May 2018 – Our Creative Haven

First up this week I’m going to be cheeky and start with a litte plug for an upcoming adventure that I need your help with!

At the end of September I will be travelling to Tanzania for 3 weeks with 2 friends. The first 2 weeks will be spent volunteering with First Aid Africa teaching first aid and the 3rd week will be spent climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro (eek scary)!! This is where you come in. Each of us has a fundraising target of £1600 for the charity and If you have any spare monies I would be eternity grateful if you would sponsor me to climb the mountain – the funds for this will be completely funded my myself.

You can find my fundraising page and more info on the link below 🙂

https://www.totalgiving.co.uk/mypage/firstaidafrica-tanzania-miriam

Now onto this week’s blog…

As many of you know I’m a Christian and I’m also a nurse. In some respects this is a great combination however as the years have gone on (a few too many if I actually count them up) I have come to realise it is also not. Shift work is never good for routine and makes attending anything regularly very difficult. Every week means different shifts and different days, sadly people aren’t just sick mon-fri 9-5. This has made it difficult for me to really feel connected and apart of church life! So I’ve had to be creative in finding other ways to express my faith.

One afternoon on Instagram I came across a bible art journaling community and thought I’d give it a go. You don’t have to be good at art! That’s not the point thankfully! The point is to look at scripture and express yourself creatively. It can be very personal or you can share it with the world! I have decided to share some of mine to hopefully inspire others to give it a go!

All my love,

God bless,

Mim

xXx

Happy Friday everyone! For the first time in a while I genuinely have that Friday feeling! The thought of a whole weekend off is lush! Now those of you who know me know that I’m a fan of a good old upcycle project and this week’s blog is about one of my favourites. A lush sewing stool… Well I guess it’s essentially a regular stool but I use it as my sewing stool!!

First up you’ll need to scale the local charity shops or your house for an old stool with a pop out cushion. (Please excuse my wrinkly hands! I dont think I’ll make it as a hand model!!)

Then pick some lovely fabrics to create the patchwork top. I made sure I made my patchwork almost one square bigger than the surface so that there was plenty of material left to cover the sides and to attach it to the back of the seat.

Once you have decided on a size of square, lay them out to make sure you’re happy with the patchwork lay out before sewing each line of squares together. I then removed the fabric from the previous stool cover. You could in theory leave this in place, just depends on how dark the fabric is underneath and it might pucker up underneath.

Then lay your patchwork material over the padded seat, making sure that it’s straight, before using a staple gun to fix the material to the back of the seat. Be sure to hold the material taught as you staple to avoid looseness. (I do love a staple gun… it’s a great stress reliever in crafting!!