Baby Boy Onesies

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

It would seem that my go to gift for new babies are painted onesies. I tried a different paint this time, my normal fabric paint needs to dry for a few days then it is ready to wash. This paint uses the iron to heat set it... and I scorched the onesies a bit. Luckily my paint is back in stock at the craft store and I don't need to worry about ironing it too much or not enough!

The giraffe is from the silhouette online store, I think he looks super cute on a onesie.

Agate Pendants

Years ago I bought some polished agate on eBay to make pendants for my little sister and my sister in law. Then I came across the agate again while browsing on eBay, which has resulted in some lovely pendants for myself and as gifts.

The blue one at the end is my favourite and I wear it most of the time, it has pretty much replaced my tree of life wire wrap pendant that I used to wear. They are quite big (and therefore quite heavy) and as yet I haven't found a chain I like for them,one day I will find the perfect one!

I enjoy making these pendants and find that I make around five of them each time I sit down to make one, they are quite addictive little projects to make. Now that I've been writing about them and looking through the photos I really feel like making more. Unfortunately Christmas is not too far away and I still have a lot to do - and not enough time as usual!

Etched Martini Glasses

I love glass etching, but it is impossible to photograph glass thanks to all the reflections. Bumping up the contrast quite a bit helps the etched design show up a little better in photos.

These martini glasses were an 18th birthday present for my husbands cousin. I used my Silhouette machine and a feather design from their store for the stencils. 

Curved glass makes it a bit difficult with the stencil as it bubbles and causes the stencil to lift in some spots. Luckily this design was pretty forgiving where the cream leaked out.

I still need to try glass etching with my Dremel - I was so excited about buying one and I've hardly used it. I did try engraving a pet tag myself and I had trouble keeping the Dremel steady so it has put me off the idea of using it for glass etching when I can just use my etching cream. Although not all glass takes with the etching cream, so I'm sure there will be a day where I have no choice but to try it!

Crochet Baby Blankets

Awhile ago I asked my mum to teach me how to crochet, while there are heaps of videos online that teach you how to do it, I just couldn't figure it out. So I started with a chevron blanket for our couch using three colours. Then for some reason I decided that I should make a blanket for my youngest nephews first birthday. I finished it just in time for his birthday party.

I really liked the yarn with different shades of blue, it made a cute blanket. I decided to use the same sort of yarn for my niece's first birthday present - this one was a very, very late birthday present!

I've decided that I don't like crochet, probably why it took me so long to finish that second baby blanket. Unfortunately I still have to finish the chevron one I started for our couch. Oh and I have another niece on the way so I'm trying to decide if I should do the same for her first birthday - if I do, then I need to make one for my 11 year old nephew... maybe I'll get one finished just in time for his 18th birthday!

Easter Bunny Shirts

For Easter this year I made my little niece and nephew matching Easter bunny shirts.

I made my stencils on my silhouette machine with contact paper (vinyl), it makes it a lot easier to paint as you don't need to worry about the stencil moving. 

The super cute bunny image on the top shirts is from the blog Petti Bear - although the intended use is as a wall sticker. I think it is great for tshirts too :)

The bunnies on the bottom shirts were from the Silhouette Online Store - unfortunately I didn't iron the paint properly and some of it washed off. Luckily it still looks cute :)

Wood Burned Cat Spoon

I just had to share this photo...

This is Chaos, he is one of my foster cats (most likely that sentence will have the word "foster" removed). 

Chaos decided to "help" me photograph one of the wooden spoons that I burnt a cat design on. What normally happens is that I start clearing space to take a photo or start a craft and all of a sudden one of the cats decide it's the perfect spot to sit/lay/sleep/play. Luckily this time he was in a good mood and let me sit the spoon under his leg. Funnily enough the first time I showed him a wooden spoon he attacked it, I guess there have been enough of them around my house that they are huggable now.

This spoon and a second one I made were Christmas gifts for the ladies who run the rescue that I foster for (plus toys for their cats).

Mosaic Trivet

For my older sister's birthday last year, I had a brilliant idea to make a mosaic tile trivet.

Why is it a brilliant idea? Because I've never done mosaic before, or anything to do with tiling really. Turns out I didn't enjoy it that much, mostly because it was a bit of a pain trying to evenly line up all those tiles since they shifted when I removed the spacers. And because I have all these grand ideas in my head, I bought enough tiles to make quite a few trivets!

Luckily it turned out well, since my younger sister wanted one for her birthday (hence the buying of extra tiles). Even better, they both have the same colour schemes for their homes. 

Because I had basically everything I needed, I decided to make one for my mother in laws birthday as well - in greens of course as that is her favourite colour. I completely forgot to take a photo of that one.

While I was making a huge mess I also made one for myself. I made mine bigger with smaller grout spacing and I have a lot of tiles leftover...

More Cushions

I'm starting to think that cushions are my thing when it comes to sewing. Maybe because they are easy, the fiddliest part is the zip and it is put in right at the start so if you mess up it is easy to fix. Little dresses and such tend to need buttons and generally sewing the buttonholes is right near the end - if I messed that up the whole thing would be thrown in a drawer until I muster up the courage to try again!

So I will stick with cushions when I want a quick sewing project (or need room for more fabric). Plus since all my pets like sitting on cushions new ones are always a good thing at our house. The old ones get a second life as new indoor pet beds, then the old pet ones go outside for Trixie's kennel. 

Totally random story, but I have to share it; when Trixie was a puppy she used to drag her old bed around the yard until she found the perfect spot to have a nap - cushy beds are far more preferable to grass.

Now I have four new cushions for our couch, sized a little bigger than normal. Have you ever noticed that cushion inserts are quite expensive? Especially when you can generally buy two cheap pillows for $5. Granted, being cheap pillows means they don't have a lot of stuffing.

What I do is make a square cushion cover using the measurement for the shorter side of the pillow. Then just shake that pillow till the stuffing settles into a squared off shape and squish it into the cushion cover. Easy, and best of all cheaper than cushion inserts!

Woodburned Knife Block

Every time I go to Ikea, there are so many things I want to buy and by the time I get to the register I'm dreading the total. So I mentally take note of all the things I want so I can think about it for awhile before buying.

One of those items was their RETRÄTT Knife Block - an item I don't actually need since I already have a knife set with a block. Plus I wanted to burn a design on it and I wasn't sure if I could due to the lacquer.

Eventually I bought it of course, then it sat on my desk for ages because every design I tried to draw on it just wasn't right. Until I decided to get out my flower stencils and draw a few of those on. Then googled flower drawings and sketched a few of those in the gaps. So I started burning, drawing in more flowers, stems and leaves, then burning some more until I was happy.

Because of the lacquer, my pencil drawings rubbed off very quickly so I had no choice but to draw and burn flower by flower. Ordinarily I like my projects to be perfectly planned, but luckily this one turned out great and most importantly I enjoyed doing it.

Wire Shrimp

At the start of this year I entered a art/craft competition to make a shrimp so I made this cute wire wrapped shrimp.

This little guy took me about 6 to 7 hours, which seems to be the usual amount of time that I spend on my wire sculptures. He won me first place in the competition, which were some goodies for my shrimp tank.

These are cherry shrimp, very difficult to take photos of as they are so small, but they are super cute! I just don't have much luck with them thanks to my water and how hot it gets in summer.

Origami Crane Birthday Dress

For my niece's first birthday I decided to make her a Junebug Dress. I spent ages trying to pick the fabric (mum kept pointing out girly pink ones) until we finally found some cute fabric with origami cranes on it. Perfect gift from an aunty who loves making origami!

I also used my Silhouette machine to design a first birthday card for my niece and nephew which I added their name to on a banner (the blurry section).

The Junebug Dress fastens with the front flap and buttons, while the dress fit my niece, we found it difficult to get the dress on and off so I ended up adding a beautiful red lace zipper to the back. Installing that zip to a completed dress - that wasn't meant to have one - proved a bit difficult, but it looked good in the end.

Motherboard clock

My hubby likes building computers and because family and friends know that, he tends to be given their old computers. Generally, these computers are destined for landfill so I decided to use one of the old motherboards as the background of a clock for my hubby.

I started by using pliers to pull all the components off but it was taking forever so I used our multi tool to cut all the bits off. Then I cut the motherboard to fit a square shadowbox photo frame and drilled a hole in the centre so I could install the clock.

If I ever make another one it will probably be five times quicker and a lot easier than this first one!

Loopy Bee

Since getting a Silhouette machine, I have been having a lot of fun making a lot of onesies for my baby nephew and niece, along with a few shirts for my first nephew. One day I just felt the need to completely redesign my crazy bee design so I could paint it on some onesies for the babies.

These are my original crazy bees, which would have been perfectly fine with a lot less time staring at the screen. Click here to go to the blog post with the template and instructions to make felt magnets!

I am glad I decided to redo my bee, this new design looks so much cuter for onesies. Plus I did a much better job of the graphics for this one. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the first one I painted with the original design.

Christmas 2013

Since I've been busy (by that I mean slack at updating my blog) I realised I never shared my handmade gifts for Christmas 2013!

I had been a little obsessed with woodburning, which meant everyone got a wooden spoon for Christmas! I made up a vine/leaf design and sketched it onto each wooden spoon before I started burning them.

With the wooden spoon I also gave a tea towel and I made everyone a jar of sweet chilli sauce using my favourite recipe.

Oh and of course everyone got to enjoy my rumballs - I think they are expected every year now!

Find and seek

It is getting close to two years since my last blog post, unfortunately life got busy and my blog got forgotten! To add to that, my creative side has dwindled and I feel like I only ever make gifts. I don't seem to have the time - or the motivation - to just craft for the fun of it.

So my new plan is to be organised, I have been buying more gifts rather than making them, and also planning way ahead to avoid frustrating mistakes and deadlines. I have been completing unfinished projects, starting new ones, as well as starting a few draft blog posts!

Before publishing any new posts I felt that my blog needed a new banner, but I just couldn't decide what I wanted, so the blog has been waiting...

Yesterday I was sorting through my vase of origami lucky stars as I wanted the colours to match our home. Sitting there with a pile of stars covering my desk made me realise that it would look great as my blog banner.

After thinking about it while sorting stars, I decided that it would be cute to add some of my little decorations into the mix to turn it into a find and seek banner.

I did find my set up difficult to photograph because the camera couldn't get it all in focus, but its not too bad considering my camera skills. The best thing about my new banner? I think I'm finally happy with this one - we'll see how long that lasts...