Blinking Flights

GIveaway Winners:

Thank you to everyone who entered! I picked two winners using the random number generator thingo, but I'm not sure how you do a screen shot of that without downloading a bunch of screen shot software, so you'll just have to take my word that I'm relaying the truth!

The winners are:
1. Sohpie
2. Suzy

I will contact you both soon and get some postal details!

And I'm feeling like a bit of a winner too because I finally managed to finish this horse I've been going on about. He isn't perfect, but if you look at him without looking at the picture in the book, he looks quite alright, even if I do say so myself!

I actually decided to make another one to keep, but this time I get to pick the colours, I had very specific instructions on the colours for the first one!

Happy Weekend!

B.

Getting Busy!

I'm not good at sitting still at the best of times, and I'm starting to get pretty excited about the baby, so I think that's what all the sewing is about, and this isn't everything... I do need to stop and sort her room out though because it is a mess- everything has been placed in there and left for arranging at a later date!

The pencilcase is for someone else, but you can get the pattern here. And the kokeshi doll is from 'Simple Softies' which is by the same people as 'Softies', but it's all completely kid friendly and hand sewing, and I made her up in a couple of hours- and added a rattle! And the burp cloths and bandana are from the Aranzi Aronzo book I'm loving at the moment.

And I've been doing the Christmas sewing that I promised some little people in my life that I would do, I just need to attach some legs to a certain patchwork horse and I'm all done. I'm really happy with how well this kangaroo turned out, but it was my second attempt- the first one just didn't look right. She is from the Softies book too, and the pattern is by My Little Mochi, and the joey is harder than it looks!!

And I'm going to draw the winner to my giveaway tomorrow night- and yes twitter entries count! :)

B.

A giveaway and a freebie!

Well it's nearly Christmas and I can no longer ignore that fact! To celebrate, I have decided to giveaway 2 of my screen prints- they're both the same, and I'll give one each to 2 readers who leave a comment below, just make sure you leave an email address or some way of obtaining your details. I will pick the winners on Friday night (Dec 10th) Australian time, which is probably Thursday night-ish for US folks.

There are only 4 of them in the world and they would look great framed, or hanging free on the wall like they do at my house.

And a freebie- I turned the doll picture that I made for my baby's room into a pdf so that you can print it out yourself. The page size is A4, and there is quite a sizable boarder so that you can either cut it down or use a large matt- it will print fine from a home ink jet printer. This is the link, and it's also in my sidebar under 'freebies'. I hope you enjoy!

And I hope you're not tearing your hair out at the impending festive season- I've discovered that Christmas shopping at 31 weeks pregnant is not my cup of tea, and that this year it all seems somewhat irrelevant compared with getting ready for the baby- but it will be nice to spend some time with my Mum and Dad before everything gets super hectic!

B.

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GIVEAWAY CLOSED!

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flickr love

1. toys on wheels, 2. Blue children decoration, 3. Girl on a Swing, 4. Kanga, 5. sprinkled pluses baby quilt, 6. Circle of Friends, 7. A happy place, 8. A happy place, 9. alleluja

1. Untitled, 2. Triangles, 3. handmade folk art magnets, 4. Blossom baby mobile - by PukaPuka, 5. Awesome mobile not just for babies, 6. Golden Sunset Mobile, 7. The Blanket, 8. Scandinavian Tomte, 9. edit

Check out all these lovely flickrstreams!! :)

B.

 

a shop update!!

Finally, finally, finally I put some things in my shop! This feels like a big accomplishment after having let it sit empty for such a long time. Of course I had the best of intentions, but no energy for the photos and description writing and the like. I've only added the blinkies so far, and I will be adding some Dew Drop Girls within the next week- I only have 2 of them, and hopefully some other bits and pieces like the baby blinkies.

Little Edwin was snapped up almost immediately as I did the update yesterday, but I wanted to show him off because he's the blinky that Riyo made the stamp of (last post), and I think he's pretty darn cute. If you join my facebook page, you'll know about shop updates and the like much quicker than via the blog by the way!

I've used Etsy because I can use Australian currency now and it has more reach, however if you're nervous or haven't joined up, email me and I can set up a transaction in my big cartel shop.

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For now, I'm feeling a huge sense of relief that I won't be doing any markets anymore for a long time, the stress, the repetitiveness, and the fact that I feel like I weigh about a million tones mean that I get to sit around the house and chill for a little bit instead of driving myself, and Joe mad! And it means I get to make my nieces the toys from the Softies books that they've been wanting for a very long time, I have made 'Little Pup' by My Little Mochi, I'm about to attempt to remake her Kangaroo after I completely messed up the pouch and the nose on the one I made yesterday, and I need to make the 'Patchwork Horse' by While She Naps, which is making me a little nervous-- because I love her aesthetic, but I'm not sure I can pull it off... I guess we'll see!

Happy Weekend!

B.

 

Where to start...

1. The drawers are actually finished! Yay... Joe spent an entire day last weekend touching up the edges of all the animals and attaching the handles. I will post a photo when it's where it's supposed to be.

2. The flat is so clean that I almost feel awkward. All the fabric is away. We had a house inspection this afternoon.

3. I did the Glebe Street Fair on Sunday, and I think it worked as an antidote for all markets for me, possibly forever. I forgot how rude people can be, don't get me wrong there were some really nice people too, but the 'I could do that' crowd was out in force.

My highlight was hanging out with some people I hadn't seen in a long time, one being Riyo, who spontaneously made me this blinky stamp- a type of portrait, she sat and drew a picture of her fave blinky and whipped this up and presented it to me!

She also gave me some of that great Japanese rubber she uses to carve her stamps from, my mind boggles at all the possibilities, but she's had a lot of practice, and I'm pretty sure my first attempt won't be nearly as impressive as her stuff.

4. Needless to say, I have some extra dolls left over from the weekend, and I will be popping them in my online shop sometime soon- this time I'm using Etsy, the Aus dollar is practically the same anyway.

5. I'm selling the Dew Drop Girl and Meekoo patterns up until Christmas- I've gotten a million emails about them in the last little while, so this is the link to my etsy shop. Please don't make them and sell them though, I've noticed a bit of that going on lately.

6. I've been making some more things for the baby, including some drawings for her walls, and I'm planning on making up some screen prints too. This is what I have so far:

B.

 

Mine's bigger...

Ever since I was a little girl, I have known how to make a proper mess. It's just that as an adult, you have more than one room to mistreat... and now that it's getting to be so warm, I can't stand the mess, I think all the sunshine somehow makes the chaos less bearable. So despite the fact I have my first market since June next Sunday, I've had to stop, breathe and organise.

Hopefully the rest of the flat will be this well organised soon. Wish me luck!

P.S. The subway fabric that everyone loves so much is available here! And it is soft and lovely- not quite as soft and lovely as the Heather Ross seahorse fabric you can see in the photo, but still, it's lovely!

B.

A little lamb

Apparently babies need mobiles, I'm not sure exactly why yet, but they are everywhere and when I saw this pattern in my new Aranzi Aronzo book, I figured that we needed this one in our house just for the sake of cuteness. I need to finish 3 more lambs and attach them, and then I need to figure out how to hang it from the ceiling in this rented flat without leaving too much of a mark, which means I also need to figure out where we are going to put the cot... jeepers!

And babies need drawers, even before they are born, because it turns out that even before they are born they accumulate a lot of clothes, so when we found this abandoned dresser on the street outside our house, we thought it would be perfect to clean up and paint. We used the stencil pattern from this Lena Corwin book that I got ages ago, and so far it's taken us 4 weekends to sand it back, paint with undercoat, paint, and then do the stenciling, and it's STILL not finished, it needs some touching up here and there, and some handles, and probably a hundred other things I haven't thought of yet, but we think it looks pretty funky:

Note: just ignore Joe's sculpture space in the background and imagine a nice white wall!

Edit/P.S. I just found this project as a free online one on the Etsy blog, it provides the template and the instructions from the book here!

B.

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Sydney siders: I will be at the Glebe Street Fair, Sunday November 21- which is held on Glebe Point Rd, so come and get all your Christmas pressies there from me in person, and I will be sharing a space with Riyo from Talk to the Wind and Sun, and Stephanie from Spark Candles. 

Look, no toys!

Well actually I have been steadily making (and stuffing) toys all week long, but I thought I'd share some other crafty endeavours related to the most popular topic at our house at the moment... lots of them I made weeks and weeks ago, they actually helped pull me out of the spotless house syndrome I was going through in the first 14 weeks, where the lounge-room was clean and the fabric was all packed away. That's not the case anymore.

I had been making bibs for my market stall, and they were all from tea-towels and the like, but I've let my opping wane a little over the past couple of months and thought it would be good to use up some of those pieces that were too small for anything much, but too big to bin... and I found this piece of linen that I screen printed way-back-when...

Normally I think kids should stay well away from politics, but I just couldn't help myself with this lovely Propagandhi quote. The bib pattern is from here.

And a snuggler, which looks more like this, it's just that mine is folded in half! It's from my Lotta Jansdotter book. And I made it from summer-weight fabrics rather than snuggly winter ones. And some shoes from this here pattern.

And a doll's quilt. I managed to find a second hand toy cradle which Joe is currently painting up, this is my contribution. Inspired by this amazing full sized baby quilt. I found it through this awesome quilty post by Kelly at My Happy Little Life, and I'm three squares away from finishing a cot sized quilt inspired by the squarey one (second from the top) in that post, but those pictures are for another day!

And I'm sorry if I started too many sentences with the word 'and', now I'm an adult, I know that it's technically okay to do so, but in primary school, it was strongly shunned and I still feel a little pang of 'inappropriateness' whenever I do it!

B. 

Life on Mars:

Joe and I have been talking about how much our lives have changed already, and we still have 4 full months to go until everything changes utterly and completely, forever, or so we keep hearing! It feels a little like being on an alien planet sometimes... I just noticed today how it odd it is to do the washing-up from a distance, that is, I can't get as close to the sink as I used to, and I've started to need to sleep during the day, which I've always detested, and my ability to sew is erratic, some days, I can churn them out, others, nothing happens. There is no routine or rhythm, but this is what it looks like:

Something for the little one, from Simple Sewing for Babies, which is actually full of really easy things to sew, AND I managed to find some rattle inserts for once in my life... here. They sell out a lot, so you need to keep checking back if they don't have any in.

Regular blinkies, and some baby blinkies have emerged too, thanks to Emma-Lee's need for smallness for an ingenious Christmas marketing plan she has coming up!

And the piles (and piles) of recently sewn, but as yet, unstuffed softies, and this photo doesn't include the new Spring/Summer version of my dew drops... you don't want to know how many there are!

Hopefully more will happen on the stuffing front soon!

B.