The apple of my eye DIY

Today we bring you a very autumnal DIY: apple-shaped coasters. We like them because they're so eye-catching and very easy to make. Plus they could make an ideal gift for Christmas, which is approaching way too fast. Don't you agree? I don't think you can beat a gift that's been lovingly made by hand and practical to boot :)

We took the idea from The Purl bee, and although we didn't find as brightly-coloured felt, we're very happy with the end result! 

Ok, let's let you in on the action...
Materials:
Felt in different colours
Needle
White, black and red thread
Template (not needed if you're brave)
And that's it!

Method:
1. Using the template, draw your apple silhouettes out on the felt:

2. To make each apple, you will need two red parts, one white part, the pips, stalk and its leaf:

3. Once you've cut out the pieces, start to sew the white part onto the red part using small stitches and then sew on the pips (don't worry about the stitching showing on the back because we'll cover that up with the other red part):

4. Put the two red parts together, one on top of the other, and start to sew around the border with very small stitches. Leave the top of the apple to the end and before stitching up that section place the stalk and the leaf inside so that they stick out to the length desired and then you can finish sewing around the border of the red piece:

5. Lastly, trim the borders of the two parts to equal them out:

And then it's ready to welcome a delicious cup of tea (or a juice)!



What do you think? Will you be making handmade gifts?

Olga

Getting social with Handpicked Media

On Monday, I went to Handpicked Media Gets Social - a blogger event held at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Quite an impressive building, don’t you think?

Source: David Thompson - Flickr

I was very excited about going along (if also slightly scared about looking like a minger amongst beautiful fashion/beauty bloggers) to learn new things about blogging, meet fellow bloggers and, generally, the experience as I’d never been to a blogger event before. This was all made even better by the fact I won my ticket through a draw on the Handpicked Media website.

The event didn’t disappoint. On arrival, we were each given a generous goody bag before grabbing some breakfast, meeting other bloggers and PR staff and sitting down to hear the sessions.

Source: Handpicked Media (scribbling away in this one)

The sessions that stuck in my head the most were those by Garry Davis of Why Communicate and Sháá Wasmund of Smarta and Cosmopolitan Business Woman of the Year. Garry gave us lots of useful techy information about things like SEO, which I tried to pay full attention to having shied away from the topic in the past given how complicated it seems. He definitely made it seem less daunting.

Sháá came on and really inspired us to “Stop Talking Start Doing” – the title of her recently published book that we were each kindly given a copy of and that made good reading material for my journey home. She highlighted the importance of people working together to achieve results and not being afraid of asking others for help, or being afraid of failure. A lot of what she said made sense for blogs, businesses and life in general. I recommend you check out her book, particularly if you are someone who needs a little kick to put an idea in motion. I don’t normally go for all the motivational stuff but I was really taken by what she said because she was so honest and genuine during her session. No cheesy lines here, all just a good dose of healthy optimism. You can download a chapter for free from Shaa’s website.

There were so many people at Monday’s event that it was impossible to meet them all (plus my networking skills leave a lot to be desired – if only Olga could have come too!). However, I hope to go along to the next one (with Olga of course) because it was great to see the faces behind different blogs and twitter accounts and meet some lovely people. There’s a lot I’ve not covered here through fear of boring our readers but hopefully I’ve given you a gist of the brilliance that was Handpicked Media Gets Social.

Have you ever heard of Sháá Wasmund? Are you good at motivating yourself or do you find it easier when someone gives you a kick up the bum? Were you at the HPM Social too? It would be lovely to hear from you and hear your thoughts on the day.

Carla

Sweet Paul: sweetness magazinified

The new issue of Sweet Paul, one of our favourite online magazines, came out yesterday and we've already devoured it from start to finish :). A lot of you might already have heard about the magazine but we just had to share some snapshots of the latest issue.

Excellent taste, flawless photography and the impeccable style of its creator, the Norwegian Paul Lowe, radiates from every page.

The new issue includes delicious Christmas recipes (with a special feature about biscuits and another about chocolate, yum!), tons of DIY inspiration for decorating your home during the holidays, ideas for making jewellery from fabric and even an interview about the art of millinery, which is making a big impact like we mentioned here ;).

  

Enjoy!

Olga

Today’s post is special because... we’re celebrating! We’ve reached 100 followers on the Spanish version of PolkaDot Lighthouse and we’re very happy indeed :)

We would like to say thank you to each and every one of you on the other side of the screen for reading our posts and brightening up our days with your comments. It’s what motivates us to keep on writing although it might cost us a few hours of sleep, involve exchanging a ton of e-mails to clear up translations, or losing ourselves amongst the thousands of clips, notes and favourites we have filed away in anticipation of sharing them here with you.

And this is just a taste of what’s to come. It’s our first blogiversary in January (woo hoo!) and we’ll be celebrating it in style with our Spanish and English-speaking followers... so stay tuned ;)

Have a great weekend!

Coloured in cutlery

As a big fan of all things circular, from polka-dots to...biscuits, I especially like spoons and their nice rounded shape. When you think about it, you can get so many, and interesting, varieties of spoons...or am I the only one that thinks that way? There’s wooden spoons, bamboo spoons, metal spoons, golden spoons, silver spoons, those nice tiny wooden spoons for scooping up salt (an ultimate favourite). They’re just the gentlest of cutlery items in my view. Anyway, moving on from my spoon obsession, let's get to the point of the post...I wanted to share these lovely tutorials I found for sprucing up your old/new spoons (or other cutlery). It looks quite easy and gives a really nice result, I think. 

Sania Pell uses some lovely colour combinations and you can find out how she created this effect on her website, which is well worth a visit. It includes some excellent DIY projects and she has also published books full of great crafting ideas. I'm going to try out the clay Christmas decorations and if I don't make a complete mess of it, I might give you a sneak preview ;)

I also found more detailed instructions on how to paint your cutlery on Instructables. Here is the picture of the ones they made, which have more of a glossy finish.

Would you give this a try? Let us know how it goes if you give it a shot.

Carla

In stitches

For a while now, I've been noticing cross-stitch things here and there on the internet and they have fascinated me. I'm not all that good at sewing but when I was quite young I actually made some pretty nice cross-stitch pictures :). I don't know if they were in or if my mum just liked them but as we all know everything comes back into fashion, one way or another... 

As a painted mural for a nice effect

As a personalised cover for your beloved iPhone 

Even as decoration for this refurbished wardrobe

You could also make unique cards using needle and thread

But my favourite idea added to my DIY inspiration list is this canvas with a super-sized cross-stitch pattern on it. What do you think? I would probably go for other colours and a different size but I promise to show the results if I still have the same knack I did aged 12... ;-)

Canvas by Jessica Decker

Olga