Good Morning my dears,
As I write this my rats are going to town on a paper bag, ripping it up, tearing and generally rough housing. It seems I'm destined to be surrounded by naughty little monsters! I mentioned that I was going to be making sock dolls in my last post and indeed I have been doing just that and this little fellow appeared! His name is Lumpy, due to some rather amusing attempts at stuffing him, and he tells me he's a Squirrel Sock Monster. He looks sweet enough but he's actually rather naughty, luckily he likes flowers and blackcurrent juice a lot so I let him off.
Hanging out with Clementine, Orchid and Mystery Plant! Mystery Plant is extremely mysterious but also very flamboyant as you can see from her massive leaves.
Yay flowers!
Lumpy: "hehehehe, he can't see me..."
Stan: "... I can see your ears Lumpy."
Lumpy: *scuttle scuttle* "Now he definitely won't be able to see me!"
Stan: "... It's the ears Lumpy..."
Teapot Shenanigans!
He tried to help with the washing up but he's not quite tall enough, quickly get a look at his tail! He's rather shy about it.
Hunting the Mortar and Pestle, a rather difficult prey to catch I've been told.
I had so much fun making him and now I can tell he's going to be a great toy to play with. The process was quite time consuming but relaxing and fun, I used a child's sock for the body and stuffed him with Cotton Wool since I couldn't find any stuffing at the time (I have some now!)
His ears are completely poseable which I love, sometimes I like to make them look like little horns. More Sock Monsters are definitely on their way, currently a Pig is in the works.
Good Evening my Sweetlings,
I'm very excited to announce that after months of planning and waiting I've finally started making my very first perfume. I first found out about making perfume around six months ago but by then there weren't many flowers for me to experiment with so I had to wait until Spring to really try my hand at it. Patience is not one of my strong suits I have to say, it was really difficult not to be able to get in the kitchen and try my hand at it straight away! Still, Spring is here (Hello Ostara!) and she has bought the flowers with her.
I thought I would share some pictures of the process and my own method of perfume making. Please bear in mind this is my first attempt so I'm sure my method is by no means perfect or flawless, all the same it has been very fun and easy and now I get to experiment lots which is always exciting for me. This is the beginning of the process, there's still more to do.
I started with the following tools:
1. A bottle of Almond Oil to act as the carrier oil, used to catch the scent and as the base for the perfume. You can also use refined Jojoba Oil. I used 100 ml but would suggest that 150 - 200 ml is probably a bit better.
2. Cup for measuring the Oil. The recipe I followed said to use half a cup of oil but I just tipped the whole bottle in since I didn't have too much.
3. A pot with lid for mixing everything together. I've heard that keeping the concoction in a dark place helps to seal in the scent and protects the oil from sun damage. For this reason you should also keep all finished perfumes and oils in dark glass bottles or normal bottles with labels around them and keep them out of direct sunlight.
4. Wooden Mortar and Pestle and small chopping board. I always use this to grind up my own homegrown herbs and flowers, I highly recommend having one in your kitchen! Placing the Mortar and Pestle on the board stops petals from getting on your work surface if you have any spillage.
5. Paper bag filled with collected plant material. The bag held dried Cherry Blossoms and is also handy for collecting flowers in when you go out picking. Dried flowers are easier to crush and get less sticky but I think fresher flowers have a stronger smell.
Pour the oil out into the cup to measure it, I had exactly half a big teacupful of oil. Put the flowers into the mortar and pestle and gently grind them a little. It's not necessary to really mash them up, we're just trying to bruise them to release the scent. Once you've done that place them in the bowl.
Next I went and collected some flowers from my garden. I decided to make a very Springlike scent so I used Cherry Blossoms, Orange Blossoms from my Clementine Tree, some Salvia, a Narcissus head, a few flowers from the Hyacinth, some Tulip leaves that had fallen off and a few leaves of Mint (not too many as it is very strong smelling!)
Gently tear up the fresh flowers and bruise them a little in the mortar and pestle or with your fingers. Be careful of any little bugs that might be inside, I didn't realise that the hyacinth had some little bugs in until they came running out, try not to drown them if you can! Once everything is torn up and checked for creatures add them to the pot and pour the oil in.
Swill the oil around a little bit to make sure you have all the leaves covered. It doesn't look very pretty right now but that's okay! Place the pot lid on top, or cover with clingfilm and then leave in a warm area for two or three days. After that we use cheesecloth to strain the oil out and get rid of the leaves which will leave us with the scented oil to play with.
I'll show you the next stage in a couple of days, in the meantime look out for tutorials on how to turn your odd socks into Sock Dolls! I'm taking a trip back to my folks and am going to making a selection of stuffed sock dolls with my mummy, I'm really psyched to share them with you all!
Good night my loves ♥
Good Afternoon my dears,
I decided to break up Thursday's adventure into two parts, the trip to Naturally Gifted really deserved it's own post I think! Here is what Kala and I got up to for the rest of the day, lots and lots of climbing about on trees and following cute birds around. The above picture is my favourite of the day, doesn't she look super cute?
A mallard surveying the land from his water feature.
Amazing vines.
Beautiful golden tree.
I think there were exactly three photos of me looking normal that day, everything else looked like a variation of this.
Or this!
Frogspawn, I love frogspawn, tadpoles and frogs so much. They remind me of childhood, of learning the frog lifecycle in school and springtime trips to the lake to collect tadpoles, watching them grow over the weeks and then releasing the tiny frogs.
So many blossoms were out, Kala and I collected some for my perfume making and now my clementine tree has flowered too! I'm definitely going to make a blossom based perfume.
Tree climbing explorers were we! Strangely it felt like you were really high up in this tree even though you actually weren't.
I love Springtime adventures so much, the light, the warmth, the flowers and smells. We were walking around sniffing the air the whole time because it smelt so wonderful. I've got a trip planned to the Sherwood Forest with my friend Ruthie in April, this year seems set to be full of adventures into the wild with good friends and I can't wait.
Good Morning my sweetlings,
I hope you all are having a wonderful week, mine has been rather hectic but mostly in a good way! Yesterday my friend Kala came to visit which always puts me in great spirits, seeing her is always so much fun. We drank camomile tea and hot chocolate, ate chocolate twists, I bought a little wooden giraffe painted like a cow (so strange but so cute!) and tropical green feather earrings that match my hair, we ate in the park and fed blueberry muffin to a Robin, collected blossoms for my perfume making and climbed trees.
We also took a trip to the magic shop that I often reference here, it's actually called Naturally Gifted, and I asked the lady there if I could take some pictures to share with you my lovelies. I'm excited to share one of my favourite places in all of Lincoln, it is truly gorgeous in there, very peaceful, friendly and interesting.
Jackets, hoodies, skirts, scarves, hats... pretty much everything is available!
The shop stocks a great variety of candles and incenses in all shapes and sizes. My favourites are the tall coloured candles which can be notoriously hard to find, you can use them as spell candles or as normal. I also love the incense crystals and have quite a few different ones myself, they're not as smoky as incense sticks or cones. Furthermore there is a shelf full of base oils and scented oils for perfume making and essential oil or massage oil making.
There are lots of different books, spell books, palm reading, tarot card reading, crystal books and lots of others. There are also some interesting books on spirituality including The Secret which I whole heartedly recommend. A large selection of tarot decks, oracle decks and rune sets are also available.
Record bags, I think these are really cool.
Phrenology head and Palmistry hand.
I love the crystal, fluorite and quartz tealight holders. I definitely want to buy some of these at some point.
A variety of crystals and stones.
Leather bound grimoires. I've seen these in a few places and they're so gorgeous but very expensive.
These were new and probably my favourite thing I spotted there, little witches and wizards! It saddens me when I meet people who think that witches are scary or evil, I always want to tell them that there's so much more to witches than scary faces, warts and evil spells.
These are my absolute favourite things in the shop, I have wanted one of them for so long now. If I could I would dot them about everywhere.
More witchies.
Tree colouring pencils and normal pencils. I love these so much so I finally bought myself some yesterday.
I highly recommend a trip to this shop as the surrounding area is beautiful and old fashioned and you can always visit the old sweet shop I reviewed here! The lady who runs the shop is so nice and will always chat with you and there is something here that everyone would enjoy. It's definitely one of the hidden gems of this city.
The address, for anyone interested is:
Naturally Gifted
61 Steep Hill
Lincoln LN2 1LR
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