A New Look

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the Lucky Ladybird blog has a new look complete with hand-sewn banner and a pretty pink colour scheme. But it's more than just a spring clean, all the Lucky Ladybird sites including the Twitter and Facebook pages have been restyled to match the new website that went live today.

luckyladybirdcraft.co.uk is still in development but will soon include a shop selling all my new products (and some of my old products too) as well as plenty of info about me and how I work. But don't worry, the blog will stay where it is for the foreseeable future.
If there's anything else you'd like to see included in the new website then let me know. The new couple of months are going to be very busy while I get things up and running, but I hope to be back with more tutorials very soon. Until then stay lucky,

LL xx

New designs, the first sneak peak!

I've kept you all waiting long enough, the time has come for you to see my new range of bags and purses! From now on I'm going to be concentrating on my new range of cake themed bags. Here is the first teaser image.

The range will include unique Battenburg bags as well as Swiss Roll handbags, purses and bag charms in a range of colours and flavours.


If you're a regular reader and/or customer and would like to help me on my way to making the cake bags a reality please take complete my online survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/28MHMMB

It should only take a few minutes, there are only 7 questions, so please fill it out. It also includes a few more images to get your mouths watering. All feedback will be used to price the bags fairly and sell them in the way that's most convenient for you.

Check out the Facebook page for regular updates about the new range or email me at luckyladybirdcraft@gmail.com if you have any comments or suggestions that just wouldn't fit into the boxes of the survey. 

Thank you all so much for your help and responses!

LL xx

The Times They Are A'Changin

It's all change for me at the moment. After looking for jobs since I moved back to the Midlands in September I'm finally decided to make my own job and become full time self-employed. I've been taking plenty of advice from family and friends, have signed up with the enterprise allowance scheme (who should be providing me with a mentor and some training) and if all goes to plan I should be trading under my own name in eight weeks time.

I'm very excited to be starting something new. I've designed a new range of bags and purses and am currently sourcing materials. I'll put up photos as soon as I've made the prototypes and I'll ask for lots of feedback! I'm also working on a new central website with a cute and crafty design. I'm planning on keeping this blospot address for the convenience of all my followers, but the layout of this blog will be getting a makeover soon so it fits in with the website. While all this is going on I've had to suspend my shop on etsy. Sales are always pretty slow at this time of year anyway, so hopefully not too many people will be inconvenienced.

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive and enthusiastic about my decision, I'll bring you more news very soon!

LL xx

More Cassiopeia Craft

For those of you who enjoyed my tutorial on fox-face placemats you might be interested to read my article in the latest issue of Cassiopeia Magazine 'From Junk to Joy' on plastic fusing.

It's a beautiful issue with lots of creative writing, recipes and reviews too, so I recommend reading more than just the craft section!
Happy reading, LL x

Creative Pay-It-Forward

At the beginning of January an interesting meme seemed to be spreading rapidly across Facebook. It went something like this:

"2013 Creative Pay-It-Forward: The first five people to comment on this status will receive from me, sometime in the next calendar year, a gift! Made by me! Said gift may be written, drawn, baked or some combination thereof. There will likely be no warning and it will happen whenever the mood strikes me. The catch? Those five people must make the same offer in their FB status"

I don't normally share memes, but this one seemed like a great opportunity to make some little presents for my friends and to share my crafting with people who weren't customers. I shared it and got four responses, but like a lot of people I then had to think for a while about what I would make. Two of the people who took up the offer were living overseas (one in the US, one in France) so I decided it would have to be something fairly small to cut down on shipping costs. The text I'd posted said it would be something "written, drawn, baked or some combination thereof" but would anyone mind if I sewed something? I decided it wouldn't be cheating, not really, and set to work on some tiny Lucky Ladybird charms.

One of my friends loved my salmon roe coin purse, so I decided to make him a smiley keyring that would remind him of it.

Not everyone loves sushi as much as I do, I'm clear on that, but something everyone does love is a biscuit or a cookie!

Jammie Dodger and Bourbon Biscuits for friends in the UK, Oreo cookie for my friend in America. These guys were a lot of fun to make, if a little fiddly. The Oreo in particular took a long time to embroider!

While the meme was spreading I signed up to be the recipient of a couple of gifts too, so some time in 2013 I should be receiving some interesting handmade items in return. I can't wait!

Did anyone else sign up for Creative Pay-It-Forward? What did you give, what did you receive?
It's still early in the year, so there's still time to share the meme if you like the idea.

Have fun, stay lucky

LL xx

Fox Face Fused-Plastic Placemats

For fans of my famous coiled plastic bag baskets this is another great recycling project to use up all your spare plastic bags. I was reading a post by One Crafty Place about sewing your own animal face placemats and it occurred to me that almost all the plastic bags we collect are orange - the perfect colour for fox fur! I am crazy about foxes at the moment and something told me that fox placemats would make the perfect addition to our kitchen table.

Before you get started I recommend you watch this instructional video from Etsy about plastic bag fusing. It sums up very well how the bags need to be heated smoothly and evenly, and also emphasises the safety aspects of the technique!

You will need:

• (Per placemat) 2 orange bags, 2 white bags and 1 black. Use the kind of thin plastic bags that supermarkets provide for free
• Scissors
• Paper
• Iron and ironing board
• Craft glue
• Sewing machine and white and black thread

Lay each plastic bag out flat and cut off the handles. These can be thrown away. Cut along the bottom edge of the bag as well where the bag is sealed together, removing a small strip. You can now open the bag out into a wide plastic tube. If you're using a patterned bag you should now turn the tube inside-out. If you don't do this then when you start ironing you create a big mess!

Smooth the tube out flat and fold in half. Fold in half again to make a neat rectangle just smaller than the size of an A4 piece of paper.
Heat your iron to a medium-hot setting. Place your folded plastic bag on an ironing board with one piece of paper below it (to protect the board) and one piece of paper above it (to protect the iron). You can use brown paper for this or printer paper, but make sure the paper is bigger than the plastic so nothing gets messy. Open a window to keep your work area well ventilated.

Keeping the plastic safely sandwiched between the layers of paper begin to iron evenly. Iron in smooth even strokes for 15 seconds on one side, flip the whole thing over and repeat. Do this two or three times. You are aiming to fuse the plastic into a smooth sheet. When you peel back the paper you may see bubbles, which indicates that the plastic hasn't fused completely. Sandwich it in paper again and repeat until it is smooth.

You will notice that the plastic shrinks as it heats. To make the base of the placemat you will need to fuse two orange plastic bags separately and then glue them together using craft glue. Leave to dry for a couple of hours and then, using a sheet of paper as a template, trim the edges to make them straight and uniform.

Two fused 'bags'. Glue the long edges together with an overlap of about half an inch

Trim to make approximately A4 in size

Print this pattern out at A4 size:

Fuse two plain white plastic bags and, when they're cool and safe to touch, trim each bag into a curved cheek piece using the pattern above as a template. Arrange the cheek pieces on the base and glue them into place. They should overlap slightly. Allow them to dry fully, at least a couple of hours, before reinforcing with your sewing machine. Set the machine to a zig-zag stitch and, using white thread, sew just inside the edge of each cheek piece as well as down the middle where they
overlap.

Position the cheek pieces and glue into place

Set to zig-zag stitch

Sew the cheek pieces to reinforce

Fuse one black plastic bag as before and cut two eyes and a nose from it using the template above. One black plastic bag should be more than enough to make eyes and noses for a set of four placemats. As with the cheek pieces these should be glued into position and, when dry, sewn either by hand or with a sewing machine using black thread.

Here is my kitchen table complete with fox mats, fox cushion and even a fox handbag, and so the obsession continues!

Plastic bag fusing takes quite a lot of practice, so don't lose patience if your first attempts don't work out as planned. Be careful with the iron, and make sure you ventilate your work space well. Many thanks to One Crafty Place for the inspiration. Good luck and stay crafty!

LL xx

23 Questions

Life been pretty quiet since Christmas, I've just been catching up on some old craft projects, applying for jobs and putting together the next issue of Cassiopeia. There are plenty of tutorials coming including more plastic bag crafts and a guide to making a celebration quilt, but in the mean time here's a little more about me, courtesy of the lovely Make do and Mend

1. Do you have a middle name?
I didn't used to, by which I mean I wasn't given one when I was born, so I always felt a little left out. When I got married I decided to take my maiden name as my middle name. My husband's middle name is a surname, so it just seemed to fit!

2. What is your favourite drink?
Tea, hands down.

3. Who is your all time favourite musician/band?
The Magnetic Fields. If you haven't heard of them check them out here. Funny, dark, lyrically brilliant.

4. What is your job?
I don't have one at the moment (hence the job applications) but I'm hoping to get a job in marketing or copywriting.

5. What is your dream job?
What I do now, only being paid for it! I love editing and writing and I'd love to be a professional writer.

6. What is your favourite song at the moment?
The new gypsy style reworking of 'The Beginning of the Twist' by The Futureheads. I challenge anyone not to dance when this is playing!

7. What would you name your kids or next pets?
There are loads of girls' names I love, flower names like Poppy and Daisy, or cute names like Maisy and Milly. Boys' names I have no idea about!

8. Do you participate in any sports, if so which?
I like swimming, but I'm not competitive at all.

9. Favourite book?
Milan Kundera's 'Immortality', with Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' coming a close second.

10. Favourite colour?
Red

11. Favourite animal?
The red panda. I also love foxes, owls and reindeer.

12. Favourite holiday?
Our honeymoon to the Isles of Scilly. I hope we'll go back some day!

13. Where would you like to go on holiday?
Canada to visit friends or Japan to do touristy things (like the Ghibli museum)

14. What countries have you visited?
Ireland, Spain, Germany, Austria, Beguim, The Netherlands, Swizerland, The Czech Republic, Italy, Greece and China.

15. Do you speak any other languages?
Shamefully no.

16. Do you have siblings?
One brother.

17. What is your favourite shop?
Haberdasheries or comic book shops.

18. Favourite restaurant – what do you order?
Sushi restaurants - inari nigiri (tofu pockets)

19. Did you like school, what was your favourite subject?
I loved school and was the archetypal teacher's pet. English was by far my favourite subject and still is.

20. Favourite blogger?
I love my friends' blogs best, Dreyma, Eminance Graisse I'm thinking of you.

21. Favourite movie?
For relaxation probably 'Funny Face' or 'Harvey'. For brain food 'The Fountain'.

22. Favourite TV show?
Adventure Time!

23. What is most valuable piece of advice you have ever been given?
Be the change you want to see in the world.