The Crafty Hen

This year I have the absolute joy of not only seeing three of my best friends walk down the aisle but being there beside them as a bridesmaid.

As you’ll know from this post I love a wedding. The thing I love most is all the little touches which make each one unique – the personalised love hearts which echo the proposal, the little tissue in ribbon ‘for your tears of joy’, giving the bouquet to the couple who have been married the longest…I could go on.

But there are also so many other things which make weddings awesome. The dresses, the flowers, the cake and, of course, the hen do! Which brings me, in an ever so smooth link, to the Crafty Hen.

Last weekend I went to Lori’s hen do, a 1920s spectacular in Cambridge. We danced the Charleston in an awesome dance class, we shook and stirred up some Cosmos in a cocktail making session, and, best of all for any lover of crafting, we made our own fascinators.

Our three hour session was run by two lovely ladies from The Crafty Hen. We met them in All Bar One where they laid out all their feathers, ribbons, trinkets and netting.

A treasure trove of trinkets!

We took it in turns to go up and select our materials, with the experts on hand for advice, and a few example pictures for inspiration.

Let the crafting begin!

There wasn’t a tutorial as such, but it was pretty straight forward, with lots of pinning and hand-sewing. The netting was a little tricksy, and you can see from the photos it’s not that neat, but we were up against the clock so I figured I could always neaten it up later. (There was a proper Great British Sewing Bee adrenaline rush to get finished at the end!)

Luckily the Crafty Hens had a mannequin on hand for help!

I decided to go for quite neutral colours so I could hopefully wear my fascinator with various different outfits, and I found an awesome pink gem stone to go in the middle. Every girl needs a bit of bling right?

My finished fascinator, complete with bling!

It was so lovely just having a natter with all the hens while we crafted, and we all stopped for lunch half way through to refuel before powering through to get finished.

The finished fascinators were all so different and all of them looked brilliant.

The bride-to-be’s lovely fascinator!

Mine ended up looking a bit 1930s/1940s in style, totally accidental but I kind of like it!

My finished creation

A craft activity is such an awesome idea for a hen party. It brings everyone together and is a great way to get to know the other hens, while making something fabulous to take home.

So much fun

And it started off what was an absolutely fantastic weekend. I can already tell the year of weddings is going to be a very good year indeed.