Image Details: ‘Birthday cake’ by 3liz4, via Flickr

So, there was a birthday at Shinybees HQ last week. Birthdays are always good news, because they generally involve cake and presents (and we’ll ignore the whole getting older bit in a blur of gin induced happiness) and I had plenty of both, minus the gin, unfortunately. I will make no apology for the slightly self-indulgent blog post: it’s my party and I will cry if I want to, quite frankly. Plus there is some crafty goodness to share by way of a Gingerbread Bunny tutorial.

I received a soap making kit from the Soap Kitchen, which I am looking forward to trying. I got a couple of cold process soap making books at Christmas, but I haven’t tried any of the recipes out yet, as I need to get quite a bit of equipment and supplies. There isn’t much room to store all this at Shinybees HQ at the moment, so I decided to get a pre-measured kit to try out, which doesn’t require me to store a lot of ingredients such as caustic soda and essential oils.  There is a great blog post and podcast about the particular kit I am going to use on the iMake website, which was quite amusing: I don’t think I will be making soap in a champagne bucket! Sadly, I’m just not rock and roll enough to have a stainless steel champagne bucket. Or a bucket at all in fact. The fizz doesn’t last long enough to get warm usually!

I also invested in a couple of new knitting patterns with my birthday spends, including the new Sirdar Hearts and Stripes pattern book. I’ll be reviewing this in a future blog post once I’ve had a go at some of the garments.

Starry Eyed

Image Copyright of The Gingerbread Bunny

So onto the squeal-worthy make! Again, it isn’t one of mine, although I am now the proud owner of said artwork. I have decided it is far too pretty to wear for actual cooking even though it matches my kitchen theme perfectly, so I intend to Scotchguard the material to protect it and to have it as a craft apron. It will only be for light crafting (not making soap with corrosive liquids!) and I am hoping it will inspire some great new makes. At the very least, I am going to look the part. I especially like the extra-long ties which mean I will be able to tie it nicely at the front for the 50’s effect.

Clearly, you are now going to want your own crafting apron, or you know someone who does, so for a tutorial on how this was made, get yourself over to the Gingerbread Bunny’s blog. The pinny was made using instructions from Simply Homemade magazine (which has also been reviewed on the blog) and the Bunny has added her own spin and pictures in the blog post. Now all you have to do is find some pretty fabric and get cracking!