Introducing Crafty Colour Palettes with @hellohoorayblog

Crafty Colour Palettes is the inspiration for your next craft project. On my blog and on Instagram, I’ll be curating colourful photos and creating colour palettes with embroidery thread for you to use for crafting! Every colour palette will come complete with a blog post and full details of the threads that you need. I’ve chosen to use embroidery thread for my project because there is such a vast array of colours, which gives lots of opportunity to create so many palettes. Not a stitcher? Don’t worry, I’m on the look out for other ways of suggesting colourful projects! I’m also looking for contributors too, so keep reading on if you want to know more…

Inspiration from everyday things

We are surrounded by colour, and inspiration can come from anywhere. The initial idea for this project came from a tray that I bought in IKEA! You’ll see that in my first Crafty Colour Palettes post. I think it’s lovely to be able to create something which your own curated selection of colours. I love to play around with colour. Something as simple as a bunch of daffodils in your favourite jug could be the inspiration for your next project!

How to find Crafty Colour Palettes

The full details for each colour palette will be on my blog, and I’ve created a separate page for you to be able to find them all in one place – just click here. If you’d like to follow on Instagram, search for @craftycolourpalettes. Or search for the #craftycolourpalettes hashtag. Alternatively, you can find a board on my Pinterest. There are lots of ways to get your colour fix!

Interested in getting involved?

I would LOVE to have some guest curators of Crafty Colour Palettes! I think this would give greater variation for your craft projects. If you are interested in being a guest curator, you can email me clare@hellohooray.com or get in touch via my contact page. Or get in touch via Instagram @craftycolourpalettes or @hellohoorayblog Don’t worry if you don’t have oodles of embroidery thread like me – I can create palettes with your photos very easily. Let me know your ideas!

I really hope that you like my new project! Look out for the first Crafty Colour Palette tomorrow…

The post Introducing Crafty Colour Palettes appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

The design comes from the Flow magazine colouring book, which has the most gorgeous designs by Helen Dardik and Carolyn Gavin. Although I’m pretty good at stitching, I’m rubbish at designing so this was perfect!

I traced the design to make my own pattern on A4 paper to use as a template, as this was easier than trying to trace it onto my fabric out of the book. I used an air erasable pen to transfer it onto my fabric, which was some premium white Kona cotton that I love using for embroidery projects. The colours I used were the following:

Anchor 206, 208 and 210 (greens)

Anchor 28 (pink for the large flowers)

Anchor 26 (pale pink), 293 (yellow), 187 (teal), 146 (cornflower) and 119 (purple) for the shapes

DMC 3845 for the letters

I embroidered the design and then put the banner together in the same way that I did in for my painted banner (click here for the written tutorial or here for the video). I attached the pom poms at the end so they are visible at the back, but no-one is going to see that anyway! The pom pom trim is jumbo size and is from Frumble and I really love it! Each pom pom is 20mm in diameter, so it’s a great size for this banner. I’m obviously trying to think of other things to make with it haha!

I’ve already got my eye on a few other designs from the colouring book that I want to stitch (I will probably colour them in at some point too!). I love this bird and the tea pots too…

I’m now stitching something else for another friend – I am seriously into my embroidery at the moment! When it’s done I’ll share that with you too. What are you making?

The post Embroidered banner appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

Even the outside is lovely – not sure how sewing things ended up in a box for developing formula, but it’s a good combo and it’s all part of the history!

When I took off the lid, this is what I found: a selection of what turned out to be beautiful vintage iron-on transfers! I’ve got no idea how old they are, but some have been used and others haven’t.

The ‘A’ in these next couple could be a connection to our family name (which is Albans) – I wonder what these letters were embroidered on to…

These napkin designs are just wonderful – they even have a vintage name to match!

Hiding underneath the transfers was a glorious selection of embroidery floss. Look at the lovely colours!

And I’m saving the best until last here…there’s a transfer for a beautiful table runner! I’m definitely going to have this as a long-term project, as it would be so lovely to stitch. I’m not sure whether the pattern will transfer easily without spoiling the original, so I may trace it. I’d actually quite like to frame the transfer, as it’s so lovely!

I even have the original instructions, so hopefully I’ll be able to get the right colours too.

Not sure when I’ll be starting, but stay tuned for progress pictures when I do! I am so lucky to have been given these beautiful treasures, and I really want to do the old pattern justice so I’ll be taking my time… I hope you enjoyed seeing the photos! Hope you have a great weekend – what are you up to?

The post Vintage sewing treasures appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

Although I usually do my scrapbooking month by month, it was really nice to cover a longer period of time. I was a bit worried that I would forget lots of things, but having all my photos in iPhoto has helped with that – it even tells me what date I did things! So I had a browse and chose a few events each month to document. Weren’t the colours beautiful in Autumn?

One thing I have done differently this time is that I have printed out my own photos. Yay! I got a new printer when I got my new computermabob and I love it – can’t imagine how we didn’t have one for so long now! I did have a scout about for a 3×4″ blank template on the internet, as this would have been super helpful for sizing, but I couldn’t find one (let me know if you know where I can find one!). So instead I just printed out a trial photo to test the size. 6.4 x 6.4cm is the perfect size to fit these cards – I just put all my photos into a word document and then printed them out on some everyday photo paper, leaving a bit of room to cut out. I managed to fit 8 photos this size onto an A4 page.

I think that home printing will be so much easier, although I will get some printed from Inkifi every now and again! I experimented with a larger size photo for the 6 x 4″ cards, and 8 x 8cm works well for these.

It was fun to put together my December pages, and I used the Merry and Bright kit for the month, along with some cards that I made from the primaries cardstock pack. The colour combinations of this pack work so well together, and it makes for a set of fun and bright pages!

So that marks the end of 2014 in my Project Life album! I decided that I would use the final page cards from the Strawberry and Blush kits to mark the end of the year in my album – the quotes seemed to work well here. I am going to make a 2015 title page, but I’ll share that with you another day (once I’ve actually finished it!).

The post Catching up with 2014 appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

I decided that I’d make a quilted cover, so chose some white fabric for the inside lining – it didn’t really need to be jazzy because no-one will see the inside! For the binding I picked out the pale aqua colour to co-ordinate, and got myself a bias binding-making tool too.

The first thing that I did was measure my machine with its plastic cover on – I measured from the middle of the front to the back, and then the width of the front. I also measured the width and height of the side. When I had the measurements I drew out some templates on craft paper, and to get the shape of the side pieces just right I drew around the side of the cover.

Once the templates were cut out, I then cut out all the pieces of fabric and wadding. I layered up the side pieces first and then pinned them together.

I tried out my quilting guide attachment for the first time today, and it’s brilliant for sewing evenly. I haven’t used it before because I’ve only ever used thicker polyester wadding, and not this thinner cotton wadding. I love the thinner stuff – it’s much easier to sew with! I decided to stitch between every other row after experimenting on some scrap pieces.

Once I had quilted the side pieces, I did the same with the large rectangular piece. This larger piece needed more pins to keep it all together, but I quilted it in the same way.

Once all three pieces were quilted, I pinned them (wrong sides together) before stitching. To make the cover fit a little better, I trimmed the excess afterwards.

The final thing to do was to make and attach the bias binding. The tool was really easy to use and it didn’t take as long as I thought! I also got a binding attachment for my machine, but I could not get the hang of it at all when I practised using it…so to save making a complete mess of my cover, I just pressed the binding in half and pinned and stitched it on.

Ta-dah!

I’m so glad that I chose this fabric – it certainly brightened up a very gloomy day today! Hopefully I’ll be able to sew dust free from now on…

The post Sewing machine cover appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

You can read all about how I put together the title pages and getting started here, but I wanted to show you how I’m using the 12 x 12 paper and pockets for monthly dividers. I stuck one of the small journaling cards on each page and wrote the month on it – I like that I can find my way around the months easily this way! There are cards stuck on the other side too, which I’m using to write down all the things I’m looking forward to about the month ahead.

The first pages that I created were all about our first wedding anniversary (you can read about that here!). One of my favourite things about Project Life is that I’m printing out photos again – with everything in digital format, it’s so lovely to be able to flick through the pages to look at them. Another thing that I love is that this process is like writing a journal and compiling a photo album in one. I used to write a diary when I was much younger, but that sort of fell by the wayside as life got busier. Doing it this way means that I can write shorter snippets about things we’ve done, and it doesn’t feel like a chore!

As I spent a lot of time during August working on my new website, I decided to make some pages about it – I used some 2 x 2 inch photos that I got printed through Inkifi. I really love these little photos, and I’ll be reviewing them soon, so look out for that…

As you may have guessed, I like my pages colourful! These pages are all about my trip to the Northern Quilt Show with Mum:

And with the next divider, I’m ready for September!

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Project Life: August 2014 appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.