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In between making ready for the students today, I have been trying to carry on with my present for Scary.  It is a bag that consists of eight panels and each panel is different.  I am using old sheets, clothes and any odd bits and pieces that I have lying around.

It's coming on but it's taking rather longer than I anticipated.

I have tried some free embroidery (I think this is what you call it) for the first time and I'm reasonably pleased with the result.

I wasn't sure how the bag went together.  I kept reading the instructions and I couldn't visualise it.

So I thought perhaps I needed to make a little practice one before I started putting the big one together.

Does anyone have a Barbie that needs a handbag?

Valentine's Day!

He knows how much I like magazines and how hard I try to resist them!

Then he made me scrambled egg, grilled tomatoes and bacon for breakfast! Yum!

My name is Ellouise and I am addicted to making garlands! I was still making them this morning!


I put these beads on the bottom as Mad One is rather keen on penguins. I think I have had these beads ForEver. I remember playing with them as a child in my Mum's button bottle.


Yes, I know the gun's a bit weird but it's a family heirloom! I found my crochet hearts from last year and other bits and pieces that I have collected on a red theme.

Remember those little heart shaped silicone cases that I bought? I filled each of the six with different sweets. Lovehearts, of course

and some gobstoppers and heart shaped things and letter shaped things and sour things and more sour things.

We also had some Lindor chocolates in a little dish bought from Paperchase last year.

And not forgetting a bumble bee, synonymous with Valentine's Day of course - not sure where he came from!

Don't forget some sweet treats to eat!

I managed to save some of those ginger nuts I made yesterday.

And does anyone fancy a slice of chocolate cake?

Guess what, I forgot to take a picture of The Pie!!!!!!! Duh!

Valentine Garland

This all started when I received the latest newsletter from Kids Craft Weekly and they had some 'kiss cards' for Valentine's Day. They have some really good ideas, albeit sometimes for younger children.

I do love garlands. I look at the ones on flickr and make plans but never seem to get to it. It's all a bit superfluous I guess. Real Life gets in the way. That and the fact that our walls are harder than diamonds and putting them up requires industrial equipment and a very well bribed Marathon Runner!

So anyway, I digress ....

First find some red lipstick (you might have some in your handbag but I got mine from Boots, £1.99, as red isn't normally my colour) and get some willing (or bribed) volunteers:

Then proceed to snog some paper. I bought a big sheet of thick white paper from the stationers for 50p.

I decided to use some heart shaped biscuit cutters rather than circles; I had three sizes and did a selection.

Then Mad Child and I cut them out, being careful not to smudge the lipstick.

Then I laminated them. I managed to get quite a few into each laminating pouch, leaving spaces between but they were rather tricky to feed into the machine as they kept slipping about.

Unfortunately on the last sheet, the pouch went into the laminator but didn't come out. Oh joy!

So maybe we'll have some lunch. A little bit of leftover steak and ale pie, that will do. Calm the nerves.

Then, whilst teaching Mad Child a bit of Anglo Saxon, I took the laminator to pieces, unravelled the last sheet and put it all back together. If you want to make one of these garlands, you may not need to do this step!

Then we proceeded to cut them out again, this time with a border of laminate around the edge.

Now we had 20 hearts of various sizes.

The next step is to string them into a garland. But which ribbon to use?

Most votes seem to have been cast for the red rickrack.

By this time Marathon Runner is home from work and 'helping'! We wanted ours approximately 180cm long and we just randomly placed the different sized hearts roughly 5cm apart, leaving ends on the rickrack for pinning. It turned out that we only needed 12 of the hearts but I am sure the others will be used for something.

We started off gluing the rickrack onto the back of the hearts but it didn't stick quickly enough (we were in a hurry to finish at this point) so stuck a bit of sellotape on as well.

Yay, tis done!!!!!!!!!

Obviously, by this time it is dark!!!!!

Hope you like it!

Hearts

Some of my favourite hearts from Flickr:

Heart #1

makes you dream of summer days on the beach, doesn't it?

Heart #2

So simple and beautiful.

Heart #3

A girl can always dream that this will land on her mat on the 14th!

Still getting in the mood for Valentines Day but when you've been married for nearly 20 years, sometimes you have to dig a little deeper .......

Some of my hearts I made last year. I wonder where I put them?