Making paper flowers with A Alicia at Crafternoon Cabaret

Hurrah! I finally got to visit Crafternoon Cabaret. A fun monthly Saturday afternoon get together that involves crafting and live cabaret.
(This is what I made. But more on that later...)

The event takes place upstairs in a room at The Library, a pub on Upper Street, near Highbury & Islington tube in London.

And it's single-handedly run by Hannah (who made her fabulous reversible, length changing apron with very useful pockets.) This means she organises the craft activities, books the entertainment, liaises with the pub and does all the publicity. Six month's in, the event is always sold out, (possibly out-growing it's home), has a regular following and has received some excellent publicity.

For October, Crafternoon Cabaret hosted their first guest, Anna aka A Alicia, who many peeps in the craft community will be familiar with. She was promoting her new book which shows simple, tasteful ways to add crafty touches to your home and she adapted two of the projects for us.

These were paper cut lanterns and amazing card flowers (so simple yet utterly gorgeous).

When I arrived some people had already sat down and I joined a table which was occupied by three flatmates who were rather impressively spending some time together away from their home.There was a huge pile of craft materials to help yourself to plus instructions to make the projects, with A Alicia on hand to help out.

Not being much of an instruction person I skipped the steps, had a good look at the samples and attempted to make my own. I discovered that you can be as brutal as you want to cardboard (I've been way too timid in the past!) - it will keep its shape!

Time went sooooooooo quickly. In fact the quickest it's gone for me in ages!

As promised this was not just an afternoon of making, there was music too and we were treated to the cheeky tunes of Mr Meredith who sung about his Darlek lover and  what makes a proper man...

...which he concluded was someone like himself who can pull off sequins. Well sung!

Here are those flatmates I mentioned with their creations.

I also managed a peek at what other tables were up to and discovered these two wonderful floral fascinators.

Mine was a bit more like a strange collar turned headdress.

Which you can see better here. I totally love the card flower technique, that is one I will be using again and again. To try it yourself, cut out circles of varying sizes, cut sections out of them all the way round then fold these up and stitch through. The the leaves were done similarly with a crease along their centres.

There are so many positives I could say about Crafternoon Cabaret. Here's some of them:

• Hannah the organiser is lovely
• The timing is great 2-4pm so you don't need to wake up early on a weekend and you still have loads of time afterwards to carry on with your Saturday
• Two hours cost £10 which is a very decent 'hourly rate' 
• Materials and instructions are provided - after the sessions you can keep the instructions, go home and make more!
• There are so many things to do in London but sometimes on a Saturday you just want to sit down and chill rather than be walking around galleries or shopping or sitting in a pub...I mean why sit in one and chat when you can chat and make at the same time?
• The cabaret element added a nice touch making it feel like you'd done a whole activity 
• You get to take home what you make

The next Crafternoon Cabaret is on Saturday November 8th and has a Movember moustache theme. Check it out! A Alicia has some more workshops planned too so look her up while you're at it.