Fabric Markers

My sister got me some fabric markers from Spotlight today and I have some calico pieces here that I've cut out ready to make into bags. Ella and I are going to have some fun when she gets home from school this afternoon!! =D There's a nice bright red and green in the box so I think I might get her to do some Christmas themed pictures and she can give them to family as Christmas gifts. I'm way too excited about this lol. It's only just gone 11am and she doesn't finish school until 3pm so I have 4 hours to wait!

I might see if I can find some cheap plain white t-shirts too and she can make herself some new clothes =D So many possibilities!

Christmas Stockings

M for Macie and S for Stella :) These are little Christmas tree decorations I made for my twin nieces. I'm going to do one more pink one for Ella, then 4 blue ones for Jayden, Lachie, Jordan and Caleb. That's all the kids in our family (all the little ones anyway!)

And this is a stocking I made for Jayden. It's not very big so I doubt much will fit inside it, but it's cute!

I have a feeling the every post from now until the end of December is going to be Christmas related =p While looking through old craft magazines last night I found a tutorial for some gorgeous sequined baubles so I'm going to give those a go soon!

Christmas Countdown Calendar

I have been very busy working on my first Christmas project for the year - an advent/countdown calendar =D I'm so so pleased with how it turned out. It's definitely not perfect and there's lots of things I could have done better, but I'm pleased because it's without a doubt the most time consuming thing I've ever attempted and I managed to stick with it without getting bored and giving up. I was too impatient to wait to get my sewing machine off my sister so the entire thing is handstitched. I'd say I spent around 6-8 hours on it in total, spread over 3 nights.



The little pockets are made out of felt and are blanket-stitched around the edges. The measuring, cutting and blanket stitching took up the majority of the 6-8 hours!



E for Ella. There's also a J for Jayden but you can't see it in this picture. Each of the pockets has a little embellishment on it except one in every row, which I'm going to put numbers on



As you can see, there's one pocket missing lol. I ran out of embroidery thread halfway through blanket stitching the edges so I'll have to get some more thread before I can finish it. The background piece is unbleached calico which is nice and thick and it's doubled for extra strength. The border around the edge is made from scraps of Christmas printed fabric leftover from a Christmas dress that my mum made for Ella a few years ago. The scraps were really small so I had to cut them into strips and then join them all together, then I made it into binding and stitched it to the edges. If I had been patient and waited for the sewing machine it would have taken me 5 minutes maximum to do the binding but I'm not a patient person so instead I sat there for over an hour handstitching it!

All I need to do now is get some more green thread to finish off the missing pocket, stitch the numbers onto the blank pockets (which I probably should have done BEFORE attaching them to the calico) and then find a way to re-enforce the top of it so I can hang it up somewhere without it folding itself in half. Oh yes, and I need to buy something to put in the pockets =p I was going to do the traditional chocolates, but over here the temperature gets mighty high in December and they'll no doubt melt so I'm thinking a small wrapped lolly or something.

I'm also really pleased because I managed to do the whole thing using materials that I already had and didn't have to buy anything for it (except green thread which I'll need to get). For most of it I ended up having EXACTLY enough for what I needed.

A few of Ella's latest drawings

Not exactly craft or sewing related, but I'm posting these because they're so cute!

Little Red Riding Hood

Ariel with Flounder and Sebastion

Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer

Does making things in Photoshop count as being creative? If so, here's what I've made this week =p

Beading Techniques

I didn't want to post these pictures until I actually had something to decent to post but it looks like that's not going to happen so I'll just have to post my mediocre efforts =p Mediocre efforts made to look better with fancy photoshop editing! lol

Ella showing off her new headband. Made with pipe cleaners, beads, and a fabric covered button in the centre. She looks like a little hippy child =p

DISCLAIMER: The pictures below are pretty much just me practising and trying out new things. With the exception of maybe one or two things I'll probably just end up unthreading them all.

Not sure what this is lol. I just kept stringing and stringing until I had a really long string!

Trying out the netting stitch.

And from a different angle...

The beads in the background were done using the peyote stitch. All was going well until I pulled on the thread to tighten it all and the knot came undone and beads went flying everywhere. It took me 2 hours to do it too! I don't know how people manage to do 6 or 7 rows. I did 3 rows and then gave up because it was doing my head in.

Just a simple single strand bracelet on elastic to make it nice and stretchy. I really like this one and have been wearing it ever since I made it. The beads are not that dark in real life, the pink is a nice pale colour and it matches my watch =p

Another pair of earrings. A month ago I had no pairs of earrings. Now I have about 20.

This one is a really awkward length. Too short for a necklace, too big for my wrist (even when doubled over as shown in the pic) and too small for my ankle (when doubled). Not that I'd wear it anyway, not really my style.

Happy Birthday!

My little cousin Lily is turning 6 on Tuesday and for the first time ever I'm giving a completely handmade gift. I'm very nervous about this!!

I chose to give her this bag because it's my favourite and I know she will love it. It's pink and flowery and perfect for a little girl :) My original plan was to just give her the bag and buy some little things to put inside it, ie some hair clips, lip gloss, beaded bracelet etc. Then I thought "Why not make those too!" (except the lip gloss obviously, I don't know how to do that yet =p)

Then while searching through my stash I found this dress that's made from the same fabric as the flowers and the lining on the bag. For some reason this dress doesn't photograph very well, it's much prettier and has a much nicer shape in real life.

And a little bracelet to go inside her bag. Ella made this one! :) I'm also going to make some hair clips to go with the bracelet and I might buy some little "Lipsmacker" lip glosses to go with it too. Her wrapping paper and card are going to be handmade too! I'm using some of Ella's paintings to wrap up the gift and Ella has already made her a cute little birthday card. So apart from the lip gloss it will all be handmade. I hope she loves it!

Origami Butterflies

I should rename this "Ella's Craft Blog" since a lot of my posts seem to be about what she's been doing rather than what I've been doing =p Anyways, here's what we've both been doing in the last few days...

Origami butterflies. We made these using the tutorial that's posted a few posts down. The tutorial is for money but we discovered it works just as well (if not better) with construction paper. The ones pictured above weren't quite finished when I took that picture because we didn't have any pipe cleaners but they're all done now :)

Ella doing some painting. When I was planning what her 'arts and craft corner' was going to look like I always envisioned some sort of wall plaque saying something clever and I was planning on buying some wooden letters to spell something out, then one day while looking for something completely different I stumbled upon this wooden cutout with the word already spelt. Perfect!

All pretty and painted!

And this is her arts and crafts corner! The origami butterflies have been finished with pipe cleaners and her "Create" letters are up on the wall, along with a few other bits and pieces of her artwork.

Printable Fabric

Ren - I don't know whether to thank you or curse you =p I've installed the Stumble Upon toolbar and I've been having loads of fun/wasting loads of time haha.

Anyways, I've just stumbled upon this awesome website that sells printable fabrics. They come in handy A4 size pieces and you just put them through your printer the same way as you would a piece of paper and then afterwards you just cut out your picture and either sew or iron it onto whatever you want. So many possibilities!!

I would LOVE to do something like this! What an awesome gift it would make.

Beads & Fimo Polymer Clay Earrings

My beads from ebay finally arrived, along with my polymer clay kit so Ella and I have been busy busy busy making earrings and other little trinkets. I don't have any pliers so I've been bending the little hooky parts with tweezers and my fingers and now I have big dents in my fingertips and they're all tender and sore. Must get some pliers! Anyways, here is the results...

My first attempt at using polymer clay! There's fingerprints all over them and little scratches everywhere but I love them =p

Ella made these ones and out of all the beaded ones they are my favourite :) She chose all the colours herself and threaded them on, then I twisted the top for her to attach them to the earring hook.

Bit boring...

Don't really like these ones much



A little bracelet to go with the earrings Ella made


The lighting was terrible when I took this picture so the colours came out kind of weird. The butterflies are meant to be silver and the beads are a soft pink.

Again, very bad lighting!

My second attempt with polymer clay and it didn't turn out much better than my first =p These are supposed to be the little blue ghost from Pacman but they look kind of spazzy. Hopefully no one will look too closely at my ears though so the spazziness won't be as obvious as it is in this close-up.

Lucky 4 leaf clovers! :)