Pinterest Project - Strawberry Pincushions

I pinned the strawberry pincushion quite some time ago having seen the darling ones made over at nanacompany (pictured below). If you haven't visited the blog then you must! It is picture heavy though and if you are using a horrid chugging piece of crap like I do then you will simply have to be very patient!

Worth it though, you will be so jealous at  Amy's beautiful embroidery and hopefully a bit inspired too :)

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So anyway, at some point in time after pinning those beauts I saw this photo tutorial for the strawberries and it looked easy so I made some. Not as good as Amy's, or those in the tutorial pictures, but they are first attempts so I will make better ones next time.

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The best bit is that these use up so little fabric you can make a whole army of them!

I embellished with white pearlescent flower sequins and gold beads found in my stash, and I only used scraps of fabric for the strawbs so didn't involve any monies jumping outta my purse!

I have pinned a tutorial from purlbee for some strawberry cushions, basically the same as these but huge! When I get around to buying the fabric I will post them up with a size comparison!

Pinterest Project - Socktopus

I saw these cuties on Pinterest and just had to! I mean, how could you not when they are so simple?

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All you do is hunt out those old/odd socks, long ones work better, snip the foot part of the sock off (unless you are using tube socks or even old tights), turn it inside out and sew a running stitch along the top and pull closed (secure it with a few stitches through the middle). Stuff with scrap fabric, toy stuffing or even carrier bags. Sew closed and snip the rest of the sock into 8 strips for the legs! Add facial features and any other embellishments and you are good to go!
Took about 20 minutes each (I was not hurrying, you could probably do them quicker) and now I want to cut up all of my socks!
You could take it further with the embellishments and use a plain sock to decorate.

Not bad hey?!

Chocolate Cupcakes

Everyone needs a chocolate cupcake hit every once in a while, especially when the chocolate cupcake is from the ultimate chocolate cake recipe! I have made many recipes for chocolate cake but this one wins for me hands down EVERY FRICKIN' TIME! Sourced from the Good Housekeeping Simple and Stunning Cakes book by Greg and Max. For some unknown reason this is the only recipe I have made from this book, maybe I subconsciously thought it was the magnificent octopus (Magnus opus for those who don't get the Blackadder reference!) of the book and the rest would pale in comparison, who knows?

They were decorated with chocolate fudge icing, marshmallows dipped in the coloured sugar I previously posted about and a few store bought sugar butterflies.

I prefer to use chocolate ganache to frost my chocolate cupcakes with but as I stupidly delayed making these the bloody cream went out of date and it was too late to go get some more.

Anyway, these tasted awesome and maybe one day I will share my recipe.... when I have a better one to remain the supreme chocolate cake maker of the universe mwahahaha!