, not quite 'And finally....', I almost forgot Amanda!

I may have had a blog address for Amanda but I can't find it, sorry Amanda!

Here's her bag in an upcycled tweed. Tweed is how I envisioned the Stella pleated bag but then I tried it myself and discovered it's a nightmare to pleat....well done Amanda on powering through though!


I suspect Amanda would agree with me, tweed isn't the best fabric for this pattern, something easily pleatable will make life simpler!

Anyway, that's all for the moment. Pop over and check out the blogs of my testers, enter their giveaways or go buy your own pattern using 30PERCENTOFF on my etsy store for 30% off any purchase. I've lost track of the days now, 27 or 28 days left to use it lol!