Felt Friday 2

First up, apologies for the lack of posts this week, we've all been busy creating lots of projects for a new challenge over at Crafty Ribbons. Again I can't show you any of those creations until Ali posts them up, but in the meantime I can tell you our projects include, some rings, a cherry topped item, something you might wear and an explosion!!

On to today's post then ... Today's week two in our Felt Friday line up, so I've got some more felt creations to share, but first I need to explain!!! A while ago I decided I'd try my hand at this gardening malarkey!! I've never really been all that interested in digging about in the dirt (there's bugs in there) and I'm certainly not a fan of bees and wasps (I scream like a girl!!). But as I was planning to spend the majority of my summer outside in the garden in the sunshine (not that there's been much sun so far!!) I thought I'd try and grow a few things to make our garden look pretty along with the odd vegetable or two. I started it all off by growing a few pumpkins, which then led to some beetroot, swede and lettuce ... well I was nothing if not ambitious!! Once I'd had a little success ... and by success I mean I'd got them all to the seedling stage ... I aimed even higher. In fact I decided to set up a challenge amongst the four of us to see who could grow the largest sunflower.

It all started so well, but a couple of months on it hasn't quite worked out. My pumpkins are yet to grow anything but a few flowers that last for just a day, my lettuce got eaten by slugs and snails within a week of introducing it into the garden. I'm still hoping my beetroot and swede will amount to something, but to be honest they've not even got any leaves left so I'm doubtful! Then there's my sunflowers ... which after growing to the dizzying height of about 31inches have pretty much all been eaten by slugs and snails. I've slowly come to realise I don't like gardening all that much and I definitely have a dislike for slugs and snails!! Not that it's all doom and gloom though ... Lady has managed to grow her sunflower to over 50inches in her courtyard ... I think she definitely wins that challenge!!

Anyway, I can hear you all asking what my gardening has to do with todays post? Well, seeing as I haven't had much success in growing the plants (I blame the weather!) Mum decided to cheer me up by making these .... 

rather beautiful felt poppy's! They're certainly cheering up the rather dull looking garden!! 

Little x

Black White and Green

Ok, please bear with us on this one ... this is our first entry into a challenge blog, so I'm really hoping this works. Crafty Ribbons (you might have figured out by now, we've got a bit of an obsession with them!) have set the challenge of "black white and one other colour", so we chose this card as our entry ...

This birthday card was created by Mum (Sharon) who it's safe to say has a bit of an obsession with all things green, so it was obvious her colour of choice would of course be green!!

Hope you all have a great weekend. 

Little x

Baby Project 1

Remember how we teased you about some of our recent projects in the last post I published?? Well now I can share the first of those projects with you. To be fair I should really have shown it to you a couple of days ago, but we've been so busy here at Craft Towers getting everything ready for Mothers Day it's been a little bit too hectic!

If you remember, we were making projects for another of the Crafty Ribbons' Challenges. Crafty Ribbons is a one off family run company based in Blandford. Over the past couple of years we've ordered and brought rather a lot of ribbons from them. They're not just a business though. Ooo no, when you order from Crafty Ribbons you know who you're ordering from. Ali and Tony! How do you know?? Well everything has that personal touch. They have their own website yes, they want you to buy from them yes, but they also want to inspire you to do more with your crafting. How?? Well they also have a blog that you can follow where Ali regularly updates you with ideas from both herself and her customers. Not only that, but they also run weekly competitions to win their product free of charge as well as having regular challenges. Through those challenges is how we've gained a lot of confidence in our crafting. This is in fact our third challenge with them now. Ali sets the theme of the challenge and sends you some freebie ribbons to craft with. All she asks is that you send her two items you've crafted for that theme which include the ribbons she sent... simple!!

The most recent challenge was a baby theme. Although a little confused as to where to start, we eventually made 11 projects ... just a few more than the required two!!! This is project number 1....

It's a small set of drawers that contain a "New Mum Survival Kit". Each drawer has one of the listed items contained in it. There's 12 in total although the actual baby of course doesn't come with it!! Lol!!. So what's in it?? Well ... 

Hopefully you can read that list. Looking at it now I can honestly say I'm very proud of my creation.... looking at it when I was working on it though I can tell you I hated it!! I couldn't get all  the drawers the same size, the y weren't sitting straight ... everything that could go wrong did ... in fact after about 4 hours working on it I threw it all in the bin and walked away from it!!! As you can probably guess, I did retrieve it from the bin and managed to salvage what I'd spent hours working on. Not only that, but I got it all to go right in the end (well almost!!). It may have caused me a rather large headache but I'm still very proud of that little box creation. 

The best bit about those drawers is decorating them ... I used 4 different little tatty teddy images on each of the sides ... 

So that's it ... my first little set of baby drawers. Cute, even if I do say so myself!! Although thankfully it's not just me that thinks so. Ali at Crafty Ribbons liked them enough to feature them on her blog and named ME as her guest deisgner of the week! You can check it out over at the Crafty Ribbons Blog here. How honoured am I?? ME! A DESIGNER!! Honestly you couldn't get the grin off my face haha!! 

Well that's it from me today. I'm now off to finish my own Mothers Day cards ... downside of being a designer I guess haha! You make everyone else's projects before your own!! I have tried something a bit different with Mum's this year so hopefully she'll like them... if not I'll just keep them for me!! There's plenty of Mothers Day designs over on our facebook page though and I'll add a few more of them here after Sunday. 

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mums 

Little x

New Challenge

We got a lovely surprise in the post last Saturday morning. The postman put a little blue envelope through our letter box here at craft towers. It was the kind of envelope that only comes from one place ... Crafty Ribbons!!! But we didn't order anything ... no no as Mum had left a comment on the Crafty Ribbons Blog saying she was bored, Ali, the owner very kindly sent us a selection of ribbons for a new challenge that she launched on Sunday 19th Feb ... we got a special preview and instant admission to the challenge, but no instructions on what the challenge was!! How special did we feel!!

Our creative crafty brains automatically kicked in ... "it might be an Easter challenge" ... "maybe it's a Mothers Day challenge" ... "Or it could be a spring challenge" ... The possibilities were endless and we already had ideas of what we could do if it was any of those. On Sunday the challenge was officially launched and it was ... "baby washing" .... Ooo how we didn't expect that. So there we were Sunday morning with every one of our ideas useless ... now what?? Well there was only one thing for it ... board meeting!!!

So on Tuesday, Mum, Lady and I all met for coffee and put our heads together (not literally!) and started brain storming. By the time we'd finished our coffees we had far too many ideas and definitely not enough time!! 7 hours later and almost all of our challenge goodies were complete. This time even Crusty put down her baking spoons and joined our crafty challenge!!  ... wanna see???

Sorry did I not mention you can't see them before they're posted on the official challenge blog?? Ooo well consider that a bit of a preview ... I'll update you again once you're allowed to see all of our makes.

Little x