a sneaky peak

here's a sneaky peak of a WIP, should be finished tomorrow...

the end of the week already...

I can't believe this week has gone by so quickly. Christmas will be here before we know it, which reminds me, I need to put the last shipping dates for Christmas onto my etsy shop (will put that on the 'to do' list).

I haven't done very much crafting today but I have finally been shopping, and bought lots of stuff, and the best thing was that I didn't really spend that much money!
Purchases included a really nice pair of grey and pink canvas pumps (aka plimsolls, sand shoes, depending on where you come from) for just £7 in the sale, and a really nice cardigan from good old Primark for £8.

With still a few hours left in the day I'm going to make a couple more brooches, and put a few more bits into the etsy shop. This is one I made last night:
Oh and lastly, the pink charity monster was called Josephine.

still feeling pink

daily blogging is quite difficult, but I said I was going to do it every day this week, so apologies if you are tiring of my tales of what I've cooked in the slow cooker this week.

I went to John Lewis today, and as always I was like a kid in a sweet shop, so many nice things, books and stationery, homewares, kids toys etc. I was looking at a blender thinking 'i really want that'. It was a sexy blender (if you can call kitchen equiptment sexy?), but it had an unsexy price tag - perhaps something for the wedding list (whenever that will be).
What I could afford to buy was several sheets of lovely giftwrap - which I will cut up and use in my cards, this one is really lovely:Also this card, which I just love. I love the cut up collage style art - so simple and yet so effective: and some ribbon which John Lewis sell as gift wrapping ribbon: I raided my button tins and felt scraps when i got home and made a couple of brooches.
Also I popped into work today to drop off the pink monster. A 'name that monster' competition (£1 a go) is happening as we speak - 50 names to choose from so my monster will be making £50 for charity. Impressive indeed. I chose the name today and will tell you what it is tomorrow when the competition is over and the monster has been won :o)

pink monsters?

a pink monster might look a bit wrong but this one is for charity so he (or she) really has to be pink. Although I'm not at work this week we are holding a 'pink day' on Friday in aid of breast cancer research
This is a national charity day where everyone wears pink. We have a team challenge whereby each team in the office competes to raise the most amount of money for this charity and this pink monster is my donation for the raffle.

Today I made a really nice dessert in my slow cooker (getting a lot of use as the cooker is still not fixed yet). It was a mixture of apple, plum and cinnamon, with a sponge topping - kind of like a sponge pudding really. It cooked for about 5 hours and mr monda agreed that it was the best thing I'd done today (although he did like the pink monster too). Tomorrow's slow cooking effort will be a sausage casserole :o)

I now have a new carpet on my stairs, that's one more job out of the way and I've also entered my Monsdeer in the holiday softie awards over at softies central

Not a bad day all in all, although the planned shopping trip didn't happen, maybe tomorrow?

the monsters are back

Here is a pic of the monsters I made yesterday they've got different coloured backs this time, so you could say they are two tone trunk monsters. Mr monda thinks that they look a bit like fruit salad chews (in their colour). Now that's something I haven't had for years.

I haven't been as productive today as I had hoped. I started to read a new book last night, and it was so good that I just had to read a bit more today, but then I thought to myself 'you're on holiday, so it's ok to read a book without feeling guilty'.
I did make our slow cooker meal this morning, so we had stew and dumplings for tea (mmm) and just for a bit of festive/seasonal silliness, this is a 'monsdeer' (a reindeer/monster cross breed). I like his hooves the best.
I'm thinking of splurging tomorrow and going to buy myself some winter clothes. It's getting a bit chilly out there, despite the sun trying to fool us all, so jumpers are definitely on the shopping list.

a week off

Brilliant, a whole week off work for a much needed recharge of batteries, although I'm probably not doing very well as it almost 11.30pm and I'm still up!
I promised myself I would blog every day this week - call it a quest, something to help motivate me not to waste the week. I thought it would be a poor show if I didn't blog on my first full day away from work.

I've spent most of the day doing those jobs that you just don't get around to doing - so I've taken a pair of shoes back to Next which were just a bit too small, I've been to the bank and the post office, I've taken 2 quilted throws into the cleaners, been food shopping, sent my bobble hats off to the folks at innocent, and I've made 2 monsters.
It was a bit too dark this evening to take pics of the monsters so I'll take some pics of them tomorrow and then pop them into the etsy shop.

In the meantime, here is a few pics of some of the bobble hats that I'd made (thanks to the goose for modeling) and finally a pic of cheeky little stevie, who is growing bigger by the minute it seems. She's a bit of a menace at the moment and i feel like we are constantly telling her off for climbing on the table, or jumping on mellie (our other baby cat), or running up the back of my legs (thank god for denim). She's still an angel in cat form though :o)
Tomorrow, I'm going to start the day by putting a stew in the slow cooker, which means I can give myself a good amount of uninterrupted time for making more monsters, and maybe a few other bits and pieces too.

Where have I been?

Good question. I have not blogged for over a week (eek). Been super busy this last week (day job) and also feeling a little under the weather with a seasonal cold/sore throat. Next week I am having a well deserved rest - a week off work. It's really going to be a week to catch up - I need to get the oven fixed (I'm really missing it, especially with the colder weather - I feel the need for hot comfort food). I'm also going to get a carpet fitter to fit my new stair carpet - which I probably bought about a year ago, if not longer - it's probably gone out of fashion now!
I might even blog every day - what a luxury and of course read a few blogs too. oh yes, and I'm going to sleep a lot. zzzzzz.

I have been a little bit creative though - I've made a few more innocent bobble hats whilst watching TV in the evening and I've made a wedding card for a colleague - it was quite a big affair this one, and took a fair few hours to create. I hope she likes it.
It's A4 size - I printed the background text and flowers onto handmade paper, and then collaged with photographs, magazine cut outs and machine embroidered the clothing in felt.

I also went to the second week of the origin craft fair in London, which was good, but not as good as the first week, and because I felt a little under the weather I didn't really have much energy for it - which is a real shame.
I'm really struggling at the moment to understand what is happening to all the hours in the day - thank goodness for daylight saving (in a couple of weeks I think). We'll get an hour back - yay!

My latest monster is also in my etsy shop. He's a trunk monster (so called because of his rather trunk like legs) and he's called Sebastian.

origin 1st week

today I went to the origin craft fair at Somerset House in London, and I came out saying to Mr Monda, 'I could do this' and 'this makes me want to do an M.A.!'.
I did my degree in design crafts - I dropped ceramics after the first year and concentrated on textiles (printed, embroidered and multi-media). Whilst I mull over what it might take for me to do an M.A. i'll tell you about a couple of the designers/artists/crafters that caught my eye today.
Firstly this pic is just a selection the cards i picked up today - mainly so I could go to their websites and find out more about these talented folks.Samantha Bryan is a mixed media artist. I can't copy any of her pics from her website (would be naughty) but check out the link here, its definitely worth it!

This is a pin brooch that I bought from erin hensley. In her words she makes 'handmade originals from repurposed materials'. You can see her website here
Occasionally I have to work at weekends, and tomorrow is one of those days. There won't be much in the way of crafting from me this weekend. If I'm lucky, I might end up making innocent bobble hat number 3, but at least I have the second week of origin to look forward to next weekend :o)

monsters and bobble hats

This weekend I did the following:
Bought a pair of shoes even though I was shopping for a pair of boots. They are nice shoes though, and surprisingly for me they have heels. This is the time of year when I can no longer wear flip flops, but every cloud has a silver lining - I can wear jumpers and cosy clothes now. I quite like Autumn as it goes - I like the smell in the air when the leaves have turned brown and have fallen on the ground. I like seeing all the shiny treasures of the conker trees. I like halloween and bonfire night and the smell of fireworks and bonfires in the cold air. If you could describe yourself as a season I would definitely be Autumn.

I also made a new monster - although I think he needs a slight modification. Mr Monda thinks he looks like he's got butt cheeks (!) which was probably not helped by the placing on the name tag - it looked fine before I added the stuffing.
Finally I made my first little hat for the innocent supergran project. I am slightly embarrassed to say that when I eventually got the needles out, my brain also seemed to fall out and I had temporarily forgotten how to knit. I sat there for ages trying to wind wool around needles to no avail. I eventually looked up some knitting instructions, which I knew wouldn't help because I've never been able to follow the written instructions of how to knit. What I really needed was my mum to show me how to do it, but she lives a good 3 hours drive away from me so that really wasn't an option. Eventually I found my brain, and the result was this little hat. Not perfect but not bad either. I'll need to make a few more though, so i'm off to start another one now.
In the meantime, here is something funny I found whilst taking pics of my new monster - a very battered (but much loved by both my cats) cupcake which I posted about a bit further down my blog. It was a worth while investment from paper and string and my moggies love it. I think it looks kind of rustic now :o)

Origin - the London Craft Fair

For years I have visited the chelsea craft fair - run by the crafts council. Chelsea craft fair became Origin last year, and the location has changed but the fair is just as good. If you check out the link you can see a little sneak peak of who is exhibiting this year. I have picked out a couple that I am looking forward to seeing this time (below). The fair runs for 2 weeks and they change exhibitors after the first week. This year it runs from the 2nd-14th October.
I've not been particularly productive over the last week. I've done a few drawings of new monsters I'd like to create and made a stack of cards to sell at work and of course Stevie is keeping me pretty busy - I'm scratched to death, and I fear for me feet if I need to go to the toilet in the night (I swear she waits up to attack them) but she's lovely, and does so much cute stuff, like falling asleep in the box that our new router came in. ahh.

It's all about the cats

I don't have any of my own crafty offerings at the moment, but I was very lucky to be sent this cheeky little kitty from Gila at Strumpfkunst for being her 100th etsy heart I can spend hours trawling around etsy finding lots of things to add to my favourites. I do occasionally buy stuff too.
I wonder if Gila secretly knew about the arrival of my little baby kitten Stevie?
Stevie is so playful and full of energy one minute and completely zonked out the next minute. Yesterday I was doing my best to work from home but stevie just kept climbing on me or on the desk to see me. She's sitting in front of the keyboard now and seems quite mesmerised by me typing. I'm going to try not to post about stevie too much, but please just let me indulge myself for now - she's only been here for a few days and is just constantly doing cute stuff. ahh.
I wish my other baby cat liked Stevie as much as we do - she currently just hisses at her a lot.

Cats with cupcakes, and kittens!

This is a particularly cat focussed post today, but as these are the best things about my weekend I felt I had to share them.
Some of you have already seen my little baby cat (mellie) in some of my older posts. She's a little bit quirky and sometimes she thinks she is a dog. She's chases things that we throw for her and brings them back, and often moves things around - for example she has taken one of my balls of wool from the living room into my bedroom.
I have a big pile of half made cards, piles of felt and fabric, buttons and the like currently on what is supposed to be a dining table. In one of the piles are card toppers, and some of paper and strings cupcakes. One night this week I saw mellie pouncing on what I thought was probably a poor spider, but no, it was a cupcake!
This has now been declared hers, and she's been intermittently running around the place with it in her mouth, attacking it, or just staring it out. The pics aren't fantastic, but she moves so fast it's quite hard to catch her on camera. I love this picture of her legging it off with the cupcake in her mouth :o) I had to take out the brads incase she swallowed them, but I guess I'll reuse them so it wasn't a total loss.

And something so sweet it would melt the heart of an ice queen. Meet Stevie. Stevie is our second baby cat. Stevie arrived today, and is currently having a kip on the sofa.

knitting, yes that's right, I did say knitting!

just a quickie, to tell everyone that Supergran is upon us already.
For the last 3 years, I have knitted little hats to raise money for Age Concern (in association with Innocent) - the idea being that us crafty types knit lots of little wool hats which will fit onto their drinks bottles - and every bottle sold with a hat raises money for people like our grandmas so that they can get help with paying their heating bills or to give them so nice warm food in the winter.
Now I'm no expert knitter but I have put an innocent hatometer on my blog to
a) encourage people to get involved and
b) remind me that I need to get knitting some hats too

Below you can see proof of my knitting skills - very basic stuff, and it's probably been a year in the making. I'm not a slow knitter, I just put it away and forgot about it for a while.
Maybe I'll just pop off a knit a few more rows now...

monster moo

I worked out that last month I worked a staggering 73 hours extra in my day job (thats like an extra 2 working weeks), and it looks like September is going to be very similar, so weekends, although precious non working time are pretty much taken up with food shopping, washing and cleaning up. This weekend however I managed to squeeze in a day trip to legoland, and also to make a monster. My ability to make stuff and indeed to blog is limited as a result, but I'm hoping in October I'll be able to take a few weeks off work to recharge my batteries, pay more attention to my crafting and of course my blog.

now to the 'moo'. a few weeks back I ordered some moo cards and they arrived earlier on this week - I was very excited about this but i'm not posting pics of them, Instead I decided to celebrate with a monster moo - you can see him here sporting a new monda loves... tag. I think however that the tag is just a little too big so maybe I'll experiment with folding the next one to see how that looks.
Monster moo will be in my esty shop tomorrow.

and the winner is...

The Vicious Chicken
A green blockhead monster called Austin
Was secretly fond of cake frosting.
It was his favourite treat,
So sticky and sweet,
But cleaning spills off his felt was exhausting...

This did indeedy make me laugh, so vicious chicken please make yourself known to me by emailing me at monda(at)homecall(dot)co(dot)uk and Austin and the Japanese bag will be on their way to you.
Some more news from the monda camp. I have been waiting for these to arrive:Finally I have some monda loves... tags to sew onto my monster creations. The bigger one is woven so will use this for some of my bigger softies, but the smaller ones are iron on transfer type lettering. I tried a few different versions here, some on grossgrain ribbon, and some onto felt - which I'm pleased to say works really well. I got a little carried away infact and ironed Austins bottom - I think it works better when you try not to iron an already stuffed monster!Tonight is Heroes night. Is anyone watching this? It's about the only thing I am watching on TV at the moment but i just love it. 'save the cheerleader, save the world' Fantastic!