Before & After

Just a quick before and after for you today.

Before: a rather ugly photo frame that has been in my collection of junque for quite some time.

During: after  stripped off the fabric, beads and foam padding I was left with a plain wooden frame.

After: an example of how my embellishments can be used.

A close up of the bottom corner, with a fabric & button flower, wire & bead spray, and a glossy, glittered bird with pearl eye.

A close up of the butterfly on the top.

A close up of the crocheted butterflies.

The picture in the middle is a page out of a matt stack I bought which I am totally in love with, so I wanted to frame this page with a “things with wings” theme.

I have more examples of ways to use my embellishments, ready to take to markets if I ever get to. But I will have to show you those another day, because I am late to pick up my family and they won’t be happy with me.

Latest Projects

I’ve got a few projects going at the moment, which I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks.

In a few weeks Little Princess turns four, so for the handmade part of her present I am making a collection of dolls clothes and accessories for her.

So far I have made a pants and coat set, a dress, four cloth nappies, and baby wipes. For the nappies I used this pattern, the baby wipes were loosely based on this tutorial, the dress I made up, the pants were made by coping a pattern from a pair of dolls pants she already owns, and the coat was loosely based on a pattern from the book Wee Wonderfuls. It’s the second or third time I’ve taken this book out from the library, I just love it. You can find a free pattern from the book here.

The other project I have been working on is a collection of embellishments, for scrapbooking, card making, altered projects etc. I started off just making these for my own use, mostly for adding to cards when i just need to throw something together quickly for a gift, but then I got totally addicted to making them, and finding new ones to make, and making more and more and more. So now I have a whole collection, which I will either be putting in my shop or trying to sell at markets.

Bead & wire sprays

Fabric & lace flowers

Crocheted flowers, mini doilies & butterflies

And smaller packs of embellishments including smaller crochet butterflies, doilies, hearts and flowers, paper flowers and butterflies, and velvet ribbon roses.

I wanted to make a few examples of uses for these embellishments, in case I do get to sell them at markets, so to start with I made this mini album:

To embellish the cover I used a paper butterfly, a crochet flower with button centre, two fabric flowers with button centres and a wire & bead spray.

The inside pages are not embellished, but each page has a pocket with a plain piece of card stock that slips in.

There are six pages in total, but two of each colour/pattern. I used this tutorial to make the album, the youtube video is super easy to follow.

So, that's what I’ve been up to. And probably what I will be up to for the next few weeks, but there will always be other little projects going on in between. I’ll try to keep you posted :)

Shop Update

If you are interested, a few new things have been added to my shop.

Cushion Swap Cushion

Today I finished my cushion for the cushion swap, and I am totally in love with it.



My first attempt at patchwork, and I think it turned out pretty good. It's not perfect, my blocks don't line up perfectly and some of my seams are a bit iffy. But I just love the colours together. I used up some scraps of floral print fabric with a fat quarter of red polkadot fabric I got as part of another swap, and the back of the cushion is from a shirt hubby didn't want anymore.



So the cushion didn't cost me anything to make, it's a total stash buster! I don't know if you can see it in the photo above, but the shirt had a breast pocket so I included that on the cushion, to be used for holding remote controls, tissues, maybe a lavender sachet, or anything really. Now I'm going to have to make more of these, one day, I'll add it to my miles long list of things to make again when I have time.

By the way, the pillow that you can see peeking out from behind my cushion was a project from a few months ago that hubby and I made for little princess. It was made using a hula hoop, weaving strips of cut up t-shirts. The tutorial we used was meant to make a rug, but our finished circle was too small to be a rug so we made it into a cushion just by cutting a circle of t-shirt fabric slightly bigger than our "rug", cutting slits all around the edges and tying it to the fringes around the outside of the "rug". The result is a super soft and cuddly pillow.

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A new feature

If you are reading this on my actual blog page (not from reader or a mobile device), you will see a new button over there at the top of my sidebar

My hubby has been busy all afternoon creating an online shop where I can sell the things I create. I have had very little success selling on Felt, and while I think it's a fantastic site, and I know they have to make money from it somehow, I get extremely frustrated when my listings expire and I have to keep paying to relist them. For the amount of sales I actually make, and the prices I try to keep as low as possible, I end up losing money if I relist over and over again. I want to make it clear that I am not doing this to make money (although a little bit of pocket money to fund my crafting addiction is always good), I am only selling my creations because there just isn't enough space in my house for all the things I make, but I can't stop making things.

So the idea of the new shop is that the things will always be listed there, but it won't cost me anything to have them there, meaning I can keep my prices down. It also means I can have sales, special codes and things much easier. The new shop is still a work in progress, it will keep changing as we find better ways of doing things. I would love your feedback about the shop, do you like it, hate it, have any suggestions to change it, have any issues viewing or navigating through it? I'm still not totally happy with my prices either, but it's hard to find a middle ground between so expensive no-one will want to buy anything and so cheap people will think it's crap. If you have any advice about how you price things I would appreciate that as well.

Please please please go check out my new shop now, then come back and give me your thoughts.


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A quick update

I had a few comments on my last post from some lovely concerned people, so I thought a quick update was required, so you didn't all think the worst.

As it turned out, exactly what I didn't want to happen, happened. My long, torturous wait was, pretty much, for nothing. What we/they suspected might be a hernia or cyst is just scar tissue from a c-section. If I want to go through a very similar process of referrals and waiting, then they MIGHT be able to open up my scar to remove it, but it would not be considered urgent, and may not even be considered necessary. So I live with the pain. I could have done that without sitting in a hospital waiting room for 9 hours and starving/dehydrating myself for 16 hours. But at least now I know, it's nothing life threatening, I should be thankful.

In crafty news, I have still been creating, mostly gifts which get given away before I can take photos. I still can't find my camera battery charger, which drives me nuts, because without it I have a completely useless camera, but I know it has to be in this house somewhere. I have joined a couple of swaps, which you can see on my sidebar. Today I finished the top of my cushion for the cushion swap. It was my first attempt at patchwork, and I think it turned out pretty well. Turns out patchwork is not as hard as I imagined it would be, I can see doing lots more of that in the future.

Spotlight has finally opened here, and I missed the grand opening. Its been a chaotic week, but I managed to pop in this afternoon for a quick look around, with both kids in tow. Not the ideal situation for craft supply shopping, but now that it's just down the road I guess I can go any time.

I have a nice relaxing, crafty weekend planned. Happy mothers day to all you wonderful mummy bloggers and readers. And especially happy mothers day to my wonderful mum, who is on the other side of the world, you will be missed as always!! I promise to make it up to you when you are here in July.

xoxoxox

A long wait

Right now I am sitting in the waiting room of the surgical admissions unit at our local hospital. I have been waiting here for 5 hours. Five minutes ago I was finally told that I have been booked in for an ultrasound, in 2 hours and 20 minutes. By that time I will have been waiting here for 7 and a half hours.
To make things worse, I have been instructed to be nil by mouth since midnight last night, so I have had nothing to eat or drink for over 13 hours. This particularly irritates me because I was told to be here before 7am so that I could be seen before the surgical team got busy with their daily appointments. I got missed.
All this is partly my fault, because I put off going to the doctors for months. I have very little faith in anything to do with the medical profession. Because of this I have gotten used to ignoring pain and illness, besides, I am usually too busy to take much notice.
So yesterday when I finally gave in and made an appointment to see the doctor, I was nervous. Mostly I was nervous because I was worried the doctor would say there's nothing they can do, as they seem to do so often these days, but there was part of me nervous that she might say there is something there and it's bad.
So what she said was, there's something there, she doesn't know what it is, and I need to go to the hospital to have it looked at by someone surgical. So now I am in limbo, I know it's something, I have a few ideas of what it could be, but until they have seen it they are not making any decisions. But I have been pencilled in on the surgical list for today, which worries me. I'm trying not to think about it too much, but when you are sitting in a room for several hours trying to stay occupied, it's hard not to start thinking about it. I don't do bored well. I thought I was well prepared with the bag of crafty library books, crochet blanket project, and mindless games loaded on my iPod that I bought with me. I finished reading the books after the first couple of hours, then I crocheted until my neck ached. Then I played games for an hour or so, until my iPod battery almost died. Then I discovered that I am in a free wireless hotspot, and I bought my iPod charger with me, and there is a power socket right next to my chair. So here I am, draining the hospitals broadband and power, waiting for a scan that I don't want, to hear news that I may not want to hear.
I think my point is, I don't want to be here, I have been tempted several times to just walk out the door. If I have lived with this discomfort for several months already, why can't I just keep living with it. Maybe it will eventually just go away. So, to occupy my time and keep me (relatively) sane, here's a list of things I should have been doing today:
• sleeping past 5:30am.
• spending the day at home with my little man.
• getting a visit from the speech and language therapist, which we have been waiting for for 4 months.
• making a gift for a friend who turned 50 this week.
• making cupcakes for said friends birthday celebration tomorrow.
• designing and choosing fabric for my cushion swap cushion.
• the usual household chores like laundry, dishes, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning etc. (notice this is at the bottom of my list, that's for a reason).

That is just today's list, I don't even want to think about the things I won't get done if I have to go to surgery and stay here for a few days.
But at least I have google reader, so I can catch up on all my favourite blogs, for as long as I am next to a power socket and free wireless hotspot.
I would probably trade my iPod for a big bowl of wedges with loads of sour cream and salsa, or just about anything else edible. Even a cup of tea would be great.


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