A buddy

Here's a little guy I made last summer before I went to Japan. 

 He lives in a different city now...

But he's got an important job to do up there so that's ok too.

Lavender Blue

Some lavender bags I made for presents...

The patterns are from Sew, a Cath Kidston book, that I got for Valentine's Day.

dried lavender from my Mum's garden

My sewing skills aren't all that wonderful yet, but they do smell nice!

The Outside World

Owl in flight

Before Christmas I was asked to illustrate a second book featuring Pippy and Dippy, two little mice who have previously made an appearance on my blog. The book, Pippy and Dippy, The Outside World, is written and self-published by Jim Bartley, who wrote The Adventures of Pippy and Dippy - released last year and for which I also created the artwork. These are some of my illustrations for the new book. 

Pippy and Dippy in their new home

As it's a small budget production the books are on sale in Fermoy (where the author and myself originally hail from), for the most part in The Book Shop and Fermoy Books, although other local shops have them as well. I believe Eason in Cork also have a few copies left too and Jim takes orders (and general comments and inquiries) at pippyanddippy@gmail.com, in case anyone is interested! 

Pippy, Dippy and Rory the Rooster

I'm working on a story of my own at the moment and so hopefully I will post some bits and bobs from that in the near future.

Green Tea Macaroons

Round 3 of macaroon making...

Green tea with lemon in the middle.

From a lovely book given to me for Christmas by someone lovely...

Macaroons

Tricky little guys.. but here are my first attempts. 

Raspberry Ripple, which turned out pretty nifty. 

Peanut Butter and Jam, which are not quite as pretty but just as tasty. 

Good with a cuppa!

The Bleat and the Pulse

Some personalised frames made for presents over the past few months...

Frames, pictures, knick knacks and glue...

One of my favourite projects in a long while.

Ariel Flowering Tea

It seems a tiny little sweet-smelling ball of tea. Drop it into almost boiling water and voilá, it blooms. Smells beautiful (jasmine and green tea and chinese lily... dreamy), looks fascinating and tastes like green tea. Gets a bit too jasmine-y taste-wise after it's stewed for a while but the whole house smells divine afterwards.

Spicy Roast Pumpkin and Peanut Soup

Baby it's cold outside... And pretty miserable. I had great intentions of going on a long walk, having a half day and all, but the rain put a stop to that. While sculling a hot cup of tea I decided what I really wanted was soup, and I set to work looking for some ingredients. I based the recipe on a Darina Allen one, but the peanuts were my own genius (if I do say so myself) idea. Anyway, here are the ingredients (although I didn't really measure anything).

• 1 pumpkin (we had one left over from hallowe'en)
• peanuts (shelled but not salted)
• about 6 shallots (or two big onions I suppose. Red ones might be nice actually)
• 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
• garlic (that's upto yourself, I would put in loads but that's just me)
• 1.5 litres stock (chicken, veg, whatever)
• 0.5 litres orange juice
• salt, pepper
• nutmeg
• cinnamon
• thyme
• cumin seeds
• 6 whole cloves
• wholegrain mustard (I had one with Guinness in it apparently. Good stuff)

With any of those spices at the end, it's upto you how much you put in, I like mine pretty spicy so I went with loads.

Right, Instructions Time.

1. Chop up your pumpkin and scrape out the seeds and gunk from the middle. Roast in the oven for around half an hour to soften (best to rub a little olive oil on them first). Roast your garlic as well so it's nice and sweet.

2. While your pumpkin and garlic are roasting, shell your peanuts and put them in an oven proof dish with a little olive oil. Also, slice your shallots.

3. Throw the shallots into a large pot with some butter (you should probably melt it first). Take out the pumpkin and garlic and swap with the peanuts for roasting. If you have a massive oven you could maybe do all that at once but I don't. You should be able to scoop the pumpkin out of its skin and toss this into the pot with your shallots. Add in your garlic (if you've roasted it you can just squish it out of its skin, otherwise crush him) and chopped tomatoes and leave on a medium heat for around 10 minutes til everything gets a bit squishy.

4. At this point add in your roast peanuts, stock, orange juice and spices and give it a good stir. Leave it to simmer for a while and then take it off the heat so you can attack it with a handheld blender type of thing. What are they called? Is it just a blender? Anyway.

After this it's up to you really; need more salt? pepper? spicy stuff? mustard? I found I had to add a little sugar as the chopped tomatoes were a little bitter. Then give it one more blitz with the blender and make sure it's hot before you put it into neat little bowls.

Pretty darn good. Although afterwards I realised I would have liked it with brown bread and cheese. Mmmm. Maybe later... 

A Tea Dress

I'm not going to lie, this is purely a gloating post. I MADE a dress. Oh yes. Out of fabric and zips and needles and threads and other amazing stuff (such as wundaweb...). ME!

Now I just need an occasion to wear it at. Exciting times!

Free dress patterns here (plus other cool stuff): http://www.burdastyle.com/patterns?free=1&most_recent=1

The one I made is called a "Danielle" dress.

Masquerade!

I mentioned last time that I've been running a summer camp with two friends (GAS craic - that's Guitar, Art and Singing and I teach the art workshops) so I thought I'd show off a little of what we did the second week with the older kids (11- 15 year olds).

During the second week we designed t-shirts, giant posters, treasure boxes, cd covers... but I think my personal favourite were masks. We took our inspiration from things like Lady Gaga, the Phantom of the Opera, animals, celebrities etc, and the kids set to work.

Here's one I made as an example:

They're pretty easy to make and lots of fun, and look great at a fancy dress party or even stuck up on a wall! 

1. Draw out the shape of your mask on a sheet of card (or cereal box card is good too!) and cut it out.
2. Place the cut out shape on to another sheet of card and trace around it - you need to cut this second one out for the back.
3. Before sticking the two together, decorate it front and back with whatever you like - I like collage and sparkly things.
4. Paste glue on the undecorated side of the back of the mask. Place a stick on one side for the handle (wooden skewers or lolly pop sticks are good) and if you want to have some feathers sticking out, go for it.
5. Stick the front of the mask on top (so the stick and feathers and anything else are sandwiched inside).
6. Leave to dry and then cut out the eyes! (If a grown up could do it with a stanley knife that's probably the easiest, if not, carefully pierce one eye part and then cut around from where you pierced it with the scissors)

And there you go! A good one for a rainy day...