Windmill Easter Gift

Happy Easter!

Originally for Easter this year I was planning on making the kids in our family some little bunnies - until we saw these little windmills at Kmart!

My little brother-in-law loves gardening so I thought these would be perfect. All I did was create a simple tag from cardboard to wrap around the post then I glued the two sides together and put a bunny sticker on it.

This is a quick, easy and cheap Easter gift that little and big kids will love!

Origami Blue Star Flowers

Today I was planning a post for the newest origami flower I learnt to make using my book "Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets" when I realised that I didn't post about the ones I learnt to make last month!

In January I tried out the Balloon flowers, and in February I opted for the Blue Star flowers.

This flower is a little awkward to make, but they turned out quite cute! I don't have the correct type of paper for the leaves, but my memo paper is great to practice origami with!

I am also doing a lot better with the floral tape, so I guess it was just me and not the tape that had issues!

If you are interested in origami flowers, keep checking back as I'm hoping to complete a new flower from this book each month of 2013!

Tree of Life Pendants

A few years ago I noticed a lot of wire wrapped tree of life pendants on the internet so I made one for myself! It is my favourite pendant to wear now - this is one of the few pieces that never goes into the jewellery box since it lives under my monitor so I can grab it as I'm leaving the house.

In September I decided that I should make a couple more so I wasn't wearing the same pendant every day.

The first one is my original pendant.

And after making another two pendants I still prefer my first one and haven't worn either of the new pendants! The last one I made using copper wire as the base, but unfortunately it doesn't really show through the wrapped wire. That pendant actually took forever to make as I used really thin wire.

Next time I will try adding seed beads as the leaves - I just need to buy more wire! I have also seen some really nice ones that use a cabochon as the background, but I think I need more wire wrapping practice before I attempt that.

Denim Jeans Dog Bed

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

A long, long time ago (probably last year) I was walking past a window display and saw a rug and bean bag made from jeans. They looked great and of course I had old jeans with ripped knees that I no longer wore.

Rather than make a traditional style beanbag I wanted to make her a round cushion type bed so I made a template and spent forever coaxing thick layers of our old jeans through the sewing machine... I finished the top and then it got put in a box and forgotten about!

Trixie had a beanbag that she loved as puppy which has been sitting in the garage since her and Alfie ripped holes in it while playing tug of war with it. Since she already spent one winter without her snuggly bean bag I thought I had better get her new denim cover finished for autumn.

Now that it is finally finished I'm happy with how it looks, Trixie thinks it's comfy and she has a ball when I put her toys in the pockets!

The bottom and sides were much easier to sew since I cut the jeans up and simply used them as fabric. I quite like the bottom, and I'm thinking of making a denim cover for our Poang armchair... that hasn't been added to my list yet!

What did I learn with this project? That bean bags need long zips, otherwise it is a pain to fill them with beans. It is horrible and frustrating to sew through multiple layers of old jeans! The wrong side of denim sometimes looks really cool - I mixed and matched the different jeans as well as using the right and wrong sides for this project!

Just because it is cute, I thought I would share this scrapbook collage of Trixie on her new bed.

All I need to do now is figure out where to put her bed, at the moment it is in her favourite spot at my desk - where I have to move it constantly and climb over it!

Trixie's new bed was featured over at I Gotta Create!



Linking up here:
Manic Monday @ Serendipity and Spice
Transformed Tuesday @ PJH Designs
Sew Darn Crafty @ Sew Many Ways
Whatever Goes Wednesday @ Someday Crafts
Fluster's Creative Muster @ Fluster Buster
Wildly Original Link Party @ I Gotta Create!

Rainy days and mushrooms

We have had a lot of rainy days lately, the good thing about it raining is that it isn't so hot and that I keep finding mushrooms in the garden! Luckily the rain isn't constant so I can get out in the garden to take some photos.

The white mushrooms were found when I took Trixie for a quick walk when the rain had stopped. The rest are from my front garden. The really bright ones stink so the ants and flies love them - if you look closely you at the second photo there is an ant on top of the first mushroom and flies buzzing around it. 

I used my digital scrapbooking software to create this mushroom photo collage and it was much quicker and easier than my usual attempts at photo collages. If you want to buy your own copy you can save $10 by using my coupon code: STMMMS13662 

Trixie's Birthday Collar

It's Trixie's 2nd birthday today! When I got her as a puppy I wanted to make sure I took more photos of my pets - when they are babies I take heaps of photos and then I stop using my camera again. So every year I plan on taking photos of Trixie and Dash on their birthdays - and by take photos I mean that I want nice, clear photos of them with a nice background!

Trixie is normally great for photos, except she has been very naughty lately so the majority of the photos I took are of her looking away...

The middle one turned out the best but I just had to make a simple collage in MyMemories to remind me of this years photo attempts! Hopefully she behaves better for next years photos and that my garden has grown some more to give a nice backdrop.

Since it was her birthday I had a great reason to make her a new collar! I reused all the old hardware and this time I bought a purple ribbon with white birds printed on it. I didn't make it long enough for many adjustments though, luckily she stopped growing last year!

Insulated Lunch Box

My husband takes his own lunch to work, mostly because it would cost too much to eat out everyday! Originally we bought ourselves lunchboxes (that weren't too kiddy) but because he takes a container of leftovers and an iced coffee his lunchbox seams and zipper busted. So I (stupidly) suggested I make him a lunchbox to perfectly fit his coffee and food container with plenty of room for ice packs. 

Last Friday I told you that my goal this is to finish the projects I had started, and this lunchbox was one of them (and the most important to get finished).

I can proudly say that I finished it. 

And I hope it lasts him a long, long time because I don't want to make another one!

He chose the outer fabric at Spotlight, for the inside I used fabric from IKEA on which I wrote a note saying I love you (finishing this lunchbox definitely shows him just how much!), used some leftover clear vinyl to line it and used insulated batting to help keep everything cold.

It turned out well, apart from the zip which is hard to do up on the corners. And the most important things is that it fits what it needs  to fit with room to spare! It has been in use for one month now and no seams have popped open. It was a difficult project, both to sew and to figure out how to sew - maybe I should find tutorials before I attempt  a project like this.

Feather Cross Stitch Pattern

I have been wanting to add another cross stitch to my "coaster wall". I really should take an updated photo of it!

Quite awhile ago I started creating this feather cross stitch pattern which is finally ready to share with you. If you would like to see my other free patterns you can simply click the cross stitch tab at the top of my page or click here.

I chose to do this one in red to bring some more colour into our office. I'm considering doing a mirror image of this in blue for my wall as well.

I hope you enjoy my latest cross stitch pattern!

As usual, you can either click on the image to bring it up in full size, then right click and save as, or you can download the jpg through Google Drive.

Linking up here: 
Take-A-Look Tuesday @ Sugar Bee Crafts Manic Monday @ Serendipity and Spice Sew Darn Crafty Linking Party @ Sew Many Ways Transformed Tuesday @ PJH Designs Fluster's Creative Muster Party @ Fluster Buster Whatever Goes Wednesday @ Someday Crafts Wildly Original Link Party @ I Gotta Create!

Create for 365 days - February 2013

Yesterday marked the last day of my create for 365 days challenge! Will I be continuing to finish a craft each day? No! There are just some days where you do not have time to make something - as evidenced by all the origami stars I made. Then there are the times you are working on a big project that will take days and you don't really want to stop work on that just to finish something else that day.


So in 2013 I hope to finish some of the many unfinished projects I have started or the ones I keep saying I will make. And yes I have a long list to remind me to do these projects - amazingly I have crossed off three already! Now if only I would stop adding new projects to my list...


Now for my last 365 days summary:

338: I decided to paint my nephews name onto the tote I made for his birthday. He can colour this in with the fabric markers we bought for his birthday.
339: My little sister gave me these cute panda erasers for Christmas. I will never use them as rubbers so I decided to draw on some black noses so they can sit on my desk!
340: I made these two layouts for wall coasters using the MyMemories software. See my blog post here.
341: A green agate wire wrapped pendant for my MIL's birthday.
342: Trixie's scrapbook wall coaster using the print I made in the MyMemories software. See my blog post here.
343: Our wedding scrapbook wall coaster using the print I made in the MyMemories software. See my blog post here.
344: Pink origami cube.
345: Blue origami balloon flower. See the others I made in this post.
346: My rumballs recipe card I made using the MyMemories software. See my blog post here where you can get a copy.
347: Dash and Suki wall coasters.
348: I made new wall coasters of these two photos of Stellar and Trixie as the original MDF coasters are a different size to the ones I can buy now.
349: Another origami balloon flower. See the others I made in this post.
350: Decoupaged biscuit tin.
351: I made two scrapbook pages from our holiday in Thailand using the MyMemories software. See my blog post here.
352: I made another three scrapbook pages from our holiday in Thailand using the MyMemories software. See my blog post here.
353: Seven purple lucky stars.
354: Another wall coaster using a photo of us from Christmas.
355: I had to make a new bail for Oma's pendant sine I made the original one too small. I really need to check that as I make the pendants!
356: I made my photo clock using the MyMemories software. See my blog post here.
357: Lots more purple lucky stars.
358: A wire wrapped agate pendant. This pendant just would not work for me. It was my first time working with half round wire so that could have been the reason I was having so much trouble.
359: I made a new bail for my panda button. I didn't like the type I originally bought and used so I made my own!
360: Orange stamped and coloured gift tag.
361: Glittered pegs!
362: A little beaded girl. I posted about the ones I made when I was about 13 here.
363: Red feather cross stitch.
364: Pattern for my feather cross stitch - I will post that up soon!
365: Blue star origami flowers - I made a blue one and a yellow one.