Changed.

Hey, look! I've got a new header and post dividers! Hope you like. I designed the header in PicMonkey and just uploaded it through the Blogger layout interface, and you can find the easy-peasy tutorial for the divider here.

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

Embroidered Wedding Date - Tutorial

One of my workmates got married on the weekend. He was still at work late Friday afternoon, being his helpful self, sorting out problems that other people had caused while ordering flowers and nipping out to purchase cufflinks. One of the people he was helping was me, as I had made a bit of a mess of a piece of routine work. So I made him and his wife this little wall hanging as a thank you for being awesome and to celebrate their wedding date.

What you will need to make a similar gift:

4" (10cm) embroidery hoop
washi tape
piece of fabric to fit the hoop
water soluble fabric marker
embroidery needle
two colours of embroidery thread (I used Anchor266 and DMC3809)
small piece of waste canvas
double-sided tape
cardboard
pencil
glue stick
paper scissors
yarn scissors
pinking shears

First, I wrapped the outer piece of the embroidery hoop with washi tape. As I was going to be using the hoop as a frame for the finished work, this made it look pretty and also holds the fabric in place.

I trimmed the piece of fabric to size with pinking shears and placed it in the hoop. You can use regular fabric scissors, but pinking the edges will keep them from fraying. I then used the water soluble marker to draw a circle, which helped me place the names of the couple and the date. I wrote the names and the wedding date along the lines of the circle. I practised on a piece of paper first, until I liked the way the lettering looked.

I then embroidered along the lines of the letters and numbers in back stitch, making sure the stitches were roughly the same length. After I was done, I basted my piece of waste canvas onto the middle and cross stitched a simple heart design over three threads of the waste canvas, making the crosses slightly larger than usual. In order to determine where to place the heart, I held the frame against the light to see where the middle of the design was.

Once done stitching the heart, I carefully trimmed the waste canvas around the design and removed the threads one by one. You can use tweezers for this if it appears too fiddly.

I then took the finished embroidery out of the hoop and used a clean, lint free cloth that I dampened with cold water to remove the marker for the fabric. It is enough to dab the lines, but you could also rinse out the whole piece.

I let the fabric dry and then placed it back in the hoop. I trimmed it all around to a length that gave me an overhang of about 1cm, using the pinking shears. I attached a length of double sided tape all along the inside rim of the hoop, removed the backing and folded the edge of the fabric over to the inside to secure.

This is what the hoop looked like from the back after I was finished. I then used a pencil and traced very lightly around the outside of the hoop on a piece of cardboard. This was going to be the backing for my wall hanging. 

I cut the circle out just inside the lines and used a glue stick to secure the cardboard to the back of the hoop. I also glued on a paper doily with a message for the couple, but whether or not you would like to do the same is up to you. I attached a pretty ribbon to the screw and then I was done!

I hope this tutorial was okay to understand. Let me know if you make your own little gift for somebody! It doesn't have to be for a wedding, you could also give it to somebody to commemorate the birth if a child or embroider the names of you and a friend? I am sure you could come up with all different kinds of ideas!

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated). 

Have You Got Mail?

Can I let you in on something? If I comment on a blog and the blog owner replies to my comment with another comment, I might never know. Because I do not usually go and check back! I will just assume they have ignored me altogether. Sad, but a fact of life.
If you have commented on All The Live Long Day, you will know that I'm gonna come back to you with an email. And if I do not have your email but a bit of time, I might come over to your blog and leave a comment in reply. In any case, you will know that I have read what you wrote to me. But emailing is definitely my preferred method of interaction. 
By getting in touch with people that way, I have had some awesome conversations and built a few virtual relationships with a bunch of lovely people. Emailing is personal and easy to do. 
You are wondering what I am talking about and want in on the email magic? It's so easy! 
If you are using Blogger, like I am, you can associate an email address with your profile. And when you do that, any owner of any blog that you comment on can reply to your remark straight from their inbox. If you have no public email address, you will be a no-reply-blogger. That's does not sound nice, does it? 
If you are now a bit down and feeling sad about the fact that somebody might think you don't like to play, you can quickly change your status from noreply-comment@blogger.com to iamsupersociableandloveemails@anyemailaddress.com. 
Here is how: 
While you are signed in to your account, you open your dashboard in the design view, and there, beside your profile picture, you will find a link that lets you edit your profile. Click that link and you will see the following:

In order to associate an email address with you profile, you need to make sure you are:
1) sharing your profile2) showing your email address3) entering a valid email address to your profile
If you are leery about sharing your personal email address, why don't you set one up that you will only be using for blogging purposes? That is what I did with annika@allthelivelongday.com. It is so easy to just open a new account with any of the major email providers.
And that is it. Now the people whose blogs you comment on will be able to interact with you in a quick and effortless way. All they need to do is click 'reply to email'. This is particularly useful if you enter giveaways, your contact details will always be right there, conveniently connected with your profile. If you win, they'll know where to reach you! I know this works with Blogger, but I am sure that the other blogging platforms must have similar settings.
If you read and comment on my blog, will you do this for me? I'd love to chat with you first hand! Mkay? And if not, that's fine too, naturally. I'd just thought I'd put this information out there.
Have a lovely day!

© Text & Photos - Annika - All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated).

I'm Guest Posting At Sparrows & Arrows Today (+ Giveaway)

The giveaway is now closed.

BOO!
Halloween is almost here!

Jessi from Sparrows & Arrows recently shared some of her best travel tips for everybody over here. Did you read her post?

In return, I promised to write something for Sparrows & Arrows' celebration of the scariest month of all. Head over to Sparrows & Arrows to check out my little Halloween project and cross stitch tutorial and all the other fun posts from this month.

Done that?

Okay!

Then now is the time to enter the giveaway!

I am giving away a kit for a Halloween cross stitch design like the one I made. The kit includes:

- 5 skeins of stranded cotton

- 1 embroidery hoop

- 1 embroidery needle

- 1 piece of cross stitch fabric

- 1 Halloween cross stitch chart

There are up to three ways to enter:

1) Leave a comment below, telling me your favourite Sparrows & Arrows Halloween post.

2) If you are a follower Sparrows & Arrows via Google Friend Connect, let me know in a separate comment for another entry. (If you are not: what's holding you back? It's such a cool blog!!!)

3) If you follow All The Live Long Day with Google Friend Connect, leave another comment for an added chance to win! (If you are not, why don't you start now and make my day?)

Please make sure that your comment links to your email address or that you leave the address within the comment, so that I can contact you in case of a win!

The giveaway will close at midnight (GMT) on Sunday, 30 October and I will draw a winner on Halloween! This means you will have tons of time to finish your first piece of decoration for next year's spook fest!

GOOD LUCK!

© All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated)

How To Make A Paper Flower Boutonniere or Corsage

Inspired by Martha, I made boutonnieres and corsages for all members of our wedding party from tissue paper and wire. Let me show you how.

Need To Have:
cardboardrulerpencilscissorstissue papera ball-shaped object, ca. 3 cm in diameterartificial stamensgreen florist tapeflorist stub wire (ca. 20 gauge)wire plierssome woody herbs (optional)brooch pins

Need To Do:

First, make a 12.5 cm x 6 cm cardboard template. You will need this to cut out the petals to size.

For one flower, you will need 5 petals. Use your cardboard template and a pencil to draw 5 rectangles onto tissue paper in the colour of your choice. You can fold the paper into 5 layers if you like and cut out 5 petal shapes at once.

To form each petal, wrap your tissue paper halfway around a ball-shaped object. I used a little styrofoam ball for this, but you could also use a marble, a bouncing ball, or any other object that is about 3 cm in diameter. Twist the ends of the paper together like you were wrapping a piece of candy. Be quite delicate with this and careful not to rip the paper, but make sure that both ends are tightly twisted. Then carefully remove the ball.

After you have shaped each petal in this fashion, take one of the petals and about 8 - 12 of the articficial stamens and attach them to each other with florist tape. Add the petals one by one, until you end up with a flower shape. Don't worry if your flower looks a bit wonky at this stage, that can be rectified later.

Take a piece of stub wire and attach your flower to it, with the help of more florist tape. Cut the wire at the required length.

Cut off the twisty bits from the ends of your petals and arrange them in a nice blossom shape.

For our boutonnieres, I went out into the garden the day before the wedding and picked some rosemary, lavender and sage to attach to the paper flowers. I cut the herbs to the same length as the wire stem, stripped the lower leaves and attached them to the flower with the florist tape. this made the boutonnieres look more interesting and they also smelled really nice!

For the final step, take the brooch pin and attach it to the back of your creation, using the trusted florist tape. 
Et voilà! Your done!

P.S.: Keep your eyes peeled for the Wedding Month giveway. I will post the details later today!

© All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated)

An Instant Guestbook

Hello There! 

If you ended up on this post via a link or a search, can you please let me know in a comment or an email what you were doing just before you clicked to get here? This post is getting SO many hits and it's driving me crazy that I do not know who or what is sending this much traffic my way! 

Ta!

***

Our guest book was probably one of my favourite details from our wedding. Well, apart from saying "I Do", mind you! Marco and I both really appreciate photography, and our guest book was all about taking pictures!  

Initially, I had looked into hiring a photo booth, but that turned out to be somewhat too expensive for our budget. I had bought an old Polaroid camera from eBay a while before the wedding, and that gave me the idea for a different kind of guest book that was more interactive than our guests just writing a proverb and signing their names in an actual book.

There were a few decorative vases with shrub-like branches dotted around our reception venue. We tied a lot of pretty ribbons around these twigs and arranged a little table with the Polaroid, a few film cartridges (also from eBay), some Sharpies, a bucket with clothes pegs and the following instructions:

 

I was really happy when I saw that the idea worked and our guests had loads of fun taking their pictures. They all live in an album now and are such a great reminder of all the lovely people who celebrated with us. I only wish Marco and I had remembered to take one of ourselves!

   

© All The Live Long Day (unless otherwise stated)