Thumbelina At The Beetle Ball

Hi everyone hope you're having a nice 'summer'.

Just thought I'd post about something that's inspired me recently...

On my birthday, I watched Thumbelina- one of my favourite films as a child. I LOVE the story and the characters.... just everything about it to be honest!

Anyway, I've always loved the bit where she meets the Beetle and he makes her sing and dance at the Beetle Ball- and I LOVE the outfit she wears when performing. I have always wanted a dress like that, not to mention the wings and antennae :D

So when I was watching it the other day, I was like 'why don't I make a dress like that?', like a modern version anyway... so I came up with a few ideas... I might make it, although have so much work to do right now it's not looking great!

I don't have a photo of Thumbelina at the Beetle Ball, but there are loads on Google Images- just type in 'Thumbelina Beetle'... her dress is gorgeous :)

This is the best picture I have of my design... it's pretty rough and I don't know how you're supposed to design dresses to be honest I'm not an expert! Also, sorry about the photo, I would have scanned it but I don't have a scanner for this laptop and our scanner's not working too well anyway!

Anyway, as I said, I shall post updates on this, watch this space ;)

LOVEYOU
Caitlin

P.S. Prince Cornelius is only 16! And he's not a complete idiot. Then again, he is a fairy prince...

Happy Birthday To Me!

Hi everyone! It's my birthday today, just to let you know!

Obviously, yesterday was my party, and it was rather sucessful! Here are a few of the photos!

Tulgey Wood... with 2 trees...

All my lovely friends dressed up as various characters...:)

The 'glass table', complete with 'Drink Me' bottle and 'Eat Me' cake

Me setting up- was a mess at this point!

My friend Emily's door :)

A rabbit hole for people to crawl through to get to 'Wonderland' (kept falling down though :/)

THE CAKE! All hail the cake :)

Because it was actually my Unbirthday yestersay ;)

Winner of the costume competition- my cousin Daisy as the White Rabbit. She has a blog too. It's called daisychain- read it, it's good :D

I made (or tried to) an Alice out of icing. She is now called 'Fat Alice' ¬_¬

I was planning on putting on a picture of my brother's caterpillar costume (I made it yesterday morning, took me about 20 minutes but was pretty good!) but I didn't really get a proper photo of it- I had to pin most of it together anyway so it all fell apart :/ haha

A MERRY UNBIRTHDAY TO YOU ALL!!
(unless it's you're birthday, like it is mine!!)
Caitlin (now 16)

P.S. I got vampire fangs for my birthday xD

Quick Update

Just thought I'd give you all a quick update on the whole party thing.

Well today, I got my GCSE results! 5 A*'s and 4 A's- am very very happy :)

I also now have a laptop- my first. It is beautiful and has been christened Daphne, because I love Some Like It Hot. I'm having a few problems with iTunes but apart from that, everything is fine and dandy :)

Anyways, party-wise, today I'm making my cake, which was inspired by one I found on Google Images (be prepared for that, it's gonna be huuuggggee)... well I wont decorate it today but I'll make it :L

And then I think I might make decorations to go on the top of the cake as well :)

See ya later, alligator
Caitlin

P.S. Daphne says hi ;)
P.P.S. I am Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney
...
that's Robin Hood, by the way :D

A Week Down the Rabbit Hole...

So this week my house is becoming Wonderland, starting tonight- I've just started putting up decorations.

The staircase has become Tulgey Wood- the wood with all the mysterious creatures in the Disney (<3) film.

The hallway is now the room with all the doors- instead of one little door I've got lots of different sized doors, and it'll have a little table with a bottle labled 'Drink Me' there by Thursday.

The front doorway, I've decided, is going to be covered with a huge piece of paper with a hole cut in the bottom, and I'm going to pin some brown fabric behind it so people have to crawl through it- like a rabbit hole! 

This is like what I did for one of my birthday parties when I was little- we did a Harry Potter party and made a huge brick wall (platforms 9 and 10) which you had to run through- like getting onto Platform 9 3/4 :D

Anyway that's all I've got so far. I will probably post some pictures on Thursday, so you can see it all together :D

LOVEYOU
Caitlin

P.S. Pride and Prejudice is amazing, and Mr Darcy is gorgeous ;)

P.P.S. As requested, I LOVE KATIE!! (my best friend, by the way!)

Costume Troubles

So as I have previously mentioned, for my 16th birthday party next Thursday, I'm having an Alice in Wonderland tea party.

It seems that my brother George (who thinks that this blog is a waste of time because no one reads it, but I guess that's little brothers for you) did not get the message that my party is in fact next week. And so, while he sits and plays on his PS3, I have been trying to find ideas on Google for a costume for him.

George originally wanted to be the Mad Hatter, but unfortunately that role had already been filled. Then I said that he would be Tweedledum and he could bring a friend to be Tweedledee (I insisted that he would be TweedleDUM, I'm sure you see why). However, when I told my friend Grace who was originally going to be the caterpillar, she said that she would rather be Tweedledee/dum and that George could be the caterpillar.

And the caterpillar is the most IMPOSSIBLE costume to create, whether I am going to MAKE it or just put some stuff together.

Our original idea was to buy a cheap blue top and pair of trousers from Primark or somewhere similar, then buy some leg warmers for the extra arms/legs.

Of course, you can imagine how much success we've had with this, especially the blue trousers. The only pair I could find were some disgusting light blue combat style trousers, but they were not at all the right type and were £9, so there was no point.

So then we looked at ready made costumes. Well I'm sorry but I refuse to pay whatever $125 is in pounds for something I could make myself (pretty much). To be honest, it wasn't that good either.

So, I'm now thinking of making one. That should be interesting, seeing as I'm busy every day next week (Monday: shopping for party, Tuesday: results day, Wednesday: Katie and Emily over to help prepare for party, Thursday: party, Friday: birthday, although why would I make it on Friday anyway?) Then I need to make Emily's skirt. Still. Will post my progress, if any!

Anyways if anyone has any ideas that would be appreciated :)

Thanks :D
Caitlin

P.S. Frogs = comments. I changed it because 'comments' was boring.

Followers!

I have a grand total of
T W O
followers!!

I'm not being sarcastic- every little helps :)

Having said that, the more the merrier!

P L U S

if you follow my blog, I will love you
F O R E V E R !

but not in a weird way, just kinda, a nice, friendly way...

you get my point :)

LOVEYOU
Caitlin

P.S. Really feel like making a dress or a skirt or an item of clothing... still need to make my friend Emily's Queen of Heart's skirt for my party next week... I just haven't got round to it :/

In This Style 10/6 (or completely free when you follow the pattern!)

It worked! Yay! I can finally upload the pictures and attempt to put on a pattern...

By the way, crochet...ing.. is not for old ladies. Not that they don't do it too but.... anyway, I find crochet an easier alternative to knitting- it grows faster, it only has one needle, stitches are easily picked up again if dropped, the needle is only attatched to one stitch, you don't need to be super advanced to make cool shapes (like the hat :) ), and the stitches are so easy to undo if you make a mistake. I'm sure there are loads more but that's all I can think of right now :).

I decided to photograph it on a teapot with ribbons on for some reason :)

Here is the pattern. It probably doesn't make any sense but there you go :) By the way, if you are learning how to crochet, I would recommend youtube- it's much better than instructions being written down because people show you. That's pretty much how I learnt anyway :)

By the way,

ch = chain- wrap round, pull through
sc = single crochet- insert into next stitch, wrap round, pull through, wrap round, pull through
slip stitch = insert into next stitch, wrap round, pull through
inc= increase (sc 2 in one stitch)
dec= decrease (sc 2 together)

I'm only saying this because when I was learning crochet, I strangely discovered that sometimes 'single crochet' means 'double crochet', or the other way around I suppose. I don't know why...

You need:

4mm crochet hook (that's what I did it with anyways)
Wool in 3 different colours- I used a berry-coloured one, black and white
A darning needle
An ordinary needle
Thread

How to do it:

Main hat:

Round 1: ch 2, sc 6 in first stitch (6) <-- the number of stitches, by the way
Round 2: [sc 1, inc] around (9)
Round 3: [sc 1, inc] 4 times, sc 1 (13)
Round 4: [sc 1, inc] 6 times, sc 1 (19)
Round 5: [sc 1, inc] 9 times, sc 1 (28)
Round 6: [sc 1, inc] around, slip stitch (42)
Round 7: sc around in back loops of stitches (42)
Round 8: [sc 2, dec] 10 times, sc 2 (32)
Round 9: [sc 2, dec] around (24)
Round 10: [sc 1, dec] around (16)
Rounds 11-13: sc around (16)
Round 14: sc around in back loops of stitches (16)
Round 15: [sc 1, inc] around (24)
Round 16: [sc 1, inc] around, slip stitch, fasten off.

Hat band:

Row 1: ch 18
Row 2: sc 17
Row 3: chain 1, sc 17, fasten off.

Hat card:

Row 1: ch 5
Row 2: sc 4
Rows 3-5: ch 1, sc 4
Row 6: ch 1, sc 4, fasten off

Now you can sew '10/6' onto the hat card with some wool (I used a darning needle with the big holes)... you can sew 'In this style' as well if you want and are insane at sewing.
Then sew the hat card to the hat, and then the hat band, et VOILA! You're very own mini Mad Hatter's hat :)
You can make it into a pin cushion by making a circle that's big enough to fit into the gap at the bottom of the hat, stuff the hat and sew on the circle. 

Have fun, my lovelies :)
Caitlin

P.S. Homer's 'The Odyssey' is so depressing! I'm reading it for school and they are crying and moaning constantly! I know they have good reason to do so but still!!