Pictures of Pillows

I'm a really big fan of pillows, one of the mottos my mother and I live by is that "you can never have too many pillows" as this is proven in both of our living rooms..... they are everywhere. I love that they can be very personal and give a homely touch to any room as there is a little story behind each one of my cushions. I tend to spend more time in bed than your average person so I have made it a really comfy place which reminds me of my home and my family.

The one above is my favourite of my cushions and is really personal to me (also shown with my sock monkey and his little crochet scarf). I made it when I was very unwell and going through some tough stuff, the cushion helped me to deal with things as it was a fun distraction. I used to make lots of sock monkeys, when making a sock monkey, it takes a whole pair of socks apart from a few inch square of fabric, over time these squares were just thrown into the bottom of my sewing bag, when deciding that I wanted to try patchwork, they seemed like the perfect thing to use. I then added ribbons, buttons and felt shapes, to give it a unique and homemade feel. My dear mum then helped me to make the cushion cover for it to go on and we added a gorgeous ribbon on the back which we found in a charity shop. I love this cushion as I have fond memories of putting it all together and I love the look and feel of it too.

This little owl cushion is a new creation of my mum's she is very talented and came up with the idea of them. I love them, so I was soo happy when I got to be the proud owner of one :) the patterns and colours suit my room really well.







This cushion, I made for my boyfriend for his birthday last week. He absolutely adores badgers and I realised he had no cushions in his room, so I made this cute one for his bed. Here is a quick tutorial of how I created it.

1: Firstly I found an outline of a badger online and printed it out. 2: I then cut it out of black felt by pinning the paper template into place and repeated this for each section of the badger in the correct colours, 3: I then laid out each piece in place, 4: then stitched around each piece to fix them together, I also attached a pearl bead as an eye, 5: I created a cushion cover out of a tea towel, in a simple 3 piece way with poppers for closing (I will do another tutorial for this as I forgot to take photos of this stage) 6: I then cut out leaf shapes from felt and fixed them to the cushion by sewing along them to look like veins in a leaf.

To wrap his gift I used brown paper and garden string, I love the old fashioned and traditional look of it. I also wrapped a bundle of his favourite sweets and chocolate with the inside of an envelope and string to match.

Dont forget to enter my Handmade Jewellery Giveaway!!!

Southsea Festival

So i've wanted to try Live Music Photography for a while but been waiting for the opportunity to arise. On saturday the perfect opportunity came along, my housemate (who I am very grateful to) managed to get me my first ever photo press pass. It was for Southsea Fest, which is a little festival held down the road near to our flat and has 100 local bands and musicians playing in all the cafes, pubs, bars and gig venues. It was a great first experience as I had to adapt to lots of different types of venues and acts. We went from a tiny cafe, to the theatre to a large gig venue. It was an absolutely incredible day and night, to top off the night I caught the drummers drum stick from the headline band....... I usually cant catch anything so I was over the moon. It was an exhausting day as we were there for 13 hours, but I kept going and still managed to really enjoy it after some rests. We managed to stay out till 2, which I was not expecting, however was a little sore the next day. I can not wait to do more Live music photography now, just hoping I get some of the passes i've applied for.

My highlight of the night was definitely Clock Opera who closed the festival (see above). I got the chance to photograph them while my housemate was interviewing them before their set (see below) they were such nice guys. Their set was amazing and each band member at one point would look right down my camera lens, it was an incredible feeling to have some-one on stage look into your camera while they are preforming to a whole room of people there to see them. I had such a buzz after Clock Opera and think I've found a new addiction...... Live Music Photography.

Others artists who were awesome were Luke Ferre, Tom Williams and the boats and The boy I used to be - All can be seen below. If you would like to see more of my photos from Southsea Fest then they are on my Facebook page i'd love to hear any feedback or comments.

Week 5 in photos

This week I really started to knuckle down and focus on the business side of my photography again. I started with a nice bit of room re-arranging, I created a proper office space in my room with all of my photography stuff in one place thats easy to get to, this really motivated me and I started a marketing plan and did lots more research. At the weekend a close friend of mine came to stay, all the way from the dark depths of somerset, we had an amazing time, the table tennis was brought out again and was really lovely to catch-up. On saturday I had my first photo press pass experience. My housemate had managed to get me a pass to Southsea Fest, which is just down the road from our flat. It was incredible and had an awesome timeI I will write up another post soon to tell you all about it and to show you my first live music photos.

 1: Me and my friend who visited at a BBQ, 2: Gizmo - the newest and fluffiest addition to our little group, 3: Playing pool at the pub (I actually got a winning shot which shocked everyone, including myself) 4: hot chocolate on a cold evening, 5: doing work in my new office space with a little glass of wine, 6: the most delicious fajita's i've ever eaten, 7: new angel lights, 8: my new flower hair slide, 8: the first book i've actually finished in a while, strongly recommend it.

Photo shoot with my pet rats

So I was a little bit bored the other day but actually had some energy so decided to take some nice photos of our pet rats based on a pop-art style photo I found that I woman did with her cats. I know a lot of people dont like rats but I adore them, they are such good fun and I wanted a nice photo to remember them by when they are no longer with us, (the older 2 are way past middle aged for rats). It was very tricky to get them to stay in the right place for where I had the photo framed. The camera was on a tripod and I used a wired remote because I needed both my hands to stop the rats running all over the place. This was the outcome.....

1: Wiki - she's the smallest and absolutely mad, 2: Petal - she's very blind and often poorly so she is very nervous and gets scared a lot (hence her expression in the photo) 3: Lemmi - is the one who will eat everything and anything, 4: Blossom - she's the best rat in the world, so friendly and fun, she loves exploring and is soo curious of everything, she's good company on my not so well days when everyone else is out.

Here are some of the pictures which didn't go quite to plan, they wanted to explore and play but I wanted them to pose for the camera. Distracting them with treats seemed to work, thats why so many of them are eating in the photos.

Hope you enjoyed my random little post about the rats and an example of what I get up to on my bored days when im not doing crafts. I'm aware of how mad this all sounds but the rats really are such great pets, always a great form of entertainment and awesome company when you are unwell and bored.

Week 3 in photos

Well its been a really quiet week. It wasnt a great surprise that Reading Festival left me feeling a little run down to say the least. My energy levels were non-existant and my knees are still very painful. Therefore the majority of my week was spent in bed or on the sofa. It did mean however that I got to watch a lot of films I had been dying to see recently and I decided to re-watch every episode of Dexter (really cant get enough of that show). The weekend was a lot nicer as the boyfriend treated me to pizza and a movie which was lovely then we met with some new friends at the pub, this was finished off by a game of drinking table tennis (which is a dangerous game and not for the light hearted, you have been warned). Overall a quiet and calm week which lead to a lovely weekend. Energy and general health is slightly getting better so maybe this week I can do a few more things.

1: new make-up bag, 2: blossom (one of our rats) doing a ninja mission to the top of the door, 3: my broken photography mug :( very sad about this, 4: chocolate pancakes with bacon and maple syrup...... yummy, 5: Pizza!!!!!, 6: drinking table tennis with wine........

Week 2 in photos

Here is week 2 of my week in photos. I have left Reading festival out of it as that is all in the post before, however here is my week in the lead up to reading :)

1: BBQ time, 2: new blue trousers, couldn't resist the Asda half price sale, 3: me, 4: gorgeous necklace from a charity shop for 70p.... bargain, 5: my housemates trying to get glass out of my foot (took 30 minutes and was bloody painful) 6: housemate doing a rescue mission for a cigarette that fell (thats our neighbours roof she's on) 7: festival nails..... got destroyed on the first night of Reading but at least they looked nice when I arrived, 8: Pick-n-mix :)

Week 1 in photos

I've decided to do round-ups of each week with the use of photos. Hopefully this will show you what i've been up to and show that even in the weeks when my health is at its worse that there are still lovely and happy things which happen. I strongly believe its the little things in life which can make you very happy and content and you need to appreciate them. Whether its a cup of tea brought to you in the morning or a new food to try, it all puts a smile on my face :). Anyway, enough of the lovey dovey stuff...... here is week 1 of my week in photos :) its been a bit of a quiet week but some lovely stuff has happened and looking back through my photos from the week I realised how well i've eaten this week thanks to my amazing housemate who fills our bellies with delicious goodies :) 

1: My little rodent buddies, 2: baked camembert with cranberry jam, baguette and port.... amazing, 3: eaton mess with an assortment of berries, 4: breakfast... tea and berries, 5: me in my new shorts, 6: a cute cactus bought for the boyf, 7: my first ever taste of watermelon, verdict was..... delicious, 8: crochet tablecloth I made for my bedside table :)