More soap!

Here's some more soap, again from the wonderful Making Stuff book (see previous post for linkage). This was the first batch of soap Andrew and I ever made, I had great fun clarting on with paper and ribbon packaging it up afterwards.

Soap box...literally

So I'm back home in St Albans for the weekend and I found all these craft photos on my folks home PC. Delighted! Loads of projects I made years ago and had forgotten about, now all safely uploaded to my photobucket ready and waiting for me to write about them.

First up, the Frances Birthday Soap Box.

I bought the tin for 50p from a charity shop and filled it with shredded tissue paper to make it look like a proper box you would buy. The little fabric sachets are filled with a mixture of grated soap, herbal tea and spices such as ginger and cinnamon. The idea is you pop them in your sock drawer to make your undies smell nice!

The soap was also handmade, using the recipe from the wonderful Making Stuff: An Alternative Craft Book by Ziggy Hanaor. It was half honey and half green tea scented.

Frances was delighted with it and I almost didn't want to give it away.





The contents of the sachets:

Soap, Trons and a work in progress

Crafting has been plodding along recently, exams and studying have got in the way sadly. Still, I got my oral and spot exam out of the way yesterday (oral = good, spot = bad) and have my last written paper tomorrow so hopefully things will pick up again over christmas.

In the meantime though, here's some handmade lavendar soap Andrew and I made a while back. It came out really nicely and soaps up with lots of creamy rich bubbles. It goes a bit gooey if you leave it in water though, but then what soap doesn't? The flatmates are suitably impressed, more than for the last piece of soap which was my failed chocolate and oatmeal attempt from the summer. I don't know what happened but it flakes into bits when you use it and looks like someone threw up in the sink.

How do you like the teacup as well? I bought a box of blue and white china from a car boot sale for 50p over the summer and I'm in love with it all. I'm currently using 3 teacups as soap dishes (2 at Andrew's, 1 at mine) and 2 teacups as plant pots (holding my mint plants). I plan to make some teacup pin cushions out of them at some point as well but I guess I should really drink out of them in the meantime!



Pictures to follow of the other teacups...

The work in progress, another t-shirt bath mat. I'll post photos of the first (rather wonky) bath mat once I've finished this one, it's coming out much more square which is nice. Although the photo is really dark, apologies for that.



Last but not least, the Trons in their respective carry cases. At £10 each from Pets at Home these things aren't cheap, but they are sturdy and make me feel safe carrying the tiny creatures around. They sit in them whilst they're being cleaned out and having their bedding washed, the pink frisbee thing is Viola's heat pad (which doesn't fit prooperly in the carry case sadly).

Drawer scenters - not the old lady kind, promise!

I made these a while back on a whim, they're such a good way to use up little scraps of pretty fabric that are too nice to just throw away. They're also a good way to use up bath bombs, I'm given quite a lot of these as presents because I'm unashamedly in love with Lush ♥ but I can't really use them as they irritate my skin. They smell so lovely though, I can't bear to give them away (how selfish is that!) so I crumbled them up and put them inside these little pouches to make my clothes smell nice. They work really well, my socks smell like cinnamon now! They're also pretty good for soap boxes as presents, I've given them away to a few folk now and they're always well received.











Yes, I know it's a lot of unnecessary photos but they're so pretty, I can't help myself!

In other non-craft related news, the Taylor-Dyce household gained a new addition today, another African pygmy hedgehog called Viola. She is adorable, though rather hyperactive but we're hoping she'll calm down once she's settled in. She was introduced to Hobbes and he instantly took to her, making these really sweet little squeaking sounds. She was less impressed however, especially since he kept trying to sniff her bottom and push his nose underneath her. I swear, you bring them up to the best of your ability...*rolls eyes*...