26/01/2014

Recently I’ve been...

Reading these magazines, which were a little gift from my mum when I went round for dinner last week. They’ve made the perfect pick me up to the January blues, along with my trusty rabbit lamp of course.


Resolving to let my nails recover after copious amounts of glitter nail varnish over the festive season. In an attempt to look after them better I had a go with my new stylefile; I’m not sure it ‘revolutionises’ nail filing but was fun to try!


Baking chocolate and peanut butter cookies with some of our leftover Christmas chocolate, sadly I don’t have a picture as they disappeared within a day. Oops.

Photographing some of the local flooding. This is usually fields; there should be no water in sight!

19/01/2014

I made a candle!

If there was one ‘make’ I would never have considered trying it was candle making, the idea of hot wax and flammable materials seemed like a recipe for disaster, well, when in my hands anyway. But after receiving a candle making set for Christmas, it seemed the decision had been made for me and the other weekend I figured I might as well give it a go.

And as you can see by the pictures... it actually worked! I was too nervous to attempt to take step by step pictures on my first go – juggling stirring the pan of hot wax (was convinced I was going to ruin the pan and wooden spoon) and my camera seemed like that recipe for disaster I mentioned earlier.

Anyway, it was actually fairly easy *faints with shock* and all the materials needed can be brought online so keep your eyes out for a tutorial coming soon!



Burn baby burn.

12/01/2014

florals and feathers: the January edit

Welcome to a new feature here on floral & feather, I thought it would be fun to share some of the floral and feather-y things I find, love and am inspired by while browsing the internet each month.

florals

Print / No winter lasts forever / Makewells - Etsy
Not only is this print absolutely beautiful, it’s also fairly appropriate – anyone else already dreaming of spring? When will the rain end?! I love its deeper meaning too and of course the pretty font and flower decorations.


Duvet cover / h&m home
I really should know better by now – browsing the new h&m home collection is a danger to my bank balance. And here’s what I’m coveting this time – a gorgeous floral duvet set, complete with my favourite colour and hummingbirds! We saw hummingbirds in Barbados and they really are amazing creatures, interestingly they’re much smaller than I’d imagined but fascinating to watch. This is going straight on my birthday list.

feathers

Necklace / Wooden feather / A girl called Boz - Etsy
When I doodle feathers (seems to happen quite a lot) this is very similar to how I draw them, I love the curve of this one, the stripes and the material – plus it’s on sale!


Coasters / Set of four feather coasters / Club matters – Not on the high street
Sometimes I think our flat has too much white, but I’m sure I could make an exception for these white feather print coasters – almost too nice to cover up with your mug of tea.


08/01/2014

THE knitted scarf

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the source of most of my pre-Christmas stress...  the knitted scarf. Would you believe I started this in August 2013 but was still knitting at lunchtime on Christmas Eve?! *Note to self: even if you start presents early you actually have to keep working on them in order to finish* Anyway the recipient of the stressful scarf, the boyfriend, loves it so that has made it all worthwhile!

It matches the neon and grey gloves he requested last year (after seeing the heart fingerless gloves I made for myself). Both patterns are from ravelry – here’s the one for the scarf but it’s just a simple rib with striped ends, I cast on a few less stitches so it’s not quite a wide but thank goodness or I’d probably still be knitting it now...



04/01/2014

Photography – having fun with a fisheye

I’ve loved photography for years, way before I started blogging and my canon 600D is probably my most prized possession, so whenever Christmas or a birthday rolls around I usually have some sort of accessory on my list and this year it was a fisheye lens.

*Did you know - it’s called a fisheye lens because the distorted image it takes is similar to the view of a fish when looking towards the surface of the water.*  I’ve always loved this effect so am looking forward to having some fun with it!

Proper fisheye lenses can be really expensive (from £200 to over £1,000!) and seeing as I was just after something to play around with I thought this Opteka lens was far better value for money at just £45 and it had some encouraging reviews on amazon. Rather than being a lens in itself this one fits on the end of your existing lens and converts it to fish eye. After a brief stint on Christmas Day, I took the lens on its first proper outing last week and here are the results. Drumroll please.

When zoomed fully out you can create almost a complete circle and the effect is at its strongest, the more you zoom in the more of the circle you cut out and the weaker the effect. The really bright winter sunshine (hello vitamin D. Finally!) also created a few interesting light spots on one of the pictures which I really like. 

Here fishy fishy...




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