I've Got A New Blog!

Hi Guys, long time no see!

I just wanted to let you know that I have a brand new blog that I will be posting on every week, you can find it here - www.thehenthusiast.co.uk

Technically the focus is on Hen Parties and how I can help you throw one that is totally unique! But that is not to say that if you aren't throwing a Hen party that it wouldn't be of interest to you too.

I'm going to be posting lots of crafty DIY's that will still be useful in everyday life, or for other types of parties so come and follow me if you liked the tutorials I used to post on here! The first one is already up and its a tutorial for a cute crown hair accessory!

I've also opened an etsy shop which is selling my customised hen party tattoos as well as lots of unique printable items. I'm really excited to grow the shop and I have tonnes of ideas! So spread the word if you know of anyone throwing a party soon.

Also I have a new instagram which is @thehenthusiast. Again, lots of crafty goodness, but also some pop culture illustrations, and fun adventures will be posted on here.

I hope really you'll follow me in my new adventure! It will be cool to virtually hang with you all again!

Laura (The Henthusiast)

xxx

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Where have I been???

Hey chaps, long time no see! 

Where have I been the last year you ask?  Well, I have been in blog-writing hibernation.  To be honest with you, I wasn't really finding it all that fun, and it was beginning to become a bit of a chore to write, so I decided to take a break for a while. 

Whilst in hibernation Chris and I have been having many fun adventures with our friends, and my interests and hobbies have changed quite a lot.  Basically, before my hibernation I was all about the crafting, and now I have emerged from my chrysalis a fully fledged geek! Yes, I'm not sure what has come over me, but in the last year or so I have started; reading comics, playing board games, and even playing dungeons and dragons! I have been having SO MUCH FUN guys!

So heres a quick run down of what I've been up to, not in any order whatsoever.....

Having a blast at Star Wars Secret Cinema...

Being Batwoman (from DC's Bombshells comic) at MCM Comic-Con London.

Reading lots of comics and graphic novels. Saga was one of my first and I have absolutely loved it!!

Celebrating Chris's Birthday with a robot party.  He went as Awesom-O from South Park, so I made him a cake to match...

I dyed my hair pink for a bit ...

I spent Halloween at Dunster Castle with these crazy people ...

We totally got into it. Also we spent the rest of the weekend playing board games and Dungeons and Dragons! This is the rest of my board gaming team if you hadn't guessed :)

I spent my Birthday with some of my favourite people, playing a specially crafted role playing game, I dubbed it 'Asteroids and Aliens'.

I threw an 80's themed party for Clic Sargent and we raised over £3500! I'm so pleased with how the event went, and I even managed to get an awesome Photo Booth company to get involved! (I was supposed to be Kate Bush)

I went to Canada for Christmas to visit family.  Played an awesome Escape Maze where we got to dress up afterwards, went to Medieval Times to watch my cousin perform, and crafted a Unicorn out of a sock...

So there you go!  I may have a think about writing some blog posts about some of my new interests/hobbies, so let me know if you'd like to know more about anything I have mentioned. Also, if you're a fan of board games or comics let me know some of your favourites!

Laura xXx

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My Living Room Tour

Hey chaps, long time no see!

Way back in November 2013 I showed you what our Living Room was like when we first moved in. Here's a link back to that old post. It was looking pretty sad and bare, and since then I have been working hard to re-decorate.  It has taken me ages to find everything that would fit, but I think I'm pretty much there now, so today I've decided to finally do a living room tour! 

As I mentioned in my first post, I decided to go for a yellow and grey colour scheme. Eventually I also decided to give it a bit of a botanical/natural history museum feel, which you might notice a little bit more in the close up photos.

The first things we bought were the sofa, the armchair and the rug. The sofa came from Next, and the armchair and rug were both from Ikea.

The cushions came from H&M Home, except for the little grey ones which I made myself from off-cuts from the curtains (They were crazy long!)

I hunted for quite a while to find an old botanical encyclopaedia which had pretty pictures in it that I could hang, and in the end we found one at an antique shop which I mentioned in this post. I chose Kiko frames to hang them in as I liked the simplistic look.

My absolute favourite buy was my hexagon shelves, which I had specially made and shipped from the US. I think they make a really nice focal piece in the room, and I was really pleased with the way they turned out.  The birds on display are actually made of lego, you can find the kit here . I like the fact that they have their latin names on little plaques below them, I feel like it fits with the museum theme pretty well!

So just to compare, this is what the lounge looked like before...

...and here it is after!  A great improvement I'm sure you will agree!  The curtains were also from Ikea. I think having less heavy curtains has made a huge difference to the room. And I think painting the walls grey makes it look a little bit more homely.

I made the butterfly chart hanging above the fireplace using a pretty poster, you can find my No-Saw DIY here.

I also made a little trio of pictures using another botanical book that my friends Mum bought for me. I couldn't decide which pictures to use as there were quite a few good ones, but the great thing about the Kiko frames is that I can swap them whenever I want!

I bought these agate slices when I was on holiday in Majorca, I thought they would make great coasters to go on the table, and they are so pretty! I might buy some more of these just to put on display on the shelves.

I re-painted this little side table to match my colour scheme, since it used to be blue. The phone is another of my favourite things in the room, it was given to us as a wedding gift!

This magazine rack started out life as a yarn holder which came free with a knitting magazine. I decided I wanted to re-cover it to match the room, and I found some awesome honeycomb fabric from Zazzle which I thought would work really well. The amount of choices of fabric patterns and fabric types on Zazzle is insane, so it took me ages to decide.  You can also design your own fabric, which I would love to try at some point!

All I did to make it was to unpick the old fabric from the frame, then I used this as a template, and tried to make an exact copy of it with my honeycomb fabric.  The only tricky bit was attaching it securely back onto the frame. In the end I had to do this by hand which was a little bit difficult  as the canvas fabric which I ordered is quite thick, but I got there in the end and I think it looks fab!

I also used the same fabric to make a little table cloth for the coffee table which you can see in the earlier pictures. I think that they really match my hexagon shelves beautifully .  

Another good buy was my Oliver Bonas shelves/drawers. I was pining after them for a long time since they were pretty expensive, but in the end I decided I had to have them! They definitely help bring the room together. 

This TV cabinet, as well as the coffee table were both things that I found at the dump. They cost me £5 each and were both a little worse for wear when I found them. But after a good sanding down and a few coats of grey paint they looked good as new! This cabinet is actually the perfect size and we can fit the X-Box in the little cubby hole and all of our games inside.

There are still a couple of things I would like to do before I will feel the whole room is complete, but I am much happier with it now that I feel there is some sort of decor going on, rather than random furniture thrown into a room.

Laura xXx

Disclaimer - The honeycomb fabric was gifted to me by Zazzle. I was really pleased with the quality of the fabric and service and I would recommend to those that are looking to add a unique touch to their decor.

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My Wedding Album - Made using Blurb Book Smart

Hi Guys, I want to share something with you today that I have been working on for aaages!

Since our wedding I have been planning to make a wedding album, but it seemed such a huge undertaking as we had over 600 photos, and I just didn't know where to start! In the end I managed to get a book made and delivered just before our 1 year anniversary, but it took a whole lot of effort! I thought I'd share my experience making the book with you, incase you are thinking of making your own wedding album, or any other album for that matter!

I wasn't sure what company to get the book printed with, so I did some research online and found that people were pleased with their Blurb books, and it looked the best option for what I wanted. I have to say, I was a little worried when I saw their page templates for the first time. The wedding album templates included a lot of text for some reason, and the boxes meant for pictures seemed to be strangely off centre and not in the dimensions I wanted. Fortunately Blub has a function whereby you can build your own template, and once I figured this out I was more than happy! I built the book using a program you can download from their website called 'Book Smart'.

I pretty much designed each page dependant upon the photos I had to go on it, which is one of the reasons it all took so long.  I think I was probably working on the book for about 4 months in total, as it was something I found I had to do a little bit at a time. 

As well as picking which photos were going where, I spent a lot of time making sure the boxes were even as well as the gaps in between and centralising the photos.

Once I had pretty much completed the album I found that to get the best quality the photos should be resized to the same dimensions as the box they were going into. Obviously this was another job that took a really long time, especially since nearly all of my pages were different, but I think it was worthwhile in the end.

The above and below pictures are two of my favourite layouts which I designed. I found it immensely satisfying when the pages finally 'came together', it did take rather a lot of trial and error in most cases!

On the back of the book I chose a picture of our confetti cones, which I think looks rather pretty!

I'd definitely recommend Blurb, and I'd say that the more time you put into it the better it will look! Picking the right photos to go together, and positioning them in a complementary way, as well as knowing when a picture deserves its own page, are all really important in creating a quality product.  I am really pleased with the way that my album turned out.

I chose the 'large square' sized book, as I wanted the pictures to be as big as possible! It has 116 pages in total (probably containing around 300 photos) and I chose one of the most expensive papers, as well as 'image wrap'. Since I had spent so much time on it I didn't mind spending a little bit extra to make it as high quality as possible.

This album would normally have cost me £100, but I managed to get a 30% discount from Voucher Codes. I probably would have ended up spending a few hundred if I had asked the photographers to do it, so I think that is pretty good!

Have you used Blurb or another site to create a photo book? What have your experiences been like?

Laura xXx

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Things To See And Do - Lewes

This week we went to Lewes for our weekly date!  I used to go to University at Sussex, so it was a bit of a blast from the past, and it was good to explore again.

Lewes is great if you are on the hunt for Antiques, and quirky old stuff! The first place we found was Lewes Flea Market, which is a treasure trove of weird and wonderful things!

Next we stopped in on a lovely little shop called Mary's which stocked some really cute items, as well as sweets! I bought some pretty cards here as I felt I couldn't leave with nothing!  

I remembered from previous visits that there was a Bill's here, so we decided to head there for lunch! Chris picked a beautiful, if rather effeminate, drink.

We both had ham hock and pea terrine with caramelised onions as a starter, which was really nice! Then we had sea bass with potato rosti and tomato and avocado salsa. I ate that too quickly before I remembered to take a photo, but it looked great and was equally delicious! Aside from the food, Bills has such a fun atmosphere,  and I'd really recommend going to one if you haven't been before.

We wandered around some more antiques shops located near to Bills, and then decided it was time for a drink in the sunshine!  On our way we found a really awesome shop called Closet and Botts, which had a bit of a rustic feel and had some really interesting bits and bobs!

We found a pub called The Rights of Man which had a roof terrace garden, so we decided to stay a while and enjoy a drink. It felt like summer!

After we had finished our drinks we decided to take a walk near Lewes Castle. We decided not to go in this time but maybe we will on another adventure, it was still a really nice walk seeing it from a distance.

Have you been to Lewes before? What were your favourite things to see and do?

Laura xXx

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