I had a good fair at the weekend, hurrah! It's been a tough slog this year, the credit crunch has most definitely hit the craft fairs and this was the best fair I've done this year with regards to takings. This fair was held at a large shopping centre, Castlepoint on the outskirts of Bournemouth. Because we were outside I got to use my gazebo and  hang a washing line up to display my kids aprons, bags and bunting. 

My time recently has been spent making lovely things to sell, or at least try to sell. I made these cute little iPod nano slipcovers in the most beautiful Amy Butler fabric. Such a joy to work with these gorgeous fabrics, the colours make me happy.

Made some tissues holders too, if you have a cold you may as well cheer yourself up with a pretty tissue holder!

Then I made some larger slipcovers for mobiles / gadgets, this time I added a little ribbon tab detail, very cute. The first two covers are the nano size, replacing stock sold at a fair I had at the beginning of June and all the others are the larger size.

Last week I drilled, painted and strung up a load of wooden hearts, small and large. The large ones I also applied rub-ons letters on to spell out words such at 'love', 'baby' and 'home'. It was a good thing I'd replenished my stock of these because I sold loads of them on Sunday.

But my crafting time hasn't only been used on my Hearts & Flowers stock. I've found some time to make stuff for the boys too. The other day I knocked up a sofa for the playhouse, as you do! I bought a £10 toy box from Ikea which was low and ideal for the base of the sofa. I used an old foam cot mattress (from when Matthew was a baby), an old Ikea throw (bought 10 years ago to cover the sofa in our rented house) and some wadding and velcro. Under the seat, the lid of the toy box can lift off to provide storage for other toys.

Way back at Easter I made some oven gloves, as per Matthew's request. I have now made some for stock to sell in red gingham and some in pink gingham. I have also made mini tablecloth and napkins sets to sell; blue chambray tablecloth with red gingham napkins and pink gingham tablecloth with white napkins. I don't have any photos of these stock items but you can see in the photo below the ones I made for the boys.

Laying in pieces on my dining room table waiting to be sewn together is a new summer skirt (have to sew in a zip next, I hate sewing in zips, this is why it's still in pieces!) and a bag - both in Amy Butler fabric. But before I can make them up I have a custom order for a camera strap which needs to be made, that's this afternoon's job!

Anyway, it would seem that I'm not the only creative one in the house, my boys have creative minds too.

Callum loves to make the strangest of 'things' with the lego kits, much to Matthew's annoyance (he likes to keep them as they are supposed to be). It usually involves a lego man missing some body part or other. Here the policeman has a propellor attached to his bottom!

Matthew's school topic this half term is Kenya, so for this weeks home learning (weekly homework) we found all 'loosely' related african toys we had in the house and had a 'safari adventure' in the garden. Can you spot Matthew?

Last week my sister Janet gave us a helium canister which they had used for blowing up balloons for the kids at their wedding. We used some of what was left in the canister to blow up some balloons at home. We had fun seeing what could be lifted by the ballooons and in the end they had their own unique Lego airmail service, complete with flying postman, letters and parcels!

Finally, I'll leave you with the only two scrapbook layouts I managed to do in the last month; my May and June 12 of the 12th photo project.

See you next time!