My Creative Space

My creative space this week finds me battling the dreary, cold, wet Melbourne winter with all too many days like this...

.... to find enough good natural light to photograph my lovely Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Gift Exchange present from Keera at Live.Love.Sew.
Today however wet, miseable and cold it may be, it is the brightest day we have had all week. So here are some shots of the lovely creative journal I received.
Keera came across one of my posts moaning about how I wish I had more time to let creative ideas percolate etc and she came up with the lovely idea of a journal to draw, doodle and work ideas out in.
The cover for the journal is exquisite. Not only has she created a lovely patchwork front but she has also hand stiched some inspiring wording that winds its way around the entire cover. (I feel Keera has far more patience in her little finger than I have in my whole body)

Right down to my initials in the corner. ( Having the initials ME got me into a lot of trouble with teachers at school who thought I was being smart when asked to mark our initials in the corner of our work, but I digress)

I also received some lovely hair ties and clips for my girls in my package, but I cannot photograph them as they have gone away in the girls hair to their Grandparents for a sleepover while it is school holidays.

School holidays have been non stop to say the least around here but I have managed to get a few more of the cupcake pincushions made and out to new homes.Oh those wonderful wee hours of the morning!
When friends and family saw the one I made for Keera, the requests started pouring in.


The next lot aren't quite as large as Keera's but still just as cute.


This is the only one still to go to its new home....

I hope your week is full of sunshine and warmth and lots of creative space.
Play along at Our Creative Spaces

My Creative Space

 I Wish.....

My first creative space for a while finds me wishing....
Wishing for more time  -  my mind is working a million miles an hour with new ideas and there is is not enough hours left in the day after normal work and after school activities to get them all done.
I have new ideas for the silver cutlery that I hope will be a winner for Easter, and, I also want to have time to play around , just experimenting with spoons like the one above - nothing for sale,  just feel good stuff around the house for me.
I also have a grand new idea for fleece this winter. I am calling it B.L.I.S.S. ( but you will have to wait for the great unveiling to see what it stands for.) BUT, and this is a big BUT , BLISS is still in my mind and has yet to have any prototypes made.
The plus side however it that sewing can be done late at night. Bashing spoons flat and then stamping them is a little noisey to be done after dark.

As for all the other ideas, eg  the clothes that I would like to make,  learning  to crochet/knit , free form stiching, being creative with coffee sacks, the list goes on -   well, they will just have percolate in the brain a little longer.

I hope you find time for your creative persuits and play along at Kootoyoo

. . . Hiatus Over . . .

Big and Little has been on a hiatus for the last 4 months due mostly to the fact that I cannot do everything. Now however due to so many email and  other requests I will attempt to get it back up and going.
Just before the hiatus last year I started my Hand Stamped Silver Spoons and Forks. I thought these might be a cute little gift  for Christmas and that I might sell a couple or three. Over 500 spoons later I am still amazed how successful they have been and continue to be. With this, Christmas, school holidays, work and wanting to spend as much time as possible with the family in the small glimpses of summer that we had, it was necessary to sleep at night and take a break from blogging.
Over the next little while I will show you what I have been up to creatively over the last few months. To do it all now would be too much for anyone to handle - including me.
Lets just start with the fact that it is work tomorrow and my vow this year is to me more varied in the jewellery I wear ( and the wardrobe for that matter). Normally I have one necklace and wear it to death - not this year - this is the year of change!
On this note, tonight, I have been inspired by all the dandelion (or fairy clocks as they are called in our house) craft there is around at the moment and have made/stamped myself a pair of brass earings to wear tomorrow.
Not quite how I imagined them but pleased all the same. No one at the office tomorrow will notice ( a downside of all male co-workers) but I will know they are new and different.
Judge for yourself.......

I will change the jump rings and hooks for brass coloured when I have a chance to get to Spotlight etc but to be able to wear them tomorrow silver will have to do. I am a perfectionist when it comes to selling my products but for my family and myself, many shortcuts or 'modifications' are made - all in the name of experimentation of course.
'till next time - happy autumn

@my house - a little bit late

My house this week finds me totally our of whack! Don't get me wrong, I love 4 day holiday weekends but it does throw my time/day clock out of whack. I went through today thinking it was Sunday and that I had plenty of time to get everything done for the Red Hill market next Saturday. Just after lunch it hit me that I have less than 2 days to get everything done as tomorrow is out with 'normal' work and the candle holders will not even arrive until Thursday arvo. So.... I pulled my little finger out and got on with all the new fork and spoon options I have had floating around in my head, and I must say they have turned out rather well.  They are now all up for sale in my madeit shop

My favourites are the custom teaspoons ....

I had never like the idea of garden forks but when I stuck a couple of them in the garden at jaunty angles, it changed my mind. They now come in single forks, sets of 3 or mixed sets with spoons.

Now there are just the pile of coasters to do, more spoons and forks to stamp, cook book clips to stamp and fold, and the christmas tealight holders to create from scratch. Somehow I think I will be seeing a lot of the 'mystery hours' in the next few days.

Apart from all of that it was Melbourne Cup Day today ( hence the holiday, yesterday was mid-term break) and  'the race that stops a nation' did stop everything at our house, as, for the 3 1/2 minutes that the race took, we were all glued to the TV.

Play along with your house here

My Creative Space

My creative space today finds me creating new spoon ideas for the upcoming Christmas shopping markets.
Here is cook book holder idea #1

This one will be mine as I was a little distracted by a 3 yr old this morning when stamping the 'H', hence its wrong alignment. I can't believe I had stamped all the other words, spelling backwards, as I went without incident and I stuff up on a simple H , two words from the end. Arghhhhhh!!!

~~~~~

I also spent the day remaking  2 of my toddler drums that I thought were winging their way to my lovely madeit shoppers. Australia Post contacted me today to advise me that they had been involved in an 'accident' and were destroyed. They will reimburse me the cost of the goods and the original postage but when I said the replacements should be sent express post, I was politely told that that would cost Australia Post too much. Really???

~~~~~

While trawling the net the other day I came across a small brooch with the 'unknown Beatrix Potter tea drinking rabbit' on it and now I have located a copy of the picture for myself, I am trying to decide what to do, make with it etc.... (the original 10cm x 12cm painting sold for 15, 600 brittish pounds 2 years ago, I wrote this out as I couldn't find the pound symbol,).

Hmmmm, decisions, decisions.
If I think about this some more I am sure I can put off other proper work for a bit longer.

How has your 'space' been? Play along here at Lou's

30 Photos in 30 Days - Day 26

39 Today!

no I am not 3539! I shared birthday celebtrations with my sister whose birthday is on Wednesday.

 I can be happy about this birthday as I am still under 40 ( which according to both my children is really old)
When I was in my twenties the idea of being nearly 40 was something I wanted to avoid - turning 30 was going to be bad enough but today at 39, I can say that I do not feel any different to the 20-something girl - just a few more responsibilitieswith a few more, actually a lot more, wrinkles and wobbly bits.
So after a day of being totally spoilt by my family I thought I would see if I could list 39 things about myself that you might not know and maybe I have not realised about myself until now.

1. I am a real red head - although I do have help hiding some of the greys
2. I am perfectly happy celebrating my birthday with family and no big fuss.
3. I like myself better now than in my early 20's and I would not go back in time.
4. I love being a mother, and having 2 children is not twice as hard.
5. If there was not such a large gap between Sarah and Mia I would love to have had more kids.
6. I still love cute shoes - although my collection is slightly smaller than in my 20's
7. I always have a tape measure in my handbag.
8. I love Thai food
9. I love seafood.
10. I am more confortable in my own skin now than I have ever been.
11. I love it that my girls and I all have birthday's in September although it can be a strain on the wallet.
12. I hate blue cheese.
13. I play piano and have taught it
14. I wish Brett and I could spend more time together - life is so hectic at the moment.
15. I have all my teeth - including wisdom teeth and have had since I was 15
16. I dont drink nearly enough water.
17. I am a planner - everything is planned in advance.
18. I am not good with going with the flow.
19. I love photography and wish I could spend more time learning about it.
20. I love to cook cakes but....
21. I would happily give up cooking dinner every night.
22. I hate food shopping.
23. I would love to own a car which had back doors. - especially with 2 kids
24. I have only owned hatch back cars.
25. One day I will get married.
26. I will never get a tattoo.
27. I would love to have my own craft room. I was supposed to in this house but 3 wks after moving in I found out I was pregnant with mia - bye bye craft room, hello babies room.
28.  I hope my girls grow up to be as close as my sister and I.
29. I love vintage silver at the moment and cannot find enough of it.
30. I wish my metabolism would keep up with the fact that I love cakes.
31. My eyes change colour depending on what I wear between blue, green, grey, hazel and a wierd kind of dark yellow ( I hate this one and avoid wearing colours that bring this out).
32. I have had a cat all my life.
33. I love 80's music
34. I love jelly snakes and am a sucker for licorice.
35. I ADORE dark chocolate and hate white chocolate - not even a chocolate in my book.
36. I would love to be more daring in my wardrobe.
37. My perfect house would be overlooking a beach with no close nieghbours.
38.  I am a hoarder and don't like to throw anything out (much to the dislike of my husband)
39. I have realised that age is only a number and it is how you live and feel that counts.

Oh my, that was hard. I do not think I will repeat it for my 40th, but I am glad I did it.
Now I think it is time to curl up on the couch and relax before the week starts again tomorrow

My Creative Space

My creative space this week finds me totally rethinking my market stall.
7 years ago no-one was selling pouch style baby slings anywhere much in Aus and baby wearing was just starting to take off. As such my business boomed and I easily replaced my old full time job income plus more with one day at the market 3 out of every 4 weeks and sewing at night and while Sarah was at kinder etc. Today you find slings everywhere and add to this the ecconomic climate of the past couple of years and the fact that there are free patterns for slings all over the internet,  sales have dropped dramatically and it is now my 'supplemental' products that are bringing in the money. I have also lost the desire to keep thinking of new baby products.

Since my upcycled spoons have been so popular I am moving more toward this line of upcycling thinking and are hoping to have completed samples of the new product range in the next couple of days so they can either be approved or rejected by the market committee.

My new mini butane torch arrived today so the small spoon bending can begin. Now all those souvenir teaspoons that people discard will soon have a new lease of life.
So too will this map from a 1996 version of the Brisbane UBD ( this is where we lived way back then)

These maps, but for the Melbourne markets from vintage Melways, as well as nautical charts will be turned into these....

I have several other coasters that are undergoing the waterproofing test, that are of a rounded square shape, which I think I like better, but since they are only tests they have very ugly advertising maps from the font section of the UBD on them and are not photo worthy. - not to mention the wrinkles from learning how to use modge podge. Everyone raves about this stuff but I must admit I am having some serious wrinkle problems. Any tips???
Also on the list of to do's are upcycling tea light candles, recycled sheet music, christmas carols and coffee sacks. ( A lot of these will require the mastering of modge podging) I have a very busy few days ahead but I love the inventing/design stage of new products.



I am also glad that there will be no more birthday cake baking after the efforts of the last couple of weeks have left me considerable heavier than I started out. I wish I didn't like cake so much.
Here are a couple of shots of the finished Thomas Cake for Mia last weekend ( actually a James cake as he is the favourite engine).

I hope your week is as creative as it can be. If so, play along here at Kootoyoo

As a footnote.........I am also committing to attend the Perle8 group next week (Sept 23rd). Now I have said that I will go and everyone has read it I cannot not turn up. ( What do you bet that the group stops during the holidays - hehehe, this would be just my luck)

My Creative Space

With a radical change in hair colour, the downsizing of my markets and the wintery weather, this weeks creative space is the chance to make something just for fun. As I have just about finished my gift for the craft swap on Craftaholics, the only limit is my imagination.
I want to refashion some old t-shirts into dresses for Mia, make a tulle skirt ( better than the ones in the shops) for Mia and maybe even a twirly pink skirt like Angelina Ballerina, also for Mia. Then there are Sarah's request of skirts and scarves for winter. For me, well a new apron would be nice - maybe out of teatowels or old jeans and I would like to try one of my zipper cuffs made into a collar/bib type necklace.
Oh the ideas just keep coming. -  especially when browsing all the wonderfully creative people on Kootoyoo Hopefully over the following days, many of these ideas will be making their pictorial debut on Big and Little and their street debut during our school holidays.

Shortest Lunch, Shortest Day, Longest Market

The Shortest Lunch is an even run by the smaller wineries of the Yarra Valley on the weekend of the shortest day of the year. Each of the smaller wineries of the region offer an entre sized meal and glass of wine for around $10. Yesterday saw us enjoying 6 wineries in the Seville region and we found that the smaller the winery, the bigger the serve of food and the better the wine.
Our day started with some absolutely delicious BBQ salmon and Pinot at Seville Hill Winery, then on to wine tastings as Whispering Hills. Their wine was nice but since they are only very small it was very cramped.

Seville Estate served the most delicious wasabi duck and the best Pinot and Pinot Gris of the day. I would highly recommend all of their wines to anyone. They also had great music and a very friendly dog.

Next on the list was Elmswood. Very beautiful and well set up but I am sure they were capturing and growing the ingredients for out mini pizzas as it took and incredibly long time for food to arrive.

Five Oaks vineyard was the least favourite of our stops but was followed by our final stop at Brumfiled Winery which offered a very relaxed atmosphere and lovely coffee for those who had to drive home soon. All in all a day that could very well be repeated next year.

After such a lovely day of wining and dining it was a rude shock to the body this morning to have to get up and leave for my final Flemington market in the rain. The only thing worse than rain and a market is wind and rain at a market. I was hoping for a wonderul day that would make me regret leaving this market but it proved my decision a correct one when the rain continued until about noon. Rain until noon marks and the death knoll of the market as no one comes to the market after that if they have not been out and about in the morning. Thus, sitting there in the rain with very limited customers made it seem like one of the longest markets of my seven years of markets. Were it not for the amazing sales of my coffee cozies at Red Hill Coffee stall and my need to constantly restock them the day would have been very boring indeed. These cozies also led to another business oportunity with Rebecca and Kate  fromt STREAT wanting to use my coffee cozies at their coffee carts to be located in the QV building in Melbourne and the surrounding CBD.

 STREAT is a wonderful organisation that offer homeless kids obtain some hospitatity and barista training in their mobile street food and coffee carts, which can lead to a variety of jobs to help them turn their lives around. I would love to be part of something that helps get kids off the streets. It brought home to me how lucky we really are and although the hot water system died yesterday and we have no hot water at the moment, we still have somewhere warm to live and sleep and with the temperatures dropping as low as they have been these last few nights I hate the thought of anyone having to try and find somewhere to sleep outside. I have decided that half of the profits made from the sale of my coffe cozies will be dontated to STREAT. If you would like one they can be found in my madeit store.

My pirate hats and flower hats sold well too which made up for the late nights and  the breaking of my sewing machine feel not so bad .

Happiness

I find I am happiest when I find lovely thigs that people make or get ideas for me to make - that is excluding all the happiness a family brings. Family times are not always happy. We do have the normal amount of yelling, messy rooms, struggles to get homework/music practice done, and sibling wars, but I like to think of the 'happy' times on this blog. But I digress.....
Today I have found even more things to make me happy....

1. The wonderul photos by James and Karla Murray. They have this wonderful book Store Fronts: The Disappearing Face of New York. and how they are being replaced by the big malls. I want to now find if we have any like this in Australia, in particular Melbourne and if we do I want to start noticing them more and maybe photograph them for my photo a day blog.

2. The wonderful creations by Tamar Morgendorff. There are several of these I would love to have a try at making myself. I love her big sitting swan and will probably make this into a pouffe type seat for my girls.

3. last but not least my love of aprons has been enhanced tonight by the lovely  Flirty Aprons. In particular I love the Sassy Black one.

The wonderful Linda at craftaholics anonymnous is running a giveaway for one of these aprons. Pop on over and check it out if you would like to win one of these gorgeous aprons.

Now that I have listed these so I will not forget where they are - a very bad habbit of mine (so many wonderful pages and tutorials are floating somewhere in my subconsious. Ones that I promised myself I would never forget but cannot recall for the life of me) - I am off to unwind with the lovely glass of Pinot that has just been presented to me and begin the 4 day weekend with a bit of relaxing.

I hope you find your happiness.

My Creative Space

Well after a late night finishing the leather cuff last night I was greeted by this view out of my weather window early this morning.
The ground was as white and crunchy as the sky ( our first frost for the season) 

This is the view from my kitchen window and is the best way of telling the weather for the day ( perhaps I could rent it out to the tv weathergirls as their prediciton method is fairly lousy). The large maple tree is my season indicator tree and in the big white space next to it is a huge gum tree ( normally visible) that is my wind  indicator.
I love fog and the thicker the better. To me it is mystical and magical. It always makes me think of the movie Brigadoon and on the really pea souper days my inner child hopes I might stumble on my own magical town buried in the fog.

By the time Mia and I returned from Playgroup this morning the fog had lifted to a beautiful, albeit cold, sunny day.
That meant I could use the natural light to take some photos of my new cuffs and play with all the manual settings on my camera. (Depth of field is my favourite)

After lunch I decided to sort out the zipper stash and with the organisational skills of a 2 1/2 year old this is what we ended up with.

so now my challenge is to turn the above into the below.

 

Now it is off to make some of my famous chocolate muffins. Sarah's friends at school have requested some for snack tomorrow as even though their mums now have the recipe they apparently dont make them taste as good.

As it is creative Thursday, pop on over to Kootoyoo and check out what other crafty people are up to.

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.

Natural Hearts

Continuing on the love theme from this morning is another couple of hearts I found in nature today. I love looking for heart shapes in different places when I am out. Coming out from playgroup this morning, ont of Mia's paintings blew away and on chasing it down I looked at a tree at a different angle to normal and look what I found.

Here are a couple of my other favourite "natural hearts"