Lovely stuff

Hello, happy Friday everyone. Did the first week back after the holidays absolutely drag? I know it did for me, I feel like time has ceased to function properly in 2011.

To cheer me up, I've had a trawl through all my blogs and picked my favourite discoveries to share with you. Maybe 'Lovely stuff' will even become a Friday regular.

Creatively lovely stuff:

Project Restyle - another gem from the creative minds of Elsie and Rachel. They are going to create lovely stuff out of damaged or unwanted goods, alongside weekly projects to give life to used items. You can join in yourself via their Flickr group. Inspirational!

Learning to sew: part 1 - Tilly from Tilly and the Buttons has posted this really useful introduction to sewing, answering some of the most common questions she gets asked. Lots of tips on getting started if you're new to sewing.

An extremely enviable sewing chest - lucky Nette! My sewing stuff is currently stored in an Ikea bedside table, an archive box and a couple of baskets. Not quite so stylish. Although I am lucky enough to have a very prety Cath Kidston sewing box.

Image courtesy of Nette

Other lovely stuff...

Shannon Eileen over at Happiness is has been posting lots of lovely stuff this week, not least this vintage suitcase storage. How gorgeous! I'd love one of these to store all my sewing supplies. I do like these ones from Liberty, but having felt them up in real life, I feel they're a bit flimsy for the price.

image courtesy of 'Happiness is'

 She also linked to these teacups... 

image courtesy of Me and Alice

...I can't decide if they're cute or a bit creepy? What about you? I think I would like one. It would also be quite funny to give someone tea in, but not warn them...

How to do customer service:

Spending Christmas Eve travelling can't be nice, so what better to spread a little Christmas cheer than a lovely random act of kindness from Spanair? The cynic in me keeps reminding me it's also fantastic publicity for the company, but you can't deny it's heartwarming.

Hope you've enjoyed these links as much as I have. Happy Friday everyone, I hope you have lovely weekends. I am planning a quiet one, preparing for a job interview on Monday - eek!

An update and some links to spread the festive cheer!

a little cross stitch I made last year...who doesn't <3 tea?

Hello, happy Tuesday! What are you all crafting?

I have a few projects on the go this week - I have finally finished the Simplicity dress I started making with Liberty fabric back in....June? I won't have time to take any photos until the weekend though (and I am hankering after a better camera as my photographs leave a lot to be desired - most are iPhone pics), so I'll post the results then. And last night was spent extremely pleasantly watching Elf and playing about making fabric brooch prototypes. I think I'm happy with the results now, so I'll hopefully find time this week to perfect them and maybe write up a wee tutorial in case any of you like them enough to make them yourselves.

In the meantime this week, and in spite of an impending cold, I will be attempting to keep up my festive cheer by avidly following :

• Elsie who blogs at A Beautiful Mess and her '12 Days of Handmade' project
  
• the Penniless Guide to Christmas for the frugally festive
  
• and perhaps, if I'm VERY lucky, making it along to the Rust open day to pick out my Christmas pressies from my boyfriend Matt (ha, wishful thinking - I have picked out my engagement ring from there, sadly it is £3550 so a little more saving is required). Rust is run by the lovely Artemis who writes one of my favourite blogs, Tales of A Junkaholic. 

Luckily my work is feeling pretty festive just now, so it's not hard to get in the spirit. The two pics below are from the photo booth at our Christmas party (I think I suit a moustache? Perhaps I should have done Movember), and the Narnia themed events that are going on in and around the library - can you see Aslan hiding amongst the trees? You entered Narnia via a massive wardrobe, I kid you not. It looked magical!