Easter Craft - Glassine Cookie Bags

I thought some cute custom-made glassine bags would be a nice touch for our Easter cookies!



You need a sheet of glassine (we bought one from our local art shop), a pack of doiley's and your sewing machine! You could use double sided tape & washi tape for a no-sew project, but I love to sew paper!



Cut glassine to your desired measurement - I folded my paper over so my bags were thicker, then fold in half again, sew the doiley into the top seam, then sew up the sides! Very simple really.



These are my 3rd attempt at icing biscuits, I am getting a little better with practice. I was very happy with the spotty technique! The icing was much brighter than I expected but I did use gel colouring and as the book says, it gives a vibrant colour compared to supermarket food colouring. You could pop little eggs in these too and seal with washi tape!

Valentines Craft for kids

As I mentioned the other day I have never been big on Valentines but it did present a nice opportunity to talk to Anya about love - why we love each other and how we show love etc... not so much about romantic love and to do a themed craft with her :-)



We made these cardboard hearts for Daddy - cut shape, drew our messages and pictures, stuffed them with paper and stapled closed - hung with twine. Thanks Tania for the inspiration.

Chandelier #13 - DIY beaded

Shop Girl passed on this link courtesy of a dedicated website to dollar store craft: find out how to make this Chandelier! Nice for backyard birthdays/weddings hanging from the trees :-)

Ribbon love

These stunning ribbons are from a fabulous website I found that supply EVERYTHING you could think of for events and crafting! Unfortunately they are in the states and of course they don't ship to Australia. They have alternate ways you can ship to Oz but the price is ridiculous :-( *hmphh* When our dollar is so strong it sucks that we can't take advantage of such great suppliers....

I love the names of these ribbons & colours:

1. Mint Green Parisian Grosgrain
   
2. Sea Foam Pearl Finish
   
3. Austrian Silver Velvet

We are home safe and enjoyed one night at the beach and a little relaxing before driving home yesterday. Of course it stops raining after we LEAVE the beach! ha ha - always the way. I am just happy to have my little family all back together again.

Top 100 crafting tutorials on The Long Thread

These blog posts are like GOLD don't you think? Ellen from The Long Thread has posted her top 100 crafting tutorial finds for 2009 which include her own clever creations. You will never run out of things to make and inspiration from other fellow crafters. My cousin Gretel from A little red ribbon made the list too with her linen drawstring gift bag under bags, pouches and purses! Enjoy perusing the list!

Monday Musings - more pretties in the making

I had such a fabulous time creating over the weekend. I am really happy with how my pieces turned out. Can I say these photos are only of me 'modeling' out of necessity!! They would look no good on my hubby. It is hard to get photos where you don't feel or look like a complete idiot :-) A few more of this weekends work on flickr.

More Christmas Decorations

I seriously thought yesterday was Friday when I posted my "Friday Favourites" :-) Can I blame that on pregnancy brain? I made some more clay Christmas decorations - filled with many imperfections, just like their maker :-)

Make for Christmas

This lovely image is from the Magazine Inside Out - I bought the Christmas mag for some inspiration. You can see a few more Christmas images on their blog. They have some simple paper crafts to make. All you would need was a fiskar circle cutter and you're set. I bought one at K Mart for a reasonable price.

Easy Christmas decorations / gifts...

I made these stars on Saturday when my girl slept - a mummy only project :-) They were super easy, definitely a craft to do with kids but I wanted some creative therapy all to myself for this one. The longest part was waiting 24hrs for the clay to dry and turn white.

Materials:

• Air dry clay - Bunnings (Hardware store)
  
• Star cookie cutters - Spotlight (sewing store)
• Stamp set - Lincraft (sewing store)
  
• Skewer - kitchen drawer :-)
• Rolling pin
  

I rolled the clay with Anya's plastic playdough rolling pin - approx 3mm, cut out shapes, imprinted stamp design, engraved my initials and the year on the back and finally poked a hole through the top so I can thread ribbon through to hang, once they have dried.

Monday Meanderings - Tara Dennis

Macro Mondays are taking a break for a while!!! Over the weekend we had some visitors from Sydney stay which was lovely. We love hosting laid back guests :-) It always means we eat really well over the weekend too!!! Weekends are generally lazy for me & cooking. On the Sunday we went out to Crace display village and saw Tara Dennis give a talk on decorating, the basics of "where to start". She put together a story board for making over a room, based on a colour palette found in a fashion magazine. Since fashion is always ahead of home furnishings in colour trends it is a good way to 'future proof' your home... (in Tara's words). The photo of the paper lantern is one of the free craft projects found on Tara's website. There are a few Christmas themed crafts - it's not too early to start people :-) Hope you had a nice weekend.

FREE - Craft Projects

While I am on the Bloesem kids bandwagon, I may as well point you in the direction of their free projects section! So many cool crafts/projects to do with your kids, suitable for a mix of ages! Great for school holidays or at home with your under 5's!

Necklace Craft

Celeste is wearing the latest in children's craft - pasta and cupcake liners on silver thread! Available in a household near you. What a quick, fun craft - Anya and I made this last week. We didn't do much crafting last week - we were very busy with outings :-)

Stitches and Craft show

With my free tickets in hand, I went on my merry way to the Stitches and Craft show with my Mama, Auntie, and cousins! We had a great day - my favourite part was of course the Incubator! Please excuse my mobile phone photos - everyone thought the other person was bringing the good camera ;)

• Crochet Cool display - Luisa De Santi - very cool
• Yana & Gret
  
• Me (far right)with the lovely girls from Ink & Spindle (boy I look tired - this was only at 10am) - they are as delightful in real life as you would think
  

The highlight was meeting some of the bloggers that I follow and seeing their stuff in person. I was sooooo self controlled in buying! Very proud of myself! I did get some Ink & Spindle fabric and a Kristen Doran small bundle. I am a new fan of Kristen's work, she has some gorgeous prints and was really lovely to chat with. It's a shame we couldn't take photos of the stands to share but Kristen has some on her blog Cheeky beaks. I was awake for 2 hours on Sat night dreaming up my stall layout for Handmade! Not that I haven't thought about it 100 times, must have been all that visual stimulation....

I won tickets to Stitches and Craft!!

I almost forgot to share, I won tickets to the Stitches and Craft show yesterday which is lovely because I am going with Gretel, Yana, my Mum and Auntie this Sat!! Thanks Handmade Market Blog!