Making Crochet while the Sun Doesn't Shine!

Hello everybody!

We have been a little quiet for the last few weeks as you will have seen. This is in part due to the purple bird's return to work after her super lovely maternity leave. Because of this and a decision to spend more time making things rather than writing about what we want to make, we have chosen to limit our posts to more sporadic stories of what we have been doing over a period of time. This should mean that they will make better and more colourful reading, and that we are not bombarding you all with every thought running through our heads. After all we have Twitter for that!

So, what have we been up to since we last wrote?

First of all you may remember a few weeks back we ran a competition to win one of our bunting necklaces. We announced the winner on Instagram and Twitter and are pleased to say she received her necklace just in time for the Jubilee celebrations at the weekend. God bless Royal Mail who managed a next day delivery!

We have been making and experimenting lots over the last few weeks. Here some of our creations below. You may have seen a few snapshots if you follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Some have been added to our Etsy shop today and more will be added soon. The photographing process is more time consuming than we would have thought but once we get used to it I think we will get things clearer and quicker.

Love Heart Doily

Scrumptious Scrubbies!

Sold in packs of 4

Rainbow Hearts...

Lots of Jewellery and Accessories for our Etsy Shop!

FREE UK POSTAGE on all Etsy orders!

No need to add anything further here really is there! We are running this offer until further notice. Take a look and see if there is anything you fancy.

The pink bird has had this week off work. Today is her last day of official holiday (Boohoo!) and she has been trying to make it count with more making and some time to update a few things online. In a way all this bad weather has been good from a crafting point of view but our tans are fading and tempers fraying. Hopefully the sun will come out in time for us to go back to work next week!

We were recently asked by a friend to make a raffle prize for an outdoor playgroup that she is involved in. The playgroup is run in Ivybridge, Devon and encourages kids to have fun outdoors whatever the weather! They had a coffee morning on Thursday which we are pleased to say went really well and they managed to raise a total just short of £400 which is brilliant! If you're local and fancy attending, their first group is on the 25th of June. You can find more information here - https://www.facebook.com/BluebellsOutdoorWoodlandPlaygroup
Also, the purple bird bought some raffle tickets and won a Build-A-Bear voucher which she is very much looking forward to spending with her little chick! :-D

Just before all the rain we managed a few outdoor activities. First of all there was a lovely walk with a group of friends at Becky falls in South Devon. It is so beautiful there and we took a few snaps to show you here.

Babbling Brooks

Slightly concerned looking little chick!

Pretty Pathways

Waterfalls

Pretty pink flowers...

...and yellow ones!

A beautiful end to the walk

it was all too much for little chick!

We also snuck in some gardening at the Purple Bird's nest as her lawn had gotten a little out of hand and needed some serious strimming! Mr Pink Bird came too and did all the hard work whilst we entertained the little chick and then planted some pretty flowers. That is our favourite kind of gardening. There should be some pictures of this coming on Instagram once the flowers settle into their new pots.

There was lots going on around our towns for the Jubilee and we attended a few places and watched lots of Royalty TV. We have topped up our patriocity full to the brim now so that should hold us for a few more years!

Well that's everything we have been doing recently. Well, the parts you might be interested in anyway! There was more but we thought you could do without hearing about things like putting up shelves and hanging pictures etc! We're off to bake a cake now... Lemon Drizzle - of course! What else?!

TBC x

Tutorial Tuesday: Jewellery for beginners - Earrings

When we first got into jewellery making the web wasn't as full as it is now with helpful resources for craft lovers, and we ended up buying a rather expensive kit with a DVD.

The kit was very informative and was a great starter set, but now everyone has to watch their pennies a bit more, it would be far too much of a luxury.

So, here at Two Bird's Craft we thought we'd start making our own jewellery tutorials!

We will start you at the very beginning for those of you with no previous experience.

Today's jewellery tutorial is for a pair of simple earrings, at the bottom of the page we will list some links for you to find some supplies if you need them.

Earrings are one of the first things we made and are definitely the easiest and quickest item of jewellery to make, so let's start:

To make the earrings you will need:

Two headpins in the metal of your choice

Two earring hooks.

Beads or charms to make your earrings pretty!

Pliers - round and flat nosed and

Wire cutters.

Pliers and wire cutters are essential kit!

Thread your bead selection

Step 1:  Thread your beads onto your headpin

Cut the headpin leaving 1cm space

Step 2:  With your wire cutters, cut the headpin one 1cm away from your top bead

Step3:  Next, get your round nosed pliers and grab the headpin a mm or two above your top bead and bend the wire 90 degrees.

Use the round nosed pliers

Bend 90 Degrees at top of beads

Step 4:  Still using your round nosed pliers, use the fattest bit of the plier you can whilst stilling getting a grip on the wire and from the top twist the wire into a loop.

Make a loop

Step 5:  Now, get your earring hook and your flat and round nosed pliers.

Hold the small hook on your earring hook with your flat pliers and then open it with the round nosed ones. Then hook your headpin by the loop you created onto your earring hook. Now you just need to close the hook the same way you opened it and...voila, an earring!

Connect to your earring hook

Now you need to do that all again to make a pair!

You can you any amount of beads and charms as you like, but we recommend putting a small bead or a sead bead at the bottom of your headpin (especially if they are flat bottomed ones), so that any big beads don't fall straight off! If you're feeling adventurous, you might even want to hook a few headpins full of beads onto your earring hooks! 

We've been experimenting with mixing crochet and jewellery making together, here's one of our teeny crochet flowers looped onto the earring hook - what do you think?

Here's one we made earlier!

We hope everything in the above tutorial makes sense and you all enjoy making your earrings! If you need any help or think any pictures/instructions need improving then please get in touch!

As promised, here are some suggested websites for supplies:

Pur-ple

EP Beads

Perfect Beads

Good sellers on eBay:

0kittypink0

BeadAddicts

What we're up to this weekend...

What a week it has been!

We've only been up and running since last Saturday but we have been amazed at the amount of followers and page views we've acquired so far!

Thank you so much to everyone who's taken time to read our posts and tweets, we hope you've enjoyed them.

We are loving our new blog and being a new part of the crafting community. We have met some lovely people online already and hope to meet many more.

This weekend the two birds are getting together for a good old shop for some more supplies in the morning, then we will be having a brainstorming session over lunch, followed by some crafting in the afternoon.

Top on our making list this weekend are:

- Animal Keyrings
- Pretty Hairclips and..
- Buttony Bracelets


Please check back with us from tuesday for some information on our new creations! No doubt we'll be posting pictures of our progress on Instagram as we go.

Have a brilliantly long Bank Holiday weekend everyone!

Love
TBC xxx

Rave Reviewers

Are you hatching a new product, pattern or idea? If you have anything craft related which you would like field tested or reviewed by real people, we would be happy to have a go and let you and our followers know what we think. We would give a fair and unbiased review and promise we won't peck it to pieces!

Our specific areas of expertise are Crochet, Knitting, Jewellery Making, Felting and Beading, but we are constantly expanding on that range so if you have any books, kits or products which are targeted at beginners in a particular craft then we would love to have a go!

Get The TBC Rating!

Contact the birds by email, twitter (@twobirdscraft) or comment on this post to talk about your ideas and see if we can help.

Jewellery preview

We are working hard at the moment to make some exciting items for our Etsy shop, but as a treat, here's a sneaky preview of some of the goodies that will be up for sale..

As always, if there is something special you have in mind, for yourself or for a gift, that you would like us to make then please let us know. We will try our best to create something really special for you!

Two Birds Craft

Welcome to the online home, or the nest if you will, of Two Birds Craft.

We are Anna and Jennie, two birds originally from Preston and Reading, who are now residing in lovely Devon.

In the past year we have both caught the crafting bug and decided it was about time to show off our crafty skills to the world! Our hobbies range from crochet, knitting, jewellery making and gardening. We hope to be able to include all of these on the blog!

Our blog will contain tutorials and pictures of things we’ve been making, reviews of things we’ve been using and links to other crafty sites we’re enjoying at the moment.

We’re also opening an Etsy shop soon where you will be able to buy our handmade creations including home accessories, jewellery, baby items and any other treasures we feel like making!

If you like the look of what we do but would prefer a different colour, a bigger bead/button, or the addition of customised hand stitching then please let us know and we will try and cater to your needs.

We are also on Twitter and Instagram. Our username for this is: twobirdscraft or you can e-mail us at twobirdscraft@gmail.com

Please keep checking back on our blog as we will be updating it regularly with what we’ve been up to.

Thanks for visiting,

Anna and Jennie