Folksy Friday

Happy Friday everyone. Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday - I seem to have gotten all in a kerfuffle with my sleeping pattern this week so fingers crossed I'll have straightened it out by the end of the weekend. But anyways, I have found some gorgeous paper decorations so show you today. This might actually be my favourite Folksy Friday to date!

These sweet little butterfly confetti are made by goosberrymoon.

This paper print bunting is made by English Vintage.

This framed paper hearts picture is sold by Lolly & Boo.

Rae Welch makes a range of beautiful paper birds. Sparrows, magpies, robins, blue tits, and even a few butterflies too!

And finally Bookity make a range of decorations and accessories from recycled books.

The rain is supposed to hold off until tomorrow so I think we're going to fire up the barbie tonight and pretend the weather is good! We haven't had one for at least a month - I'm having BBQ withdrawal!

Wordless Wednesday

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Giveaway winner!

So it's time to pick a winner for the giveaway. Are you excited?? I was! There will be none of that random number generator nonsense going on at Jemima HQ though. We pick winners good old fashioned raffle style and today I enlisted the help of my trusted assistant Jeff.

Over to you draw master Jeff:

As beautiful as you look in my hat, you're supposed to put the entries into it, not wear it!

That's better!

Having no aposable thumbs presents many challenges in life, but this particular problem was overcome by a makeshift fishing rod and some sellotape!

Reel her in Jeff!
And the winner is....

Kerry from Pennydog! Congrats Kerry! If you'd like to email me your address I'll send your goodies up to you.

A big thanks to everyone who entered. There were a good few names in the hat - a fair few more than I was expecting for my first ever giveaway, so thank you. And better luck next time!

Pen Pal Project

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Don't you just love getting hand written mail? I do. Most of what comes through my letterbox is boring - junk mail, bills, takeaway menus. As soon as I see my name written by hand on the front of an envelope I get excited. But it doesn't happen nearly often enough.

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That's why I was delighted when I found this post on Indie Fixx. Jen puts out a call for some new pen pals and I immediately signed up. I haven't had a pen pal for about 10 years. I used to love getting mail as a kid from London, Spain, France.

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Now I did start to get worried that I'd missed the boat, as the original post was written back in February, but I commented anyways and lo and behold, I now have 4 pen pals. Crikey! So I'm hoping to have my first batch of letters ready to send this week. They'll be going to America, Germany and Singapore. How exciting!

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We Won!

I was fortunate enough to have been invited to the Guildhall to hear the result of the 2013 City of Culture bid last night. And what a night it was! We won! The link will take you to a video of us hearing the announcement - not sure how to upload it to the blog sorry!


Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard - a well deserved win for us in the North West. And a massive thank you to everyone who supported the bid.

For those of you who haven't yet seen our bid video, here it is. If you have a spare few minutes please take a look - it's beautifully put together and makes you proud to live in this lovely city!



The atmosphere in the city over the past few weeks and months has been electric. I'm off this afternoon to join in the celebration in the guildhall square. For anyone around there will be live music and dancing in the city centre today until 5pm I think. Happy Days!

Urgh. There's nothing worse than having a cold in summer. No Sir! I have a serious case of the sniffles and I am not a happy bunny. But there's nothing like a lovely bag of buttons dropping through your letterbox to perk you up a bit!

Look how pretty they are!! No chance of staying grumpy with these babies around.


So I'm desperately trying to wolf down the vitamin C. I have no time to be sick! Today is the result of the City of Culture bid and I have been invited to go down to the city's Guildhall this evening to hear the announcement. For those of you who are interested the result will be announced live on the One Show tonight - 7pm, BBC1. Exciting times!! So everyone keep all your crossables crossed, and leave the breaking mirrors and walking under ladders till tomorrow.

Oh and before I go I'll remind you guys that the giveaway is still open. It's easy peasy lemon squeezy to enter so why not try your hand??

Birthday Boy

A Happy birthday to Patrick Steward and Harrison Ford. Oh and BF too!!


I hope he enjoys the cake I baked for him - I tried some and it is oh so yummy - even if I do say so myself. :)

Crafty Jemima's First Giveaway!

Well here we are: the 100th blog post! Exciting times! I remember starting up last year not really knowing what I was doing. But now I love my little blog - what a great way to record all the things I accomplish that would otherwise be forgotten. And it still amazes me that so many of you take the time to stop by and read! As it happens I also have a couple of other things to celebrate too. I've clocked up 100 followers over on Facebook and last week I got my very first supplier. Happy Days! But that's for another blog post.

Because as promised, today is giveaway day so here's what I'm offering up as a main prize:

One of my hand stitched heart button brooches and a matching keyring. Now I made these for my last craft fair and any I had left have been handed over to my aforementioned new supplier, so here's your chance to nab one of them before they're available for sale on Folksy.

I'll also chuck in a few extra little treats - it's always nice to get a surprise too!

So if you want to try your luck, here are the rules:

To enter the giveaway you can:
1 - follow the blog;
2 - follow me on twitter;
3 - like me on facebook.

Leave a comment below telling me which of the 3 you have done. Each one is equal to one entry - do all 3 and you have 3 entries.
If you already do any / all of the above and wish to be entered into the giveaway then leave a comment telling me which you do and your name will be added to the pot!

Overseas entries are very welcome. The giveaway will run until midnight on Monday 19th of July and the winner will be announced on Tuesday the 20th. Good luck!

Folksy Friday

Happy Friday everyone. I had a bit of a late start this morning owing to spending a few hours in casualty last night. What a week we are having!! My friend Collette (who I know reads my posts and I've been threatening to give a shout out to for a while now - Hi Collette!) tripped up some stairs and broke and dislocated a finger in the process of trying to steady herself. Ouch!!

But in every situation there is a silver lining (although I'm struggling to find a silver lining in the kayaking incident I must admit!) and from last night's events I have indeed found my Folksy Friday theme for this week. Enjoy Folksy's finest finger puppets!

Rose Lullaby Dolls creates all manner of pretty puppets and dolls.

You can find almost every animal imagined in finger puppet form over at With Hugs and Kisses.

This quirky birdie and friends are made by Dharmaflyer Crafts.

Blue Agapanthus makes these cute little amigurumi pups.

And finally it's Bret and Jermaine! These Flight of the Concord finger puppets are joined by Bjork, Morrissey and Ziggy Stardust over at Ding Dong Designs.

So, they say that bad things come in threes, and a good few of my friends are planning a spot of Go-Karting tomorrow. Strap on them helmets nice and tight guys!!

And before I leave you I'll remind you that this is blog post number 99, so on Monday it's giveaway time! So be sure to stop by!

Me Day

Some of you twitter frequenters may have heared me harping on about going kayaking yesterday. Remember how excited I was?? I've been double canoeing and white water rafting before so I was really looking forward to it!

Well more fool me is all that I can say. Apart from actually drowning I don't think it could have gotten much worse. I capsized and couldn't flip the damn thing round again. Scary stuff. But then I accidentally capsized without having taken a breath first and got completely stuck. I couldn't flip the boat and couldn't find the tag to pull the skirt off and free my legs. I managed to grab the instructors kayak as instructed but my head kept getting pushed back under. It got to the point where I knew I needed to breathe and sucked in a load of water.

Thankfully I got dragged out before I took another lung full of water. And that was the end of my kayaking experience. I pulled myself out of the water and sat in the wind in a wet suit for 45 mins. I wouldn't recommend that either!

Now anyone who knows me will know that I am a calm person. I don't panic easily. But I honestly have never been that scared in my entire life and most definitely will not be doing anything remotely life threatening ever again!

So today I am taking a me day. My muscles are aching, my throat is sore and I feel very sick. So I'm going to lie on my sofa watching vampire DVDs and sipping tea. But on the plus side, as one lovely lady said to me last night - that's one thing I can cross off my Bucket List!

So I'll leave you with a song that I love that I can't stop singing since "the event":

Wordless Wednesday

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A New Friend

Do you ever get those cravings to create for no good reason? After making and making for the craft fair last week I just wanted to make something meaningless and fun. So yesterday I got out the craft books and decided to make us a new little friend:

Meet Coco the bear! I got the pattern from Tone Finnanger's Sew Pretty Homestyle. I've had that book for a year now and have been dying to make one of the projects ever since. The pattern is meant to be machine stitched but I just wanted to sit in front of the TV with a cuppa and busy my hands for a while. It was incredibly easy to make and I was done in a few hours - great for quenching that urge to make and leaves you with a lovely sense of accomplishment!
There's a pattern for a jumper and shorts for the bear to wear but I think I'll try and work out a dress pattern for her instead. I'm actually working on my own bear pattern too as I'd like to make one that's not as tall and gangly, and a bit smaller. I'll let you know how I get on!

Craft Fair

I have reached the point of feeling drunk I'm so tired, have devoured a pizza and will swiftly be dragging myself up to bed, but before I do I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who came along to see me and all the other exhibitors at the Playhouse craft fair today.


We met some lovely people, made some new friends and sold some items too. And for those of you who weren't able to make it some of my new items will be making their way over to folksy next week.

Right, I'm most definitely running on empty now so I'm off to recharge the batteries for tomorrow. Did I mention I'm hosing a friend's Fourth of July party?? It'll be my first ever so I'm really looking forward to it. Night all!

Folksy-less Friday

Yep I'm afraid there's no time for a Folksy Friday today. Too much sewing to be done! I know I know I've been a rubbish blogger this week and have slapped myself on the wrist on your behalf. Sorry!

But I thought I'd at least take 5 mins away from the sewing machine to show you some quick snaps of what I've been working on. If you'd like to see the fruits of my labour in person then please do pop down to the Playhouse in Derry tomorrow.


I'll be there between 11-4 and it's geared up to be quite a big event. And please come and say hi if you see me there!

Sewing and Strawberries

Argh! Sorry for the blog silence this week. I thought I should at least drop in and say Hi.

I have thread sticking to my clothes, my resemblance to a disheveled old lady is remarkable, and I'm in danger of disappearing under a tower of fabric. But I'm loving it! I don't know about you but I love having these bursts of creativity -spending days and days designing and making. And I suppose an impending craft fair is inspiration enough to get you started!

So I really need to get back to it, but before I disappear behind the sewing machine once more, I'll leave you with one of my proudest achievements this year - my first ever strawberry!


The fact that this is the only one of 6 strawberry plants to produce any fruit is beside the point. I'm gonna enjoy having these babies for breakfast soon.