@my house

At my house today - the creativity is back - but in a tidy way and we have been busy, busy, busy - in the good way.
After a Saturday that was filled with a  nail biting Basketball final with 2 extra time periods, ....
  

and then the breakup/presentation party at night ,

a slightly slower paced Sunday morning saw both girls painting many a masterpiece that now adorn the noticeboards followed by playdough creations. I have only ever made cooked playdough, but when I came across this post by Danielle on Hello Owl, I thought it was worth a try. Although it was successful, and incredibly quick to make, I think I like the feel of the cooked version better.

It was then off for a ride on the local tourist Steam train, aka Thomas the Tank Engine, for our train obsessed Mia, but unfortunately the steam engine was in for repair, so, as Mia phrased it, a Dirty Diesel, (this is meant as a term of endearment for a diesel engine), was pulling the train.

Brett, Mia and Sarah all piled on; Mia loving it because it was a train, Sarah loving it because the carriage was just like the Hogwarts Express with everyone in their separate compartments and Brett loving it because it was only a one way trip.

When I met them at the end of the line, there was just time to race home for a quick bite of lunch before heading off to Casey Fields (aka the coldest and windiest place on earth) for 2 hrs of Sarah's HPV training.

Today, saw me trying to get rid of , I mean hide from view, some of the clutter in our house.
My craft area has been a sore point for a long time as eveything was stored on an open bookcase, so eveyone who visited always saw everything.
Well now it is all hidden away behind closed doors. After a bit of wardrobe renovation, I have removed several shelves from Mia's semi built in wardrobe and created a hanging space. I was very proud to throw out much of the 'stuff' I had stored on those shelves and have bags out by the bins as proof of my de-cluttering efforts.
Mia's old wardrobe then made it out into the top living room and is now my craft cupboard to hold all the equipment and sundries that I accumulate. I have decided to take a photo now, when it looks nice, before the rest of the stuff in squeezed in and the lovely neat look totally disappears.

Now you see it....

now you dont .......

No doubt wihtin a couple of days the inside will be a total clutter like the bookshelves used to be, but at least it started off well.

What's happening at your place? Play along here.

@my house New Products - Finally!

At my house today we are mini-celebrating as I am very happy with the way my new teaspoon bookmarks have turned out. The first in the 5 new products I hope to have finished in the next week.

I have always liked the souvenir teaspoons you get from all over the place but hated the normal display stand way of showing them off, so therefore, like everyone else they get shoved in a drawer or discarded.
Well now they can have a new life and also keep your place in the lastest book,  until your next moment of escapism.

And this is the little gem I have to thank for enabling me to bend them without snapping the fine handles off.  - My mini butane torch. ( but if the snapping thing does happen, I have products to make from the broken bits too).

These are the outcome...... The flattened spoon goes inside the book and the decorative handle sits down the spine of the book.

They will have custom messages stamped onto the flattened spoon but I haven't decided on what the standard ones will be yet. Prehaps, 'Fell Asleep Here', 'Brain Food', 'Food for the Soul', 'Melanie's Book' etc. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I also attempted some new fork creations but the gas ran out and even though the guy in the tobacco shop made filling the torch seem really easy, I cannot get the butane into it at sufficient pressure or amount. All I get is a low temp bunsen burner flame (although it can look like a flame thrower).
So back I go today, playing the helpless female and get another lesson on gas refills.

Whats happening at your place? Play along and check out some other homes at Lou's.

A Perfect 10

Today, September 4th, my baby turns 10! 
When I look back on it I can say that time has flown but then thinking of life BK (before kids) seems so long ago, I actually find it very hard to remember what it was like.  So, due to today's occasion here is a mini photo story ....

10 years ago, 6 weeks ahead of time we found ourselves here... (oh how young we look)

which produced this....

which 10 years later has evolved to this........ (with the brand new ipod touch)

A great day was had, the birthday girl was totally spoilt by all the  family and my rainbow cake was a huge success - more about that on a later post, but for now it will suffice to say...

Happy Birthday Sarah.
I look forward to to all that is still to come.

Toot, Toot, Chugga Chugga

Well it, the Train Cozy that is, is finished and I must say that although I would change a few things if I made it again, I am extremely happy with how it turned out. So I might say is Mia and Molly Engine.
See for yourself.......

 

As I said there are a few changes I would make as I learnt that Wonder Under does not work all that successfully under 3mm ribbon, it is very easy to stick said ribbon to your ironing board when trying to attach Wonder Under and stitching all the track cross rails individually takes a lot of time.
BUT...
I already have plans to make more but this time for racing cars with a racetrack going all the way around with a pit lane in the middle and possibly a train one but with the track done a far simpler way.
Hmmmm, possiblities, possibilities. Now if only some of my friends had young boys instead of girls.

My Creative Space

My creative space for this week is not quite as advanced as I had hoped it would be. Delayed by life, work and happily the sale of my first spoon on madeit within 2 days of listing them, yay - so excited, and an unexpected order from a new retail outlet  for my kids drums and bubba boots, my train caddy has not evolved very far.
Last night when everyone was tucked up in bed the first drafting stage began, complete with 1/2 size mockup, and then the full size trial and series of adjustments as I found out that just doubling everything did not work,

This photo was taken at about 1:30am when I finally decided that
1. no more could be done without fabric and it was too late to start searching through the stash
and
2.the fact that I needed to be up and awake in under 6 hours
.....  so excuse the bad lighting etc.

I would have thought that as I only had to choose the fabric today I would have made a start and even got it finished but my true libran indecisiveness kicked in to its fullest and I think it took me over 5 hours to finally decide on the colour combination. So as a result this is as far as I got.

Hopefully tomorrow will see it completed and I can post some pictures of it in all its glory. I have a good feeling that this will be a winner with Mia when it is finished as we had to take the paper version out today with us so she could play with with her trains.

Hope your creative space has been a little more productive.
Pop on over to kootoyoo to see what is going on in the crafting world.

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You can now see the finished track in all its glory here. 

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My Creative Space

YAY - they arrived!! My stamp set that is.....

So this week has seen me dig out some old spoons and some of these  ( everyday flat washers, that is) .....

and make some of these......

...... More practice is needed to make sure the imprints are deep and even and silver spoons are much easier than the flat washers. Others have been made but they are now touring outback NSW and I forgot to get photos before they went to their new home.

(I know this isn't Basil but mid winter is not going to find much basil growing in vegie gardens. Plus I am standing in the rain on a very wet Melbourne morning to take these photos so parsley will do.)

( As the rain was getting heavier, only one shot of each spoon was taken so their was no 'choice' to be made for the best shot/lighting, lack of stray grass growing in the vegie garden etc.)
  

Practised versions of all of these will be available in my me2 madeit shop very soon....

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Today was the opening day of the Quilt and Craft Fair in Melbourne and many hours were spent fossicking through beads, fabric, silver blanks and the  best store for any sort of gadget you could think of. www.punchwithjudy.com.au . (Finally a supplier of freezer paper in Aus!) If I had the patience to make quilts there would be even more to choose from - especially a thing they call the Curve Master Presser Foot , solely for sewing curves without the need to clip or press the seam flat!
If I could knit there is also this great book called "Really Wild Tea Cosies" - hmmmm, now who do I know who knits and has time on their hands.......sis?
The day was not all spent drooling however - apart from a selection of charms, pendants and some sterling silver pendant blanks, I did buy myself a darning foot for my machine. ( my main reason for going to the fair)

I have watched  Alisa Burke do lovely free form stiching on her blog as she transforms clothes, furnishings etc and wanted to give it a go myself, so, first thing done on arriving home today was to play with my new toy. I only got time for one attempt but was very happy with it and can't wait for the chance to do more. If this is what a first attempt looks like, the future looks promising.

To find out what other creative types are up to today, pop on over to Kootoyoo and gaze upon some amazing talent.

Mystery Hours

Once again the post meant for Tuesday is not written until after midnight. Oh how I could do with some extra hours inserted between 11pm and midnight.

With the design for my second cuff constantly on my mind, it was a long day before 'my' mystery hours came tonight. My girls give the time after they go to bed, when the dishes are done, house tiedied, everything ready for the next day and other half is happily installed in front of either his computer or the TV with remote in hand, the name of mystery hours because according to them this is when new things or clothes just appear. In thruth between 10pm and 2am (that is my absolute deadline if I want to be able to function the next day) is my time to sew, craft, hot glue, soothe the glue burns (which are getting less) and basically let the creative juices flow.

Tonight was the new cuff. Instead of twisting zippers this time I wanted to recreate a 'doodle' that I think everyone has done at one time or another. You know the one where you start out with a few big circles and fill in all the between gaps with ever decreasing circles until the whole area is filled with masses of circles.
This is the scribble that prompted it all.

and then translated into zippers....

The larger circles looked a little empty so some of the extra circles I had made were used to break them up a bit.
Now firmly attached to the polystyrene with many, many pins, the fun part of tacking the design to the felt begins. I am getting a lot faster at the whole process though. The last cuff was a very fast learning curve.

I did also whip up a new dress for myself from one that had sat in the wardrobe since the 80's. I bought it the last time the Military theme was big and had the extra long military vest to go over the top and break up its greyness. Scary to think I could hold onto something so boring for so long. This year as a first day of winter thing, I gave up waiting for long grey 80's dresses to become fashionable again and transformed a boring grey full length dress into a empire line, just above the knee dress. I forgot to take a before picture but just imagine an ankle length dress with the waistline on the actual waist and the obligatory 80's shoulderpads. ( These were the first to go).
Here is what it became...

I know it doesn't look much laying down but the only full length mirror in the house is in my daughters bedroom and she is sleeping peacefully. I do like how I fluked the flash to be where my head should be.
I am also hoping that it may look ok over leggings etc as a tunic style top as well.

My Creative Space

Well today sees me trying to finish another zipper cuff to go in my madeit shop. The design has been pinned to the foam block and tacked on the to felt backing. Now only the invisible stitching, topstitching and adding the closure remain. I wish it would all happen tonight but I think it will get the better of me. I tend to go crosseyed after a couple of hours staring at stiches on zippers.

So in pictures....

This...

becomes this......

NB: this is a printout of a photo to see if the design looked alright wrapped around a wrist.

While browsing today why not pop over to www.kootoyoo.com and check out what other clever people are up to.

Elephants in Skirts

Being stuck at home for a couple of days and wanting to find something to take my mind off what I need to make/sew for the market on the weekend has proved very profitable for youngest daughter Mia.

Ever since we went to see Mali the baby elephant at Melbourne Zoo, Mia has been besotted with elephants.

Combine this with my desire to try out a couple of the wonderful tutorials I have found online and voila - new elephant themed clothes for Mia.

There is so much 'normal' applique around everywhere on kids clothes I really like the idea of ' Reverse Applique'. With the help of 'That Darn Cat's' lovely instructions the Mali top was born. ( Mia is not the type of child to sit quietly for a photo. No matter now much I want to actually see what she is wearing or how much chocolate she is bribed with).

There was just enough pink fabric left to make a small skirt with a waistband taken from a truly horrid, illfitting skirt Mia had grown out of.

So together the outfit was made.

Bouyed from success (my pride that something worked first time and the fact that Mia didn't want to take them off) and being at home again today I thought I would try this tutorial on making skirts from pants.

This one was made from an old pair of track pants....

Again unable to stand still. The previous photo was taken while she was distracted.

and this one from uncut cord pants.

This photo had to be of the skirt by itself as all the ones with Mia in it were nothing but a blur.

On a Roll

Bouyed on by the wonderful responses I received for my Zipper delights made last night and a lovely belated Mothers Day lunch with my mother, sister (oddsocks) and my very own energiser bunny Mia, I decided that I would give a T-shirt re-fashion project a go. I wanted to experiment with more zipper ideas that are running around in my head, but ran out of hot glue :(
Sarah has wanted one of my new t-shirts with gathered sleeves etc since I bought it and as she will not be getting it any time soon I thought I would try one of the fashion upcycles that I have seen on many lovely blogs for turning old Dad t-shirts into kids clothes.
Well I think it worked out very well. 

From this.......

To this.......

The ruffles may not stay yet - not sure if Sarah will like them but wanted to see what they would look like and if I could make decent ruffles.