Craft - Driftwood sailing boat

Whenever I go to the beach, I'm always collecting shells, sea glass and bits of driftwood. They usually end up sitting in a drawer gathering dust; shells look so much prettier when they're still wet, don't they? But this weekend I decided to try making a driftwood sailing boat. I made one a few years ago and I still love it. This craft is a great use for little odds and ends of fabric.

What you'll need:

2 pieces of driftwood - one for the hull and one for the mast
1 piece of material big enough for a sail
Little fabric triangles or bells for the rigging
String/ribbon
2 pins, drawing pins, tacks or staples

Step 1. Super glue your "mast" into your driftwood boat. Mine already had a notch in it for the mast to sit in, but you could easily gouge a bit out. Prop it up in the right position and leave it to dry. It can help to put a bit of blue tack on the bottom of the boat to help it stand up.

Step 2. Press a drawing pin or a tack into each end of the boat (you might need to tap them in with a hammer). These are to keep your rigging in place. I had run out of drawing pins so I had to improvise with a dressmaker's pin at one end and a bent staple at the other.

Step 3. Prepare your sail. Measure out approximately how big your sail needs to be and cut your material to size. If you have a nice straight mast this is quite easy as you can just make a right-angled triangle. My mast was all wonky, so it took a few attempts to get it looking right.

Step 4. Hoist the sail! How you do this will probably depend on what sort of fabric you're using. My fabric, apart from being hilariously retro, was very liable to rip. I tied a piece of string around the bottom of the mast before using a needle to thread it through the bottom left corner of the sail. I sewed it along the bottom of the sail and tied the other end of the string onto the pin at the end of the boat. I then tied the top corner of the sail directly to the top of the mast, carefully pulling it taut.

However, if your fabric is a bit more sturdy you can just make a little incision in each corner and use an individual loop of string to tie each bit in place.

Step 5. Make your rigging. Tie a piece of string or ribbon from the top of the mast to the pin or staple on the opposite side to the sail. For my first boat, I decided to make little flags by cutting little triangles of contrasting fabric and attaching them to the string with a simple stitch.

This time I made use of the little bells that come on the collars of Lindt bunnies. I looped the ribbon twice through each bell to keep it in place before tying it onto the staple.

These make such pretty decorations and gifts. The big boat currently lives on top of our bathroom mirror and the little one is going to sit on the window frame. They're very light, so it's easy to blue tack them in place. Have fun making your own!

His'n'Her doe and stag plates - Sharpie craft

This is a craft which allows you to be really creative and is a great way of displaying your skills if you're good at drawing freehand. When it comes to drawing, I am truly terrible, but it seems even I can turn a few permanent-marker lines into a woodland scene when I put my mind to it.

What you'll need:

• A pair of plates - mine are from a cheap Ikea set, the rest of which was lost or broken at university.
• A permanent marker pen - Sharpies are great!
• Stencil (if you're using one)
• Oven pre-heated pretty much as high as it will go (mine was at 250 degrees C)

Step 1. Decided on your design. I wanted my plates to work as a pair, so I decided on a stag and doe standing on either side of a tree in a romantic moonlight meeting. Equally, you could choose an abstract design, writing (a favourite poem perhaps?) or a pretty stencil.

Step 2. Sketch out design onto the plate with a pencil. It's a bit tricky trying to drawing on a plate because they're not flat, but at least with a pencil you can rub out any mistakes!

Step 3. Draw over your pencil lines with a permanent marker. Test out the best angle on a piece of paper first. It's a bit daunting drawing with something described as "permanent", but if you do make a mistake you can scrub it off with a damp tissue whilst it's drying.

Step 4. Put your plates into your pre-heated oven and leave for half an hour. This bakes on the permanent marker, making it even more permanent. Other bloggers say they've tried scrubbing theirs off after baking and it hasn't budged. I'm not sure I'd trust them in the dishwasher, but they'd be lovely for eating cakes, starters or cheese courses!

Wardrobe vanity area

A surprise inside!

I'm very lucky in that my bedroom in my rented flat has a huge amount of storage space with a whole wall of wardrobes. However, it must be admitted that they're not the most beautiful things in the world and having a wall of white cupboards is not all that inspiring.

Functional but not-so-attractive wardrobes

This being a rental, there's not much I can do about them, and even if I did own the place (unlikely to happen any time soon as a similar flat was recently sold for £849,000!) fitted wardrobes are difficult to remove and expensive to replace. Plus having three shelves for my shoes is great fun.

But my wardrobes had a secret. In the middle set of doors is a little vanity area, complete with drawer, mirror and plug for my hairdryer. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to decorate scrapbook-style like I used to at university, without spoiling the clean lines of my bedroom.

Of course not everyone will have one of these neat little compartments, but I still think that decorating the insides of your wardrobe doors is a lovely way to put up some photos and add a secret pop of colour. My photos always make me smile when I get dressed in the mornings.

If you feel you can spare a couple of shelves in your wardrobe, you could always try taking one out and putting an inexpensive mirror at the back for a makeshift dressing table.

I put up a mixture of snapshots of friends and family, postcards of artworks I like and book covers by Penguin, of which I bought a big set. In one of my student rooms at university, I used these Penguin postcards to create a tiled effect around a boarded-up fireplace.

Adding your own bits and bobs, including those things you use everyday like moisturiser and perfume in nice bottles, makes it feel like a personal space just for you. 

I store my make up brushes, along with spare pens and scissors, in this ceramic shopping bag pot from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Previously I've used jam jars (Marmite jars always look cool and retro) or anything else lying around, but it's handy having everything in one place.

I love printing off photos because I have a theory that one day Facebook will explode and then I won't be able to access all the nice photos of my friends and me because they're all taken by other people. I have boxes of them, and this is a nice way to show a few of them off!