Welcome to my Blog, a Crafting Year

Hello
I taught myself to knit in 2011 I have been posting photos of my knitting creations on facebook but as I am starting to bore my friends I have created this blog to record my progress. Then I thought I might try my hand at other crafts and see how I get along. I will try a different craft every month and you can read about my successes and failures and even laugh at my photos as I try different things like felting, crochet, sewing, papercrafts etc and try and make a few things from the kids favourite book Star Wars crafts, amongst others...lets see how it goes

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

the finished product

So here it is, the soap turned out of the moulds


Cornflower at the back then lavender then rose (left to right)


Bagged...


and labelled, although you can't see who to as that would spoil the surprise. I'm very happy with how they look and the boys like them to, just hope the teachers and TA's do. One down nine more to do so best get on with it.

I hope to try decoupage next but I am still trying to wrestle the comics off the boys so I may have to buy some more then hide them. I also have a small felting kit I want to try out. With the summer holidays fast approaching my 2 littlies have expressed an interest in learning to knit and crochet so I may try and teach them.....watch this space!

Soap... again

My soaps sat in their moulds neglected for a week or so when finally I decided to do something about it. I was looking for gifts for my children's teachers and teaching asst (10 in total) when I found myself looking at handmade soap. Then I thought, hang on....I have the whole kit and caboodle at home!
So I came home and turned out my soap


The results were a bit disappointing, I hadn't expected the petals to make such dirty marks 


The pink one was too pink and the petals had all fallen off. Not good. So I started again, this time using a silicone muffin mould and I decided to put the petals in the bottom of the moulds this time.



I used Lavender

Corn flower

And rose petals

After my last attempt I knew I couldn't keep the soap white as the petals leaked so I would have to use the colour sparingly. I used 3 drops of pink to make a really pale colour then added the rose fragrance.


I then filled the moulds half way so I could make sure the petals stayed at the bottom

So far so good. I used a spatula to push the petals to the bottom and let it set whilst I melted more base soap, adding colour and fragrance as before. I then topped the moulds up and left them to set over night.

As for presentation I bought some clear cellophane bags from lakeland and I have coloured string, ribbon and luggage tags as well as my lovely butterfly stamp, much to play with.

I'm just off to check them now so may post more pictures in a bit.