Gingerbread House

I'm baaaack! Christmas is so damned busy. I hardly have time to do anything at all between Christmas shopping, Christmas preparations, Crafting and looking after and 1 1/2 year old so that's my excuse for not blogging sooner and I'm sticking to it! :)

So I finally made a faux gingerbread house which I've been wanting to make for forever and a day. I made it using a small cardboard box, felt, sparkly pipecleaners and lots and lots of hot glue. I cut the windows out so that the battery operated LED lights inside can shine out through the windows and I must say, it does look very nice all lit up and it looks a whole lot better in person. I will get an "in-action" shot of it when I have it on at night at post. I plan to do a full tute on this when I get a chance because I had so much fun making it, I want to do another one!

Hope you like it.

Happy Crafting!

:)

edit: In my haste to get this project up while my little munchkin is having a uber quick nap, I completely forgot to take a picture of one of the sides of the house, so will upload at next nap time.

Tweet Tweet! It's nearly Christmas!

Totally inspired by: http://knackstudios.blogspot.com/2009/05/little-birdie.html

I really wanted to do a Christmas themed bird. So I found the glass jar type thing in a thrift store, removed the horrible bright blue fake flowers that were in there and made the bird from some sculpey-like stuff, added some wire, beads and a Christmas pick and decorated the base. Too easy!

It's a little bit tacky to be honest, but I love it anyway. Christmas is supposed to be tacky, glitter, tinsel and lots of ornaments, that's what it's all about, right? It looks so much better in person and it really doesn't help that my photo isn't the best but it's soooo hard to take photos of glass things, there's so much glare! I'll get the hang of it one day.

Happy Crafting! :)

Little Christmas world in a jar

I was inspired by quite a few Mason jar scenes I have seen while lurking various craft sites so I decided to make my own. I'm really happy with how it turned out and can't wait to go to the thrift store to get more jars (if they have any).

The little "gingerbread" house is made from chipboard and painted. The little mushrooms and candy cane are both made from salt-dough and also painted and everything is hot glued on to a circle of white felt. I lightly sprinkled some glitter over the top but I had huge amounts of self control for once and didn't go all Vegas on it. Gosh, that was hard because I really, really love glitter! Besides which, I'm having a hell of a time finding the glitter that I normally use, it's a 3D white glitter but it changes colours depending on how the light hits it. I used to get it from my local Spotlight store but they've stopped stocking anything that's not Martha Stewart now which sucks because as much as I love Martha, her stuff is super expensive and I just can't justify $13 for a small pack of glitter, considering the other one I used to get was $4. Ugh, anyways, sorry, enough of the rant.

So, that's it! I'm definately going to make some more and I'll make some non-Christmas ones too because I want a little world to peer in to all year round so I'll post them as soon as I've made them.

Happy Crafting!

:)

PS. I'm sorry about my lack of camera-skills. I know, I totally suck at taking pictures!

Consider me back in action!

Well Hello there. I finally got my butt in to gear and got some batteries for my camera so now I can show you what I've made. Yay! I'm super excited about my latest things. So first of all I bring to you . . . (drum-roll please) . . . Zombie Barbie. Yup, that's right. Complete with half-eaten brains, intestines hanging out and the remains of lunch in her little briefcase.

So, the story behind this, believe-it-or-not, is my 5th Wedding Anniversary. Hubby is a total zombie geek as well as a Star-Wars geek and we saw this one ages ago and he was in love so I thought seeing as he's so damn hard to buy presents for, why not make him his very own Zombie-Barbie!

She was easy peasy to make but so much fun! I found her at my local thrift store for a couple of dollars and her hair was already a little disheveled which was exactly what I was after. So when I got her home, I sprayed her with plastic primer, waited for it to be half-dry and then rubbed it off to give her that dirty look. Then I whipped out my trusty soldering iron (which is not really mine at all. Thanks for the extra-long borrow, Dad!) and melted a hole in her tummy as her body is hard plastic and too tough to get through with a knife or scalpel. Then I cut a hole out of her head with some scissors and moulded a little brain and some intestines out of some air-dry plasticine type thing and painted them pink. Once I had glued her brain and intestines in place, I rummaged through my old Barbie clothes from way back when and found the medical outfit which was already aged, discoloured and torn, perfect! Then really all she needed was some blood spatter and milky eyes. The milky eyes is just a thin layer of acrylic paint and the blood is red nail polish which I thought was best suited as it dries nice and glossy so it appears to be still wet. Like I said - easy peasy!

Hope you like!

Happy Crafting!

I know, I've been kinda M.I.A

So, I've been M.I.A for a couple of weeks now but we had to move out of our house while the wood floor was being sanded and resealed and what we were told was going to be 5 days turned in to just over 2 weeks! Agh, what a drama! I am now going to impose a socks-only rule so that we don't have to go through that again (who am I kidding, how long do I really think that'll last!?)

Anyway, not to worry, the floor looks beautiful and now that I've gotten my craft room and supplies back, I've been a busy girl. So, in the last week I've made some Christmas dec's, a zombie Barbie and I've ceramic-painted a zombie mug too!

So, lots to catch up on and I will post as soon as I get some decent batteries for my camera as it's so dead it won't even turn on at the moment!

Happy Crafting! :)

Yoda Stuffie

This little guy is a stuffie I made for my Star-Wars-geek hubby. He really loves Yoda so I thought seeing as I have cutesy little things, I'd make a man-version of cutesy for him.

He is made from felt and completely hand sewn and totally my own pattern, he was fairly easy to make, just the nose and wrinkles were a little tricky. Hubby totally loved him and he now sits on the bed looking sneaky.

May the force be with you. (sorry, i could't resist! lol)

Happy Crafting! :)

Ugly Duckling to Beautiful Swan (so to speak)

Before:

I was looking at the Martha Stewart website a while back and I saw these beautiful glittered birds for Christmas decorations and I really, really wanted them. I searched high and low for some little birds that I could decorate and finally found them in my least-favourite department store at 2 for $2.00 which I thought was a total score! So I grabbed all they had on the shelf, took them home and went crazy with the glue, glitter and feathers (oh and little black seed beads for the eyes) and this is the result:

After:

I love the way they turned out and I plan on going back and getting some more little birds and maybe the next lot I'll do in Mica instead of plain old glitter. If you would like to see the original Martha version it's here: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/glitter-bird-centerpiece?lnc=d3d67c769e7ee010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD

Happy Crafting! :)

Felt Christmas Stars

My Mother-in-law requested these little stars for her Christmas tree so being the good daughter-in-law I am, I obliged. They are made of felt and are machine-stitched together and hand embroidered. I really would have liked to have blanket stitched them all however I had a lot of them to do and I would have been there forever and day otherwise.

I think they turned out pretty good all in all and they look homey and I like that there is a star for everyone in the family. I even made a star for my husband's late Grandma and Grandad who had recently passed. They are still in our hearts and memories so they definitely deserve a star on the tree.

Until next time, Happy Crafting! :)

P.S. Please excuse the so-so photo's, I'm still learning how to take a half-decent picture.

Awesome Pattern

Well, I stumbled across Fiddlehead's blog a couple of weeks ago and found this fantastic pattern for a toddlers dress/top and I knew I just had to make it but with me being a little "pattern-challenged" I wasn't too sure that I wouldn't make a mess of it. This has to be the easiest, clearest pattern I have tried so far and the results were great.

I made the pink dress from flannelette (it's still a little cool here at the moment) and added an extra ruffle at the bottom to make it a little longer. After my daughter/model let me do the photo-shoot I had to take the pink dress in a little as I made it a wee bit roomy for her up top.

The red and yellow dress is my favourite. We have a little thing about ladybugs and dragonflies, dragonflies are my thing and Cassidy's is ladybugs. So I found this cute fabric with little red and black ladybugs on yellow fabric and knew I had to make the dress out of it. I ended up making a cardigan out of an old red jumper and making bias binding out of the yellow ladybug fabric for the edges. I wish I had a photo of it but my camera is in dire need of new batteries. Anyways, I also made some little fabric yo-yo's out of the fabric for each dress and put a little loop on the back of them so I could slide them on to a headband and voila!

If you want the pattern it can be found here:http://fiddlehead.blogspot.com/2009/06/finally-let-beach-parties-begin.htmlPlease check it out, it's a great blog.

Happy Crafting! :)

Miniature Christmas Village

So, now that I have got my stuff together I can show you my favourite thing made by me so far. I made this little Mini Village last Christmas based on an idea I saw here: www.marthastewart.com/article/winter-village

I love the idea of a little Winter village all lit up especially seeing as here in Australia our Christmas is usually around the 35 - 40 degree(Celsius) mark. So I scoured the very limited number of craft stores we have here and finally found some "chipboard". I personally would just call it thick cardboard but anyway.

So I liked the look of Martha's Village so I printed up some templates and made some of my own and then away I went. I glued and painted and glittered and decorated my little village and put it atop a cut up box covered in felt and then poked fairy lights through the bottom of the box to light the little houses. This year though I plan on adding to my little village and putting it on my sideboard cupboard so I will have to think of something else for the lighting otherwise there will be horrible wires everywhere, ugh.

Greetings from Oz.

So now that I have been through the whole "What the heck do I call my blog?" thing and finally found a half-decent name that isn't already taken, I'm not sure what to say. I'm new to the world of blogging. Well, kinda. I've been reading blogs and admiring other people's creativity for a loooong time now so I thought I'd get in on the action seeing as it will give me somewhere to share my stories and craft successes/disasters (and believe me, there's been plenty of the latter).

I love crafting of any sort really except maybe crocheting and knitting. Don't get me wrong, I love crocheted and knitted things and I really admire people that have this skill however I am not one of them. Try as I might, I just for some reason can not knit or crochet. I blame my lack of co-ordination. Anyway, I will try my hand at just about anything and I seem to have a knack for never finishing a project before I start another one. There's just so many great things out there to make!

So I hope to share some of the things I've made/revamped with you soon but for now

I think my beautiful little girl will wake from her nap-time soon so I had better do some housework quick smart! Happy Crafting, See you all soon. :)