Baked Bean Chrstmas Cakes??!!

Christmas will soon be upon us, with about 5 weeks to go. I think its 5 weeks, to be honest i'm trying not to think about it too hard. Like many people its not my most favourite time of year. But despite saying (like every year) that we aren't going to "do" Christmas, we still will give little presents etc. I guess we just don't do the big family gathering, huge meal and loads of decorations type Christmas. Of course we'll send cards and i've started making those up, i quite like this years designs. But for my grandparents (and i have no worries about posting this because i can guarentee 100% that they will not read my blog) we'll be doing the normal hamper thing for a gift.

Anyway onto the point of this post. No, its not cakes containing baked beans, although that would be an interesting concept......i might just do a google search to see if i can find such a recipe, after all there are recipes for cakes containing tomato soup! The reason i bookmarked this blog post about Frugal Christmas gifts was because i gave the idea and quantities for making 5 small individual cakes, reusing baked bean tins to cook them in. The idea works in theory but there are certainly a few adjustments i'd make.

I had only 3 baked bean tins - we really don't eat things from cans very often, which in my books is a positive thing because it means we don't eat that much processed food, certainly no more than once a week at most. Making the cake mix was no issue, neither was lining the tins, although it was a tad fiddley but thats one good thing about having small hands!

The first issue came when trying to turn the cakes out of the tins....... Our can opener is one that takes the top out of the tin rather than one that slices the whole of the top off so there was still a rim left on the tin which of course made removing the cake slightly difficult and i had to squash it a bit to get it out.

Once it was out and after a little reshaping it looked fine, well, shape wise at least. The colour of the cake was a bit light for a Christmas cake i thought but then the recipe only called for light muscavado sugar so thats not suprising really. I think if i were to use tin cans again i would use the ones you get pineapple or tuna in - slightly flatter and slightly larger diameter. I just felt for "individual cakes" they looked a bit tall but if they are going to be covered in marzipan and icing at least the squashed surface would be covered.

I used up the rest of the cake mix to make 3 other individual cakes but baked them in a silicone muffin tray that i bought in Lidls - they were in the newsletter priced at £1.99 per item, however when we got to Lidls the label said 29p!! Mum and i were unsure that i could be so cheap, even for Lidls, but when we reached the tills sure enough it was 29p per item. I wish i'd got more than 2 6 hole muffin trays and a loaf "tin" now - not that i really have need for any more than that!
Being so expensive (not!) i wasn't sure how these would work, although the recipe wanted a long slow (2 hour) bake on a very low heat (100 degrees C) and the packet for the bakeware said they can take up to a temperature of 260 degrees C, so i wasn't too concerned about the silicolne melting.

As they were cooking and rising though, I could almost see them popping out of the tray. It was clear just from looking at them that they certainly weren't sticking. In fact they came clean away and not a crumb was left behind.

The only down side to the silicone was that they were muffin shaped rather than having perfectly vertical sides, however again if they are being covered with marzipan and icing then if i trimmed the sides to make a perfectly round cylinder then my knife skills wouldn't show.

One thing is for certain - i shall be using that cake mix recipe! I think i'll use a more traditional fruit cake recipe. It was an interesting experiment though.

Allotment and Gardening Forum Photo Competition - "Amazing Constructions"

Because my garden isn't exactly big enough to have a large construction like a shed or greenhouse in, i decided to enter a picture of my homemade slug trap. last year i found that the rain got in etc and the beer/dead slug mix got rather disgusting so i devised a lid/roof for it this year.

A little bit of artist detailing and my photo was complete! Not expecting to win, but its all good fun!

Freecycled Wormery - A Mega Saving!

I spotted this on freecycle a couple of weeks back. The excitment i felt was possibly a bit on the sad side but then when you see how much the brand new ones cost i think it's justified! Admittedly they come with the worms and bedding etc. But even in a specific wormery online store the rescue pack/value pack which contains everything i don't have and need costs £30, whereas when you buy a full kit with the plastic wormery case its self retails for at least £90.

i mean a spare leg costs a fiver for goodness sakes - and there are 5 of those!!

i was looking for ways to bring the costs of the remaining items i need down, but i think i need to realise i can afford £30 and i've saved double that already really. So here it is all cleaned up and assembled, waiting for me to buy some worms.

T-shirt Tote Bag Swap

The brief for this swap was to create a bag from an old t-shirt using a simple tutorial which meant all you needed to do was sew a seam along the bottom of the t-shirt, cut off the sleeves and cut a semi-circle round the neck to create the handles.

So i found an old t-shirt i didn't want anymore, set up the machine and successfully sewed the bottom edge a few times to give it some stability, cut off the sleeves and cut round the neck. This is what i came up with:

Then i couldn't find another t-shirt that needed to be thrown away so i decided to have a look in the charity shops. My partners profile said she like bright colours, and i found a strappy top, which meant i didn't need to cut the sleeves off or cut the neck so there would be no fear of the edges fraying. However my machine skills let me down this time. i managed to sew the bottom seam the first time but after that the thread kept bunching. i think it was the material which was slightly elasticated, anyway, after the 3rd attempt i gave up and finished it my hand. Machine sewing is certainly one skill i haven't yet mastered. The finish bag was ok tho.

Recycle your Bathtub - as a pond!

i spotted this on Geekware, who often features super ways to recycle objects, mainly computer or technology related.

Geekware: Bathtub pond

Happy Birthday Nan!

Well my initial idea of a funky bag made from Capri Sun juice pouches started well but i just couldn't figure a way of trying to finish it by adding handles etc.

So i decided a cloth bag from the curtain off cuts would be nice.

mum showed me how to do a french seam to make it neater. anyway i'm so proud of it and can't believe i made it! so some of the lines aren't too straight.... i seem to have issues still with machine sewing in straight lines and i had to hand sew on the handles. but it still looks super and i know she loves anything i hand make or decorate.

!
Previously i decorated flower pots, oven gloves and she uses both:

Here's the card i made for her too, as she has loads of these lilies in her garden.

Sewing - practice needed maybe?

I bought some curtain offcuts for £1 each with a couple of things in mind to make. The first was a cushion so i can display my bottlecaps when i finally get round to taken them to Daisy M, the gift shop in the village, to sell there. I've made a cushion before - a fews years ago - but i knew the theory of how i was going to make it.

By pure chance someone was offering a cushion stuffing/filling on freecycle and when i collected it - it was amazingly almost a perfect size. It went inside my cover with a bit of encourgement. But i did struggle big time with getting the machine set up and working in the first place, however it seems that this was due to the cheap cotton i was trying to use, and since then i've managed get it working on my own on more than one occassion. So here is my cushion:

Perfect for what i had in mind for the keyrings and brooches!

RePlayGround - recycling with a twist!: DIY organizing

A Great way to recycle and get organized at the same time!   It might even inspire me to try and organize my bomb site - i mean my bedroom!

RePlayGround - recycling with a twist!: DIY organizing

Eco Transport - The Magic Wheel

I get the Weekly Newsletter from Life Goggles and as part of it they do reviews in eco friendly products.

One review that caught my eye this morning was that of The Magic Wheel.  The Video on the web site for the actually product of course makes it look so easy to use but that you to Life Goggles who's product tester proved that not to be so.

You can find a link to the product web site on the review.

Great Green Giveaway

I have various "Green" Feeds in my RSS Feed and new updates come up in my Windows Live Mail. I can't actually remember which specific feed it was but one of the had a great link to this Great Green Giveaway.

Not only is it a fab competition but a great way to find and link to many other Green Sites and Shops. The competition is being hosted on Life Goggles. In fact there are 56 (but this may change it seems) competitions however some are only available to the USA and some only to the UK but there are international ones too. Prizes include a variety of green items, including clothing, homewares and cosmetic type stuff.

Also on Life Goggles there are interviews, fun stuff, articles, product reviews and a Green wall of shame for those places and products who aren't so green!!

They also have a free ebook on 100 ways to save the planet - so stop by have have a look! just think of the paper you're saving by reading an ebook!

Artist unveils 'newspaper house' - BBC News website

An artist uses discarded freesheets collected from across London to make a house. read more here

Jennyb's Bottlecaps featured on the Dawanda shop directory blog

Sara has been kind enough to feature sellers from Dawanda with a simple questionaire i replied to and has today published my article on the blog here

The blog also has great guides on dawanda and how to buy, sell and promote etc.

Recycled bags to use at the farmers market

I was thinking about bags for when i go to the farmers market. now i know i never accept a new bag but little items like my magnets and brooches could easily get lost and i don't think people would really want to put them with food from the market in their bags either.

so i did a quick websearch and thought about all the envelopes mum brings home from work for the food waste bin. i found a template for gift bags made from envelopes!! perfect!!

This has really made my day, because they have worked perfectly. the brown bag in from an A4 envelope and the white from an A5.

however the clear window gets in the way with the smaller one, and also the paper is thicker with the brown one.

so with a bit of double sided tape, i have my bags!!!

Melted Plastic Magnet

Having a bit of a photo and log catch-up, so here's a quick picture of the one bit of plastic melting that did work - have made it into a magnet and its now on the fridge.

It looks like and 'A' to me but i don't think mum's even noticed it yet! might have to bring it to her attention.....

If Money were no object....

When i was in town Thursday i spotted this in a shop window:

(click on the photo for more info)

I knew instantly it was a recycled object, so decided to pop into the shop and have a look, with the thought of my bottlecaps in mind too. I had a nice chat with the lady, who said she was just getting back up and running after a family bereveavement over Christmas. She said this shop was a bit of a test to see if the town was ready to become more green in their purchases. She said it wasn't - basically people want to think they are but don't want to pay the prices for handcrafted objects. Well i have to say i certainly couldn't afford the prices but the with the comission she charges to sell things on your behalf no wonder the prices are so high! she takes 30% comission! really not worth it for me if i want to sell my items at a reasonable price.

Mum still think things like my magnets are over priced but then these days you will be pushed to find one for under a pound i expect so i don't think for a hand crafted item that £1.50 is too much, especially as i have to cover my costs and fees, so i probably only get £1 at the end of the day anyway! but 30% certainly wouldn't leave me with anything!

anyway here's a few other favourites from the online shop:

Playing with Plastics

a few pics from my experiment with melting recycled plastics:

first a margarine tub with a couple of milk bottle tops chopped up:

took quite a high temperature - the max the oven will do is 250C but it still took a long time.



but it stuck to the greaseproof paper too.


then i tried to flatten it and ruined it completely!! why can't i just leave things alone.

so then i tried the marg tub on its own and i love this!! i kind of turned out in the shape of an A too! i might try this again because i love the way the plastic curls.

then i tried the mesh and labels from the clementines. the mesh melted well but the label seemed to be more of a paper than a plastic.

so i took out the bits that didn't melt, but the rest in a bottle cap and put it on the electric hob to melt down into the cap:

then i tried clear plastic but put some acrylic paint in to give it some colour. plastic works well, goes white but i need to rethink the colouring

then i tried a mix of white, yellow and red mesh with limited success:

then i tried to flatten that on the hob between 2 heat proof cooking dishes - but the yellow burnt and it stuck to the foil.....

Overall Verdict: Oven not hot enough and fumes cause headaches - don't try this at home folks!

Practise makes Perfect

i just do not learn!!! after having previously found that the 3d gloss makes the paper backgrounds go see-through in my bottlecaps - for some reason i did some more like it...... i managed to rescue a few but my "Orange Love" design was particuarly bad.

so i thought i'd see how easy it was to get out the designs that were in them - answer:

with a big of a dig with a craft knife/scapel and a tug with some tweezers it came out in one lump! so now i can reuse the bottlecaps - after all it would be slightly hypocritical if i just threw them away!!

Bottle top bounty!

I popped down to my local pub today to ask them if they wouldn't mind collecting the bottle caps for me over the weekend. Having sold 10 now at DaWanda i thought i should perhaps make some more. I also made 3 for a swap on swap-bot.



anyway it seems although Jo the bar maid has left she had been saving them and i was handed this brown paper bag full!



i have added more to the shop and there are still more waiting to be finished. i have just started doing a custom order of 5 as well.



so at the moment my "for sale" canvas looks like this:

Selling and Sold!!!

As i blogged last night i have set up a shop here at DaWanda.

Brilliant news! I've sold 2 items!

My first customer, Jules, bought my set of 4 purple countryside magnets:

and my 2nd customer, Kaye in the USA, bought my Green Queen Magnet:

the bad news though........ after seeing the transactions go through paypal and losing some of the money due to fees, i have had to put my prices up slightly - and thats before DaWanda take their 5%! when i compared my prices to other i thought they looked cheap - now i know why!

My New Shop at DaWanda

After finding that you need a credit card to be able to sell at Etsy a fellow swapper on the forums at Swap-bot directed me to DaWanda a similar place where you can set up a shop and sell your handmade items and crafts.

I bought some magnetic/chalkboard paint a couple of weeks back and have painted a canvas with it. My idea was that if i ever managed to find a craft show or event to sell at, i could take that along and display my magnets on it but also write the price etc on the canvas in chalk. I thought it would look quite effective. I used the canvas today as a background when i was photographing the magnets for my DaWanda shop. I think it needs a couple more coats as the strength of magnatism between the 2 wasn't great. i know its not my magnets as they stuck fine on our fridge for the very first photos i did.

I pinned the brooches to a cushion to photograph them.

anyway, i've run out of time to blog now - the oven timer has sounded! so you can see (and buy!!) my magnets and brooches here!