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!