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Make your own FAIR TRADE dress kit.

Until high street shops stock more Fair Trade clothes the easiest place for me to buy ethically made clothes is online. Unfortunately this means you can't try them on until they arrive in the post and then you may have to send them back! 

Which is why I think this is such a great idea! Buy the kit, get creative and make your clothes yourself - deciding exactly how long and how wide to make it - whether to add the frills, or make it waist or knee length. Right now these beautiful Gossypium dress kits are on offer.

Handmade paper lampshade.

These pictures are posted as an example of what you can do with 'junk', imagination and a bit of patience. Also, for friends in Brighton, who were not quite sure if I was joking when I said, 'no really, don't take that manky old lampshade frame to the tip. It's just what I've been looking for!'
It used to be a typical slanting cylinder shape - but I was so keen to start re-shaping it I forgot to take a proper 'before' photo. I bent the wire into petal shapes - you can see where the bending snapped one of the joints so I had to mend it with glue and wire.

Then I cut up bits of handmade paper and sewed a running stitch along the bottom, pulling the cotton taut so that the paper gathered into 3D shapes like petals and sewed the 'petals' onto the frame.

Here is a picture of the finished article, firstly with the bulb unlit.

Now a picture of the lamp when it's lit. Paper lampshades like this are now a safe option thanks to low heat, low energy light bulbs, but it's still important to keep the shade away from the side of the bulb.