As you’ll know if you’ve read my 30 by 30 list one of the things I want to make more time for is more creative pursuits so when an invite popped into my mailbox from Joes Bloggers inviting me to attend a Crafternoon at Drink Shop & Do (somewhere that has been on my list ever since I moved to London) I couldn’t exactly say no.

For once in my life I arrived right on time instead of a half hour early so breezed right in to the cafe, through the shop area and the regular cafe into the private back room which was reserved for us only to be greeted with tea and red velvet cake (my absolute favourite!) I knew right then that this was going to be a good event!

Hillary’s were showcasing their new Jewel: The Edit collection. A sumptuous range of sapphire, ruby and jade coloured fabrics which we were allowed to use to make our very own jewellery boxes.

Luckily we weren’t left to fend for ourselves and we had the lovely ladies from The Crafty Hen to show us what to do.

Now I used to be very creative in my youth and have pretty much given it up as I don’t have the time. Being a perfectionist makes making anything an absolute chore and I’m sure I spent much, MUCH longer on my lid than anyone else did and was struggling to get the whole thing completed before the end of the class.

I got there in the end though and I am super happy about how it turned out – what do you think?

I worked really hard to get the flower centered on my lid and work the contrasting colours together to decorate the inside. There aren’t any pictures of the actually crafting as I was way too engrossed in what I was doing! In fact this was probably one of the quietest blogger events I have been to as everyone was pretty much silent while they concentrated on what they were doing.