Little pup

When my friend found out she was expecting number two and wasn't finding out if it was a boy or a girl, I wanted to make her something that could be a bit neutral.  She has two dogs already, so I thought that a little stuffed dog would be perfect.  It ended up taking a whole weekend to make him, because I didn't think to go online and get a pdf pattern of a dog, I just looked at pictures and did a few tests until he looked right.  His body is made of cotton canvas and the print is from a local patchwork shop in town.
I love matchy-match gifts, so I went into town and got a scrap blanket from the Waverley Woolen Milles and sewed a brown linen backing on it, and some circles in the matching print.
Even though I did this nearly a year ago, I was reminded about it this week when my lovely friend texted me to tell me that her son, now seven months old was staring at the pup and then reached out and pulled it down to him. He loves it - Yay!

Inspired by a rainy weekend

This weekend the weather has been rainy, and that's given me a great reason to do craft (like anyone needs a reason too).  I saw this concept of printing on book pages a while ago and now that I have picked up my new color printer, it's time to play!

I've been considering for some time, how to use the flowers I dried from my sister-in-laws wedding bouquet.  She was happy to give me the bouquet but the flowers did not dry well.  Now you may be thinking how do these two things go together?

Well, I scanned the flowers through my new printer, edited them to be purple silhouettes and printed them on the book pages.  I also added a little monogram and the date, and a stamp of a little bird on each one.  I used purple and the bird, as that was the inspiration for the wedding decorations.  They came out great, and I'm planning to post them to her for her birthday next week.

While I was at it I got a bit off topic, and made this for the sister of the bride, who caught the bouquet on the night.  Not book art, but re-using the images of the dried flowers.









My first test print was inspired by the rainy day.  I printed a clip art umbrella onto an old book that my sweet husband said I could have for the purpose.  Sorry for the poor quality photograph, it looks much better in real life!

Patchwork inspiration

I just figured out what to do with some of the more unusual pieces of my fabric stash.  How cool are these bunting flags?



DNA photography via Style me pretty

Placemats

I have been longing to try this latest project since I saw the cushions (right) from Wit & Whistle via craftgawker.  I had planned to make cushions too, but when our cousin told us he was re-decorating in grey and white I got inspired to make them the place mats below instead.  That and they had already been given cushion covers.



In my fabric stash I had 1 metre of wool look fabric that I picked up at the op-shop for $2.    Once assembled and ironed, I got out my stencil and wrote the phrase "Live, Love, Laugh" on them with a sharpie.  I love how they came out.

Easter

For Easter we always go to Cocoabean Chocolate in Launceston.  Their chocolate is di-vine!!  This year we bought everyone two little bunnies is a clear box.  They are the cutest little bunnies and it will be a shame to eat them.  I also bought a box of Tea Tonic dark chocolate and black tea, hoping to make Easter last longer than the chocolate and giving the adults a grown up treat. And now because it is still two more days until Easter and I don't have to go to work, I thought I'd try and make them look pretty in their wrapping.

I made these cute little tags to put on the Easter baskets.  I can't believe how easy it is to make something like this in a word processing program.  The rabbit is actually the letter "r" of a font that is animal silhouettes instead of letters.  You may have guessed, I love Donna Hay magazine and it arrived yesterday, so after I read it I knew I wanted to make blue and brown themed Easter gifts the same as Donna's signature colors! Plus chocolate is brown.

I also have been going to my favorite craft site, craft gawker.  I love seeing the creative articles and getting inspiration from this site.  On there I found a crochet pattern for Easter bunnies from Craft, and with best intentions I set out to make the pair.  I haven't crocheted for over a year so it took a little longer than I thought, but I did manage to make Edward in time for Easter (sorry for the terrible photo!).




On Easter morning, my beautiful husband took these pictures for me.  From left to right: Edward Bunny and two little chocolate bunnies for our little 3 year old cousin; plum pickle for everyone; and the tea bags and plum pickle all nicely wrapped together.