LaurenPearl fabric...Step 1

So I finally got around to dying my fabric yay!  I bought two different colours, deciding to use the china blue (I also bought pink!) For some reason the dye I bought was to be used for dying in the sink and not the washing machine. I've never dyed fabric like this before but what hell, why not give it a go!

So while nobody was in the kitchen I got right to dying my white cotton blue. First things first dissolving the blue dye in some warm water. I must admit at this stage the dye was looking very blue and I did wonder how it would come out on the fabric. Once this was dissolved it was time to fill up the sink and dissolve the fabric salt...I did wonder if this was normal salt but didn't want to try it and find out, just incase I ended up poisoned or something.

Once in the sink the instructions said to keep stirring the fabric for 15 minutes, to which I did while reading my kindle (if you haven't read the I Heart series by Lindsey Kelk I urge you to do so!) Finally after 15 minutes of solid stirring, it was time to leave the fabric for 45 minutes stirring occasionally. This is when my disaster hit, I left the fabric for about 10 minutes upon returning to my horror the plug has come out and all my lovely dye mix had gone.

Nevermind, like the trooper I am I carried on by washing and drying the fabric hoping that the dye had taken. Below is the finished result, the picture is pretty rubbish and the fabric still looks white. I promise you it has come up a lovely pale blue that I will be able to print over.

I can't promise I will get printing this week but as tis the season to be jolly and I have lots of Christmas parties to go to, but you never know it might be here by the weekend! Lots of love,

Personalised Gifts...

I'm still working on my fabric situation and with the move to London happening very soon, my cash flow is mostly being put in to a nice savings account that sees I don't become homeless! So while I await more funds to buy fabric and also finish the fabric I have, I thought I would share with you something I recently found that I love.

This funky personalised phone cover is from notonthehighstreet.com which is a really cool online shop that have lots of different sellers selling cool and quirky products. I suppose it's a bit more of an upmarket Etsy. The company that make this is Pickle Pie gifts, and they also have lots of other really amazing personalised gifts. This phone cover caught my eye as I'm really into personalised belongings at the moment. Whether it be chains that have your name printed (like Carrie's), cushions with a photo of your choice (I do have a Pearl cushion!). What I really like about this personalised product is you can enter little snippets about yourself or the person your buying the gift for. I will definitely be putting this or the personalised print on my Christmas list, before I do so I did get thinking about what 16 things I love and what I would include on this? At first I struggled as for some reason when someone puts me on the spot about my favourite things my mind seems to go blank and I can't remember a thing! As I am moving to London, I will be looking for a new job and I must admit I did struggle thinking about what my duties are in my job at the moment...not because I don't do anything, quite the opposite I'm always really busy I just seem to be so indecisive I can't quite remember what doing? So anyway I have decided on my 16 loves, I have probably missed out lots of important ones but nevermind this is the list as of today!! **Lauren Loves**
Her scruffy border terrier Pearl New York City Candy Skulls Music with guitars Vintage dresses Colourful filters on photographs Mulberry Handbags Glitter A surreal sense of humour Pastel coloured hair and quirky spectacles The Wizard of OZ Brightly Coloured fabric patterns Dressing like an old lady Haribo Sweets and Earl Grey Tea Doilies and lace  ** if i'm allowed a bonus entry it's got to be Grumpy cat surely??? So now you know a bit more about me, and also if you fancied getting me a personalised gift from notonthehighstreet I would much appreciate it!! Lots of love,

EEEEK!!!

Hi all, I know I said stay tuned I have something cool to show you. Well it went a bit wrong, I was trying to dye my fabric a nice baby pink. I thought I would give a go dying fabric with food colouring. I know it sounds a bit stupid but I could get to the shop to buy actual fabric dye and thought why not lets give it a go I have some pink food colouring.
Well as you may have gathered it didn't really work and still looks white, if you try and look hard enough a tinge of pink is there but not what I want.
As I said last time, I don't really like the cotton anyway as it doesn't seem like scarf fabric, I might need to do a bit of research. 
Anyhow, I would leave you with this cute picture below. As you can tell I have been researching tea cups!

Hopefully next time I will have my awesome scarf to show you.
Lots of love,

LaurenPearl Stamp prints

My fabric paints finally arrived, so no angry email needed fired off to the company it was just me being desperately impatient (which isn't unusual). Hopefully you have seen from my previous post my beautiful candy skull stamp and what my plans were for it. So what better way to celebrate halloween then to make a skull printed scarf?

So as mentioned I picked pink, violet and white (Jacquard) paints as well as some fabric glitter (Stewart Gill) to make the fabric all sparkly and glam. I then added the white to the pink (it did exactly as what normal paint does) and turned the pink  a lovely shade of pastel pink.  This was also the same with the violet which turned a lovely lilac colour and matched beautifully together!

As you can see the stamp worked pretty well, I must admit there was a few times I had gone back to my stamp and carved parts deeper, just to make sure the print would come out right.  After my practise line that I did above, I cut up some of my fabric and attempted to mix both the pink and lilac stamps. I even added some glitter, which was harder to add than I though. If you've ever used glitter you'll know you either get nothing or have far to much of it. I tried lots of different ways to get the glitter to stand out from the paint not and didn't very much luck! When I try my next attempt I will definitely have to research how is the best way to add glitter to the paint so it still shows up.

For my first couple of attempts I'm pretty pleased with the results, each print looks a tiny bit different which I quite like and I think adds to the effect especially as the print is of a skull and I wanted it to look a bit grungy. I was really impressed with the Jacquard fabric paint, it was just as the reviews said. I found it easy to print with, there was no excess running onto the fabric and causing bleeding. It also dried very quickly which is always good when you have taken over your living room floor!  I'd like to now move on to some better material and get some trim for the edge of the fabric, perhaps pom poms as I like that effect. I also think I need to get some more speedy carve blocks as they were so good to carve with and now I have seen prints really easily.

Until next time my pretties!
Lots of love,

Magenta dip dye?...why not!

Hi! not a textile related post, but I thought I would share my new hair with you. I am a bleach and dye addict, I absolutely love the pastel fashion especially baby pink and lilac. At some point I must dig out all my hair pictures and make a photo diary of them all, as this year alone I must be in double figures.

Yesterday I ventured to the hairdressers expecting just to get my roots redone and leave the shade a ash/grey blonde as with my big move to London it's time for sensible hair for job interviews.

As usual while sitting in that chair I got lured to the different shades and opted for a nice bright magenta, not even in my usual pastel...and how about a dip dye? With my hair I'm mostly up for anything and the results were amazing and I completely love my new dip dyed tresses!

P.S Still waiting for my fabric inks and getting very impatient!

Lots of love,

An introduction to my scarf collection

So my little stamp is still waiting for some textile ink, being on an island makes things take a little longer! I did my textile ink order and got the Jacquard brand, colours I went with were violet, pink and white. Apparently by using the white I will be able to get some awesome pastel colours. I also came across this really cool stuff called 'Polyglitter from Stewart Gill' this magical glitteriness can be mixed with all types of medium including fabric paint. The plan is to have some amazing pastel glittery candy skulls all on a beautiful scarf. So fingers crossed my purchases get here for the weekend (As I'm trying to save and this would be a cost effective way to spend the weekend!).
In the meantime I thought I would post some pictures of my new silk scarves I have acquired. I am one of those people that loves to collect random things, one of them being vintage silk scarves...actually scratch that I generally love scarves! I am lucky enough that I have some one that helps me source a lot of my vintage collection, but I must admit if I see a scarf that I love on the high street I'm more than likely to buy it. I will save my beautiful scarf collection and also different ways to wear a scarf (because there a many) to another post.

There is a range of different styles that I'm adding to my collection, the middle one above it's a shame the picture doesn't really do the design justice. It's power blue with raised velvet overlay in a damask style print, it really is a beautiful scarf and nice quality silk has been used.

I especially like both the prints on these designs above as one is bright and vivid, while the other is quirky and I can't resist a bit of houndstooth.

Just to end the post I thought I would share with you my newest outfit! The minute I saw this dungaree playsuit I knew I had to have it, the pattern is as vivid as the pictures look and it fits amazingly. The top I have teamed it with is a beautiful shade of baby blue with added bejewelled detailing (which helps if you don't know which necklace to wear!)

Dungaree playsuit is from Joy coming in at £42 and the top is from Topshop at £38.

Lots of love,

Speedball - Speedy carve stamp making Kit

Hi all, hasn't this felt like the longest week ever! I'm not sure why but it has seemed to drag! Anyway as I told you before I made a few Amazon purchases, the 'Making an Impression' book (which I will tell you about at some point) and the Speedball Speedy-Carve stamp making starter kit. From the moment I opened the speedball kit to find the speedball speedy-carve block (which is like a giant pink eraser) I knew I wanted to get started on getting my stamp made. Apart from it being the most delicious colour of pink it also felt smooth and easier enough to carve into. I decided that as most of my designs involve skulls someway I was going to design a candy skull stamp...yes I can hear you say that's ambitious for your first attempt. I know you're right but why not be a bit ambitious?  I started by drawing the skull outline on the tracing paper that was provided, the trick was to press the tracing paper to the speedy-carve block and it should transfer. I must mention I did use a 2B pencil as I knew this would more than likely transfer.

The transfer worked successfully, so then it was time to start carving. The pack came with a blade number 2 and 4 which were both good sizes for carving the block. This block was definitely easier to carve than the usual lino, it was also softer which feels better on the wrist when holding the cutter.

Although I didn't necessarily need to carve away the outside, I felt it was good practise and would help me get into the rhythm. This way helped and allowed me time to practise on how deep to cut and also how freely I could move the cutter to get my desired shape. 

Next step was to draw inside the skull to press onto the block, as my drawing was quite detailed it didn't transfer as easily as I wanted. Using the basic outline it had transferred I repeated my drawing making sure to use my 2B pencil. Once this was done it was time to get cutting, I was happy with my design so I really didn't want to ruin the block now by not being able to achieve the above detailing.

All and all I am pretty happy with the way my stamp has come out, for a first time go I think it looks quite good. Although the real proof of this will be when I actually print to see what actually comes out on the fabric. I have now cut out the skull and used the excess rubber as holder glued to the back on the stamp.  My next step which will obviously be to get some textile ink and actually get printing. I've heard that Jacquard textile inks are the ones to get so tomorrow I plan on buying pink, violet and white to make them pastel and possibly something glittery because that's the type of girl I am! I would definitely get more of the Speedy-Carve blocks and would recommend it to any first time stamp maker. Lots of love,

Operation Bakewell - Part 4 (the Grande Finale)

I know I promised this on Friday and it didn't quite happen, I had a busy day at work and I know that's no excuse! Anyway I hope I have left you all in enough suspense for the unveiling of all my hard work and also everyone else's.

If you've seen my previous posts you will notice which ideas I used, as you can see above there was lots of bunting, kitsch table cloths, glass jars full of treats and lots of china cake tiers. Below are some of  the amazing entries on the day!

Above we had some super creative entries that also tasted amazing. I hope you agree that my vintage tea room design came out successfully! 

The Cake below was a wonderful showstopper cake made by the lovely RebeccahMay who was a guest judge, you can buy her delicious and awesome creations at http://www.rebeccahmay.co.uk.

This task was amazing fun, I feel so privileged to have been part of an event which seen approx 4000 people in attendance.  Overall we raised just over £1,500 which is going to a charity that are doing amazing things.

 I'm sure you've probably guessed that my next entry will be all about my Amazon purchases and how my stamp making is coming along. 

Lots of love,