Happy Easter!

{ time for the family}

It is usually Thursday before Easter that we colour eggs in our house, and this year was no exception. Luckily kindergarten closed at 1pm so Lovely Little Big Daughter and I come straight home excited about the egg colouring ritual.

We are really lucky that we like eggs in our house – eggs for breakfast, eggs in salad, eggs on toast with cream cheese, etc…yes we like eggs. So I boiled 25 eggs and we got to work. It was so much fun! Little Big Daughter wanted to put them in the colour herself and was very proud.

I decided to show her an old method which my grandmother taught me when I was I little girl. It involves a little bit of cotton or in our case a couple of eye cotton pads – you know the ones to remove make up with. The eggs turned out so nice, covered in lovely mixture of pastel colours. 

Here is how it is done...

 Use a tea spoon to drop a bit of egg colour onto the cotton pad. You could choose a single colour, a couple of colours or a mix of all the colours.

 Yes…we ( Lovely Little Big Daughter) chose to use all of the colours…

And now the just wrap your boiled egg with the coloured cotton pad. We had to use two pads per egg. The pads can be used to colour more than one egg.

Wait 5 min...

...and unwrap the egg...

If you don’t want to have the little lines you could use plain cotton or a plain pad, but I think they actually add  a bit of extra charm…

Simple...isn't it?

  

 

And the rest of our Easter eggs…

But the fun was not over yet…an enormous Easter package arrived from my parents-in-law containing the loveliest goodies ever…see for yourself.

And to top things up Mollie Makes – you know, the lovely British craft magazine, are offering half price on all of their issues through out the Easter Holiday weekend….so I stocked up on the few missing issues.

Have a Lovely Easter!

Love,

Irina

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties that I link to.

Sunglasses Case

{ summer was here this week...can't wait for it to be back}

I have one last Easter project to complete but while I am putting the idea together I decided to share a cute sunglasses case. I originally made this case last year, but would like to show the tutorial for those of you who were not reading my blog than.

It is so easy to make and I am sure it took only an hour to finish the whole project. So if you fancy making your own sunglasses case for the forthcoming summer than here is a quick tutorial and some instructions of how to do it.

You will need:

2 pieces of fabric – for the inside and the outside

2 pieces of scraps – for the sunglasses frame and the lenses

Vliesofix – to attach the appliqué

A piece of wadding/ batting or an old blanket

 

Depending on your glasses decide how big you’d like to have your case and cut your fabric accordingly.

Draw or download from the internet the shape of the sunglasses you’ll use for the appliqué. I used a pair of Little Big Daughter’s sunglasses and the small size was just perfect.

Iron the appliqué into the middle of your outside fabric piece.

Pin the fabric to the wadding / batting and than stitch the appliqué.

Fold the outside piece inside out and stitch along the long side and the bottom short side.Turn to the front.

Now the inside part – fold the inside part inside out and stitch the long side. You need to have opening on both short sides.

Place the inside piece on top of the outside piece – front tides facing and stitch the top short side.

Look at the last photo your case should look like that. Now stitch the remaining short side from the inside piece of fabric and put it inside the case.

Ready!

 

Wishing you a lovely weekend!

Love

Irina xx

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties that I link to.

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Easter Mantel Garland

{ if only we had a mantelpiece}

Christmas and Easter are only two of the occasions when I regret that we no longer have a fire place and hence no mantelpiece. I asked Lovely Husband the other day if we could have a mantel without the fire place but he just laughed. Well, we’ve got lots of big windows and to keep with the bright and cheerful decoration theme for Easter I decided to make a simple garland to hang between the curtains.

It was really easy and it took less than an hour. The technique is very similar to the one I used for the Fabric Pinwheels – basically attach two pieces of fabric together with /vliesofix/ bondaweb and cut out in the desired form. I love silhouettes so I used some Easter cookie cutters I bought on my last trip to US last year for $1 – bargain. If you don’t have cookie cutters I am sure you can find ideas on the internet.

I ironed the front pieces to vliesofix/ bondaweb and than to canvas like fabric which I bough from Ikea a while back. It is not of great quality but it did perfect job for the back of the little garland motifs.

Have a lovely sunny weekend!

Love,

Irina xx

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties link to.

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Easter Fabric Pinwheels

{or one more way to use fabric scraps}

A couple of weeks ago I decided to decorate my house for Easter in yellow and purple…well, that was a couple of weeks ago. Since than I changed my ideas and colour preferences too many times. And since we have a four year old girl I decided to go for something bright, cheerful and fun.

I always try to use my fabric scraps and I wanted to have a go at pinwheels making for a while now, so it just seemed the perfect opportunity.

I am sure you have seen plenty of pinwheel tutorials so I am only going to show you a brief photo summary of the steps – really easy!

The pin wheels are made out of fabric and fleece and are attached together with a piece of Vliesofix / Bondaweb ( the same stuff you use for appliqué). If you don’t have matching fleece you can just attach together two pieces of fabric – either complementing or the same. 

If you use fleece make sure you iron the Vliesofix / Bondaweb to the fabric piece and than iron the fabric piece to the fleece – as shown on the photos.

 

 Wishing you a lovely sunny week!

Love,

Irina xx

P.S. Please check my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties I link to. 

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Lace Tights Easter Eggs

{that was fun but I had the wrong kind of tights}

I am well into the Easter spirit and I have been thinking about little projects to make and ways to decorate our house. I would like to make a little fabric garland but for some reason do not feel like sewing so I opted for some more egg colouring.

I decided to use a pair of lace tights – you know the ones that were in fashion in the 80s and also a few years ago. I had none left from those days but I managed to find a pair in Primark.

So today I took Lovely Little Big Daughter to Kindergarten and came straight back home to give those lace eggs a go. I am afraid the final result was not exactly how I imagined and I am going to provide a few tips to help you get a better result should you like to try this.

TIP: if you are going to use store bought dye, have a couple of different types handy. The first one I used (tablets) failed so I quickly opened my second package (coloured sheets), and that worked much better.

TIP: The smaller the pattern of the lace tights, the better - the ones I chose did not work so well.

TIP: Always tie the lace around the egg at one place only, which could be the “back” of the egg.

TIP: Wear plastic gloves while removing the coloured piece of lace from the egg.

From there on it is pretty easy as you can see from the photos.

TIP: Place the eggs in a single layer in a pot. Bring to boil but once the water has started to boil reduce the heat to mark 2 or 3 – basically you are keeping the temperature quite high without the eggs being moved around by boiling bubbles. Keep on the heat for 10-12 min.

Here is the final result. Not as bad as I though but I had hoped that the lace would be more clearly defined. I guess I should look for another pair with smaller pattern and have another go. 

 

Lovely Little Big Daughter was totaly impressed with the outcome and it made me think about how kids just see the world in such a different way, how imperfection seems perfect to them and how the littlest of things make such a big impact. Oh those years of innocence!

Wishing you a lovely weekend!

Love

Irina xx

P.S. Please check my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties I link to.

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Sunday baking - Lemon Raspberry Cake

{pined on Saturday, made on Sunday}

I am not a big fan of lemon cakes as I find them a bit sour and a bit boring really. But on Saturday I found the most delicious Raspberry Lemon cake on Pinterest and had to make it as both Lovely Husband and Lovely Little Big Daughter are big lemon cake eaters, bought from Starbucks that is, not home made…until today.

It was easy to make and the raspberries gave the cake such a lovely twist. I think next time I’ll swirl the raspberry mixture through out the cake rather than just on the top.

Now you see it...now you don't...

 You can find the recipe at Kitchen Confidante if you fancy making the cake…I chose the non alcohol version.

Wishing you a lovely week!

Love

Irina xx

Glitter Easter eggs

{or eggs with bling}

I wanted to try this for a while and I couldn’t believe how quick and easy it was. Even my little girl wanted to have a go but she was only allowed to help here and there.  I do like how glittery and colourful the eggs turned out but I wish I had more eggs left just to do them only in gold and purple.

So if you are looking for some easy and inexpensive Easter decoration here is how to make your own.

You’ll need:

Styrofoam eggs (I used standard size)

Glitter in your preferred colour / colours

Decoupage glue – I believe simple craft glue will also work

Small brush

Wooden skewers

A piece of Styrofoam for the eggs to dry on (I used one I made for a recent birthday party, hence the pink look)

Hair spray – if you don’t have one by a travel size in high strength

 

Put each egg on a skewer – as shown on the photo. Make sure it doesn’t move.

Use the brush and the glue to apply glue all over the egg

Put a piece of paper on the working surface. Hold the skewer with one hand above the paper and start sprinkling glitter over the egg. Turn slightly while the whole egg is covered. It doesn’t take a lot of glitter and whatever is left on the paper can go back in the glitter pot. When ready use the Styrofoam to leave the eggs to dry.

Repeat with all the eggs.

Leave the eggs to dry for about 30 min to an hour - depending on the glue.

I am sorry, there is no photo for this next step but it is important especially if you don’t want to have glitter all over the house. Once the eggs are dry take them to the garden / balcony and spray each egg with hair spray. The hair spray will hold the glitter in place – a bit like spray glue, and it will be dry in 5 min.

 

Next remove the eggs from the skewers by slowly twisting the wooden skewer while pulling out. This will leave a little whole on the bottom of each egg. Just dab a little bit of glue to cover the hole and dip the egg back into the glitter. Some of my glitter containers were a bit small, so I put a bit of the glitter in the lid and than dipped the egg – it worked absolutely fine.

Ready!

Have fun!

Love, 

Irina xx

P.S. Please check my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties I link to.

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