wire bending

Recently when we were experimenting with the wire bending for the frame of the wooden hearts, I got a little carried away and decided to explore this project a little further, as you do. So began by twisting garden wire into a heart shape, very easy to do with thick gloves and a pair of pliers, I'm also thinking of doing spirals.

This is what I ended up with... it will be a plant support and I am going to be hanging something in the middle with the name of the seedling on but haven't quite got that far yet. As it has a rounded top you won't accidentally poke yourself in the eye whilst gardening either unlike normal canes.

I also had a go at writing with wire as you can see above.... it's a bit shaky but it is definitely still readable... just about. I have used a much thinner, red wire for this and pushed the end into a small piece of wood so that it stands up alone and can be used as a quirky photograph or memo holder.

Although I am tempted to fix the wire to the top of our family pin board along with the two little photographs.

2nd anniversary

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary, although we have been together a lot longer than this. So this is just a short post to wish my wonderful husband and true love of my life, a 'happy anniversary'.

We thought it would be fun to hand make presents for each other every year based on the traditional gift guide, this year is cotton and my husband made this beautiful piece of thread art for me.

We had recently been talking about thread or string art, which used to be popular in the 1970's, as I used to do this as a little girl with my grandfather. It is a beautiful gift to be surprised with and has a heart in the middle.

This is what I made for him, it is a photo frame covered in cotton fabric, which I then sealed. The little flower is made from a circle out of a very old, falling apart dictionary. The definition of love. I have also put in a photo from our wedding.

I had to include a photograph of this, an origami crane and say 'yay I did it' Last year on our first wedding anniversary (which was paper), my husband wrote me the most beautifully romantic poem (on paper) and one of the things I tried to make for him was this origami crane. Unfortunately those of you who have known me that long will remember I could not get the crane right and was quite disappointed... so this year I was determined to get it right and finally managed it... better late than never isn't it?

Father's day frames

Just a quick post to wish my husband, the wonderful father of my children, a happy father's day. We usually give some homemade presents as well as bought ones on special occasions as the children love to make things. This year everything seems to keep creeping up on me so fast that I'm having trouble keeping up.

So this years craft is a very simple one, we saved a few jar lids from the tea light lanterns to use as frames and added magnets to the back of them. These automatically stick but if you want something more permanent, you could add a spot of hot glue. This leaves the inside of the jar lid for your photographs, we took some fun ones, printed them out and cut them to shape. Then just push into the lid, once added to the frames they can be stuck anywhere that a magnet will stick.

This photograph shows them on the refrigerator but they are ideal for my husband to stick up in his workshop. Last year we made large hand print posters with the messy little hand print poem on and my son painted a rock with the words 'dad rocks' on it you can find a picture here.

More charity shop finds!

My very late entry for magpie Monday has had me smiling today, I have been looking for some pink transfer printed plates for absolutely ages. My daughters (and me, if I'm honest) would love to have 'proper' tea parties in a kind of romantic, bohemian/eclectic style. So we wanted a wide variety of different plates, some flowery and some like the ones below. They cost £1.00 for six plates, what a bargain!   On the back it says they are from the Constable bicentennial series.

This next item I found in a box of photograph frames, and it has my heart all a flutter, it is so romantic.... and very heavy!  It is a solid pewter frame and I'm thinking of either putting in photographs of the children or photographs of my husband and I on our wedding day and standing it on my dressing table. This also only cost £1.00.

Then I found this slightly out of season book also for £1.00 it has 200 Christmas recipes and craft ideas inside, just what we need for seasonal preparations later in the year, plenty of things for the children to try out.

Lastly today, a trivet for 50p, it needs to have a little attention paid to it but a welcome addition to the kitchen for placing hot things on and I really love the shape. So these are my finds today the first two items I'm especially excited about, can't wait to put them to good use.

to visit other magpie Monday posts click the link below.