This week has had it's up and downs, but one thing it has definitely been is a crafty and creative week. It started with the painting of the chairs, something that I am so pleased about it's ridiculous.
Then, the delivery of the goodies I ordered from [HobbyCraft] sent me into crafty overdrive. It started when I sat out in the sunshine one evening, and began to make a flat rose.
The embroidery hoop made making them so much quicker from how I [usually make them], that I made two in less than 10 minutes. 
By the following day, I had a fast growing rose garden. 
I'm making these roses in preparation for Christmas, when I intend to use them as [gift tags]. But, they are good to use for so many other things too.
Last year, I used them to decorate a straw hat, as brooches, and even stitched together to make a [Statement necklace]. As I made them this week, another use for them crept into my mind. Often when surfing around, I see truly brilliant blogs showing clothes makeovers. I'm always in awe as I am not a seamstress, and the thought of making a dress from scratch or having the courage to cut something and alter it scares me just a little.
So this is inspired by those blogs, but without having to be quite so brave.
I made a few different sized flat roses. The black ones are made from lace, the white ones from plain old cotton fabric.
I wanted black roses, but had no black fabric. Not a problem ~ just dye them. 
Do you see what it says on the packet? 'washing machine dye'. Ha! Oh yeah, I'm going to fill my washing machine with black dye,and end up with whites streaked with black or grey! Ok, I know, it's perfectly safe, but I did not want to risk it. With my luck something would go wrong and from now until the end of time I'd end up with ruined clothes. So I did the sensible thing and put it in a bucket. 
I threw in the flat roses I wanted dyed, and a strip of cotton fabric just as an experiment, and left them overnight. This morning the dye had done it's job, and I just had to wash and dry them.
And then I was able to get on with my revamp. I always wear vest tops underneath my cardis (never on their own, with my bingo wings? Oh no. No one needs to see my arms, thank you very much). I thought that to dress up a plain vest top, stitching flat roses around the neckline might be rather nice.
You can see how the dye took very well on some roses, more grey/blue on others. But that's good, it looks like they were there from the start and have just faded a bit. I pinned the roses on first, then tried it on. Once happy with where they were, they were stitched in place. Simple to do, and good fun too.
I'm definitely going to do this again, only taking more time and buying fabric and ribbon to match the top I use. Might even do it to liven up a plain cardigan. The other goodies from HobbyCraft were the cardboard letters. I've started working on them for the Christmas sign, painting them in a sample pot of Farrow & Ball's 'Blackened'.
The intention is to stack them and glue like this, in the same way as the Pottery Barn sign I showed earlier. 
(I'm holding the 'O' in place, which is why the photo isn't very good). I would say to order any Christmas letters now, while so few people are actually thinking about Christmas (unless they're like me!). Closer to the time the relevant letters will sell out, but right now all letters are in stock, and cost only £1.99 each. They are fabulous value for money, and a really good size.So there you have it. My week in crafts! I'm always pleased when I can get so much done, as well as run the house, keep everyone fed, laundry up to date, and the house *reasonably* tidy.
Time I was off. Have a lovely weekend, and I shall leave you with a photo of my little lady enjoying the orange blossom that peeps into her Fairy Tower.
Blogger has been a real pain all week. I've tried leaving comments on various blogs, but it's impossible to sign in to do so most of the time. Now and then I'm able, so I'll keep trying over the weekend.
So don't worry if you can't get into my comments to leave a message, I know that it's down to Blogger. You can always tweet me if you want to though, the link to my twitter page is in the sidebar.
See how I make flat roses [Here]
Flat roses as gift tags [click here]
Original tutorial for making flat roses (called spider web roses)can be seen [here, at the Domestic Diva]