A Parcel in the Mail

On Friday, we got a parcel slip in the mail. It turned out to be Little Snicker's Christmas present:

How cool are they? A pair of pixie bookends from the ever-talented Gary of Bentsticks, who makes timeless toys out of fallen tree branches.

I think they are just perfect for holding our Enid Blyton books:

and I love how the little doors open up:

Kind of makes me want my very own set. These will be in our family for a long time to come, that's for sure!

Memory Box

We have a pile of stuff from when Little Snicker was born that is just sitting in a plastic bag under my craft table - cards, his id bracelets from hospital, pieces of paper with his footprints on them...the list goes on and on.

I was worried that the bag would either get mistaken for rubbish and thrown out, or that the things inside it would get ruined, so I decided to make a memory box.

First I got a wooden box we had laying around the house and I painted it blue and red:


Then I went to the scrapbooking shop and was delighted to find that there was a whole heap of papers to choose from that had 'boyish' themes (unlike when you go fabric shopping and you struggle to find anything for a boy!).

I chose this paper and cut a whole heap of 1.5 inch strips from it, joined them together and then glued them around the base of the box:

Luckily, the paper I chose also had a coordinating page with matching animals, stars and some other bits and bobs that I could use for the lid:
On my way out of the store I spotted some chipboard letters, so I grabbed some so I could put his name on the vacant bit on the lid. I am in the middle of painting them up now:


I think Little Snicker was a little surprised that his mother finally tackled a nice and easy craft project:

But I'm sure he loves how it turned out.

It's duck season at our house!

Every year at about this time we start hearing a faint 'honking' noise at all hours of the night. Usually it's not too long after this starts that we have our first duck sighting:

I think it's pretty amazing that we live in a reasonably built up area, yet we still have wild ducks wandering through our yard. Unfortunately Little Snicker is a bit too young to understand all the excitement as I dash to put my shoes on, grab him a hat and run outside to look at them before they disappear. Maybe next year he might get excited.

I have to say though, that these wild ducks are nowhere near as cute as the ducks my lovely friend Rach of Picklebug Designs has! She has her own mini farm going on and also makes some awesome glass pendants. You should swing by her blog and take a look!

Upcycled Denim Skirt Bag

A while back my sisters were given some clothes from a friend and in that pile of clothes there was a ridiculously short denim skirt.

Thankfully my sisters like to dress reasonably respectable so they just laughed at the skirt and threw it to the side. I, however, picked it up and claimed that I would turn it into a bag.

So I did just that:


I put a bottom in the bag so it was a bit bigger:

I lined it with a cool fabric to make it a bit brighter:


I made a strap out of a pair of old jeans so it could be worn comfortably and put a magnetic clasp on it so it would stay closed:

and I put ruffles of the cutest umbrella fabric on the pockets, just because I could:


I listed it in the Etsy Store this morning and it's gone already - to a lovely blog reader :)

And in other news, one of the sock owls made it into the "Hoo Luvs Ya" Etsy Treasury! Make sure you have a bit of a looksie at all the other cute owl stuff

More stock in the Etsy store

There is a new supply of owl mobiles in the Etsy store.

Go on check them out - you know you want to!

Magnetic Blackboard

Now that the market is over I can concentrate more on other crafts.

The first craft I wanted to tackle was painting a piece of 3mm thick MDF with Resene's 'Magnetic Magic' and then a topcoat of Dulux's 'Chalkboard Paint' to make a magnetic blackboard for my pantry door:

Once it was dry, we needed to rub over the entire surface with chalk and wash it off before it was ready for use. I nearly used my whole box of chalk just on this!

Now that it's up, my pantry door has gone from this:

To this:

I still need to get some magnets for it, but I have tested the strength of the magnetic paint with just an ordinary, boring fridge magnet and I'm pretty happy with how good it holds.

I used 3 coats of the magnetic paint and 2 coats of the blackboard paint and it works a treat!

Off to Market...

It has been so long since my last post, but with good reason! I am getting ready to go to the Buninyong Makers Market this coming Saturday:

So many owls.....

My table will be right next door to Jenn, who owns The Cake Bakeshop in Main Road. I haven't tried her cupcakes yet, but I have heard some pretty fantastic things about them. I don't think I'll even bother trying to resist them!

I hope we'll see you at the Market this Saturday. Make sure you pop on by and say "hello!"

Weekend Garage Sales

On the weekend we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and travel around to some garage sales in our area.

Unfortunately by the time we got home from Little Snicker's swimming lesson and he had a sleep it was after 11am, so most of the garage sales had either finished up or had next to nothing left.

The first few we went to were really lame, but then we found one that was selling all kinds of junk and I managed to pick up this awesome tin for a mere 50 cents!

His hat is the lid of the tin. I'm not sure what I'm going to store it in, but it is pretty nifty.

Anyway, we were just about done with the garage sales with only one left to go. When we got there they said that 1/4 of the stuff had already gone, but we might still find something good.

I managed to find a tin to store photographic slides in and on a whim I picked up a pillowcase as I had wanted to try making a pillowcase dress for quite some time. Little did I know, that simple action would lead to the mother-load of all bargains!

When I went to pay for my goods, the lady asked me if I was interested in fabric since I'd picked up a single pillowcase. After saying that I was, she informed me that she had some bags of fabric inside but hadn't bothered putting them out. She came back with these two big bags:

Matty rolled his eyes, knowing that we could be there for quite a while as I sorted through them, so he asked how much they wanted for the two bags. When they said "Twenty Dollars" we snapped up their offer pretty quick, even though we had no idea what was really in them (and I think that was half of the thrill).

The bag on the left was full of various vintage style fabrics (ginghams, seer sucker and some crazy paisley prints):

and the other was filled with haberdashery items.... like good quality zippers, with the price tag of .20 cents still attached (this is about a quarter of the zippers in the bag):


There were metres and metres of different types of elastics:

and even a tin of crochet cotton, among so much other stuff!


Next week we are planning to hit a couple of garage sales BEFORE we go to Little Snicker's swimming lesson. Who knows what we'll come home with!

Craft Tote

In between sewing sock owls and stitching the redwork quilt, I have also been doing a lot of sewing on the machine.

Quite a while ago I found this lovely set of tea towels in Target and I simply had to have them. I'm not sure why... I never intended to put them into my 'tea towel circulation' since they definitely do not match my kitchen!:

Anyway, a few months after buying them I had an idea for making a craft tote, as I was sick of using plastic bags to transport my crafts when I went to other places (like my mum's). While I was hunting for the material to make it out of, I stumbled across the tea towels.

They were perfect for my bag, but there was one problem - I wanted my bag to be lined and I didn't have anything that even came close to matching the tea towels. As per usual, I put that craft idea on the back burner and focused on some other projects.

Another 6 months passed and I was really getting sick of using the plastic bags. I'm sure you can imagine my delight when my lovely sister (one of many) bought me back some fabric from her trip to Japan. What better material to line my bag with (isn't it beautiful!):


Out came the tea towels and I sketched down my design and started cutting and sewing away. After about an hour of sewing, I had a completed craft tote:

I must say I am absolutely in love with it and those that have seen it have also said how lovely it is. The thing that I love most of all, is how the lining really comes to life when I open up my bag. No boring old craft tote for me!

Embroidery Thread Dilemma

This week I am busy making Sock Owl Mobiles for the upcoming Buninyong Makers Market.

While this should be a pleasant and relaxing task, my current embroidery thread storage method is making it a little less enjoyable:

Yep... I store all of my embroidery thread in a great big knotted mess, along with all other sorts paraphernalia.

So far, while I've been untangling this enormous pile of thread, I have encountered 3 needles, 2 buttons, endless pieces of scrap felt and a piece of clear elastic *sigh*. Time to put everything on hold and get this sorted out.

How do you store your embroidery thread?

Day Off!

Yesterday Little Snicker spent the day with his Nana. While he was there I did a little of this:


A little of that:

Then some of this:

And while I didn't manage to actually finish anything, I felt that the day was very relaxing and productive!