I suck at crafts. There, I said it. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of being able to make something, but I'm just no good at it - no matter how much I'd like to be. So, when I received an invitation to join in with an afternoon of crafting, I must admit that I was quite hesitant to sign up. Yet, here I am with a blog post about the afternoon, so clearly I decided to go - but why? Well, I figured that there must be bloggers of all abilities attending (I was correct), there were going to be a few new faces to meet and I am always telling myself to say "yes" more to things that are out of my comfort zone. So, one gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon, I got myself lost finding the venue but eventually arrived to get my crafting head well and truly on for a few hours. Heck, I might even be able to do myself proud and make something that doesn't look completely terrible, I told myself! Let's find out, shall we?







This craft afternoon in question was being run by Joe Blogs and Hillarys Blinds, in honour of Hillarys new "Jewel Collection". Using fabrics from this new collection in shades of sapphire, amber, jade and ruby, the plan was to make ourselves a jewellery box each and a Suffolk Puff or two to take home with us. To help guide us through any crafting mishaps was Jana from The Crafty Hen, whose witty sense of humour kept us all going throughout the afternoon. The event was held in an area of Leeds that I'm not too familar with, as it is a little out of the way from the city centre; The Riverside, aptly named for being situated on the River Aire. It was very picturesque, helped no doubt by the blazing sunshine we had that day, and I can imagine it would be very popular in the summer. All manner of crafting accessories had been laid out, ready for us to rifle though; fabrics of course, as well as buttons and ribbon, and essential tools needed such as scissors and hot glue guns. I ended up sitting next to Laura from Inside Laura's Head, who I had never had the opportunity to talk to properly before. We ended up helping each other throughout the entire thing, and by the end of it I think we were both surprised to have made something that looked quite good!





First up was making a fabric covered jewellery box, and on the table in front of us was everything we needed, as well as a step-by-step guide. I won't tell you about every little detail of making this box, because it will probably bore you to tears, so let's stick to the basics. Our chosen fabric (I went for ruby shades) were to be stuck to the lid of the box using double sided tape - which sounds odd but it really does work! I messed mine up slightly by not leaving enough of a gap between the fabric and the edge of the lid, meaning that when I folded it in you could see the cardboard underneath! However, with the decoration of the lid, I had a cunning plan to cover up my mistake. I chose to add some ruby ribbon to the edges of the lid, as you can see in the image below, stuck into place with some hot glue. I managed to stick myself to the jewellery box and various accessories on numerous occassions, but luckily it dries and cools very quickly so I could unstick myself! I also added some more ruby ribbon and some grey ribbon across the lid, and added on three buttons as decoration. Pretty simple, but quite effective, I thought. Some of the girls were doing fancy bows and all sorts of pretty things; I could have attempted something like that, but I thought that I'd best not push my luck and stick to something that I knew I wouldn't get angry with after five minutes!





The next and final steps involved creating the inserts for the box itself, ready to place jewellery into. We were shown how to make ring cushions to go inside our box, made out of fabric, wadding and that magical item - double sided tape. They were actually really easy to make, if it a bit time consuming, and it's a skill that I'll definitely be using in the future. One day, I hope to covert one of the drawers on my Helmer unit into a ring drawer; at the moment my rings are scattered all over my room, and it's good to know that I can just make them instead of shelling out a fortune for ring displays. As well as making these, we had to make something for the ring displays to sit in, and also create a space for other items of jewellery, and this was made out of cardboard and more fabric. I made mine ever-so-slightly too big so it was a bit of squeeze to get it in, but as you can see I made myself a pretty nice jewellery box! There is plenty of space for a good number of rings (I was wearing quite a few rings on the day so I just had to test it out), and room at the side for other items too. I was actually really impressed that I had managed to make something so nice - despite lacking in any crafty skills whatsoever. I now use this jewellery box to store my Pandora rings in, as I wear them on a daily basis and need easy access to them, and use the other side for storing my hair grips and bands. I'm forever losing them, and this has worked out to be the perfect solution for that.





After we had taken a break and fawned over each others jewellery boxes, it was time to move on. For our next craft we were going to be making Suffolk Puffs, which I had never even heard of before. These are basically little fabric rosettes that you make into pretty much anything, from brooches through to hair accessories. They look really complicated to make, and I'm not going to lie and say it was easy - far from it! But the feeling of satisfaction from making my first successful Suffolk Puff was worth the headache. Again, using our chosen fabrics, we cut out circles of varying sizes, depending on how big we wanted the end product to be. I wanted to make a tiny little keyring, so I chose a 9cm circle, which would halve to become a 4.5cm Suffolk Puff. Once this was cut out, a running stitch with thread was done around the edge, and then pulled in to create the "flower". It can look quite messy, so some tweaking around needed to be done before stitching it in place. I ended up making two Suffolk Puffs for my keyring, sticking one on top of the other, and stitching a keyring chain between the two. I also stuck a button on the front to cover up my shoddy handiwork, but as you can see I wasn't entirely successful with doing so. For my second Suffolk Puff, I decided to make a larger one and create a brooch, and this one turned out much better. See, practice makes perfect after all! The keyring now lives with my keys (funny, that), and the brooch is on one of my coats.




After we had all finished, we had our photo taken (see if you can spot me gurning and not even looking at the camera - it's not hard!) and then it was time to say our goodbyes! We were kindly given a goody bag from Hillarys, which contained a catalogue of their latest range, including the Jewel Collection, and a couple of other bits and pieces. The bag itself was handmade using the fabrics that we ourselves had used during the afternoon, which was such a nice touch! It makes an unusual addition to my collection of tote bags (which are now getting used because of the 5p carrier bags). Despite my reservations, I had a really fun afternoon and it is something that I would definitely do again. It reaffirmed to me that saying "yes" to more things can work out quite well! As for my crafting skills? Well, you won't be seeing me adding a "craft" section to this blog any time soon, but I'm not as terrible as I thought - and I can definitely use the skills I've learnt at a later date. Thanks for having me, Joe Blogs and Hillarys!

Click here to read Hillarys post about their Crafternoon events that were held around the UK