The Tea Towel Dress

I made Claud the Martha Stewart Tea Towel dress for her birthday, in stolen minutes here and there. Except it's the Max Bennett Tea Towel Dress because the Martha Steward dress pattern is in fact infant sized, despite the model standing and looking distinctly toddler-like in the photo. So I improvised. Quietly pleased I finally made Claud an item of clothing. Quietly pleased all the materials, fabric ribbon, buttons, linen tea towel and elastic were all op-shopped.

Show and Telling with Leonie an Co.

a whisper of craft

saturday morning means dada-date to claud: swimming lessons and cafe, DVD browsing and rewards chart shopping. she is always ecstatic at the promise of it. ecstasy is so noisy! my shoulders relax as i hear their feet finally crunch gravel on the drive. after the gate clangs closed the incredible racket of a toddler and a father getting ready for a morning out is still palpable, for a minute. ah, quiet.  welcome back, i remember you! the cheerful baby sleeps on lulled by rain tapping and wood fire warmth. the minutes tick by.
i hadn't considered that possibility. ooh the possibilities!  i could nap, read, or cook something frivolous. i could blog, facebook or email, from my bed. i could clean, tidy and sort. or i could just stare into space some more, rub my itchy foot in the carpet a bit longer and then have a pot of tea. but i have had a nagging 'i-want-to'.  i crave craft as much as quiet these days. and perish the thought of leaving my cosy lair and waking my peaceful baby for a gift shop!
but the likelihood of baby waking precludes creativity. this is paint by numbers printing and i just want to get them done. with my hands busy my mind sifts. i think of the lovely muted noises you can hear when the more noisy-noise pause: chook clucks, a page turned, tiny baby snores. ahh. i think about birthdays past, and how old we are all getting, but the big picture passing of time seems so insignificant compared with a whole morning of surprise quiet freedom.








*show and telling

My Creative Space

                                              

If you haven't already seen it on Deb's blog, here's what I made her for our local bloggers secret santa meet-up.

Yes, christmas tree bunting.

My first (completed) proper sewn bunting!

(I need to work on my pointy bits a bit)

She was so excited about it (bloggers and their bunting eh). it made me so glad!

It made me want to make more!

I'm going to join bunting anonymous. It's my 2012 New Years resolution.

Wait! I'm going to set up bunting anonymous (BA).

But we'll be subversive, we won't try to give up our cutsey addiction, we'll start bunting-bombing raids on local eyesores and vow to make a different kind of bunting each week for a year and such like.

 Apply within. 

I also op-shopped this seasonal tin for her

and this 70's paper nativity set (hopefully all the bits are there?)

Thanks to Miriam for hosting and baking, Juliet for organising, Sophie for my gift, and Hannah, Nin, Kirsty, and Holly for their good company.

If any Christchurch bloggers are keen to meet up too (we're very nice and normal-I promise!) let Mirium know your email address.

Even more excited about Our Creative Spaces now it's the season of Christmas creativity!

My Creative Space

She was being VERY creative when she made this!

One heavily stained NEW t-shirt c/o dada who let baba play with adult paints (in a white T-shirt-sheesh!)

Time to apply these 

Nope. No matter how artfully arranged, there just aren't enough for sufficient stain coverage.

So I've been busy making more, and more, using cookie cutters for shapes.

In the meantime the T-shirt that rested against the paint spattered one in the laundry pile has been successfully stain-disguised

She thinks she can fly with the butterflies now!

And more bunting beginnings.

With left over colour cards from my doll-house-do-up-dead-daffodil-colour-search, from an idea posted by Polli

My Creative Space

More bunting (I know, I know!!!)

Of the proper (sewn up) Great British bunting variety.

I can justify more bunting in many ways.

1. The canvas-y fabric in a neat little red, white and blue pile cost only 20c at the local school fete white elephant stall.

2. I saw a great tutorial on making 'proper' bunting here on this lovely, crafty blog.

3.It's the next logical bunting step after paper bunting of various types, simple cut fabric bunting and doiliy bunting.

4. This.

                A very useful, recently inherited tunnel house. Bit grey and manky looking. Needs bunting.
                           Especially for when we have Claudine's 2 nd birthday midsummer garden party.
                                                        It's going to have a Brit. theme!

                                                        Sharing my creative space here

                                           

Doll House do-up #3

 

Oh it's been a grand week on the doll house do-up front. It feels like it's all coming together nicely, mainly because it she's got some slap on her face now; some colour!

I washi papered the 'grown-ups' room in one fell swoop-just the one wall, and the ceiling. It looks right that way, kind of like a tree grown up and over. I spent an age measuring and cutting it exactly to size, and modge-podged (a kind of glue/sealer) it on. Fortunatly the washi paper, despite it's delicate appearance, withstood several removals and squidging and slidings to get it into the just right position and the glue dried perfectly clear. There is still a few millimeters of gap at bottom left left bare. It's bugging me so I will patch it up at some stage, and add a further coat of sealer to protect it from Claud mauling.

The kitchen colour is resene 'laser', with some white chucked in.  The shoe box-sized room is appreciably smaller now I've painted so many coats trying to get the 'dead daffodil' colour just-so!

Resene 'Moby', is just the blue I wanted, to paint tall tongue-in-groove panelling for the 'shaker-style' hall I have planned! Think pegged coat rack, church pew, dark stained floor boards. Funnily enough I don't have the skill or tools sufficient to just rustle up some miniature panelling, real or painted on, so I just ordered some off a website. It arrived and it's beautiful, if short, plastic and not ammenable to painting-over. So blue walls it is!

Also, in a departure from shaker-minimalism, I think I'm gonna slap a bit of this on the ceiling.

You can't get to much of a good thing aye!

I found this curly-wurly letter rack down the oppy today, it screamed fancy Breakfast at Tiffany's bed head. Can you hear it too?! It's a bit wide so I'm sending the hubby off round his mates to saw it in half and de-weld (?) bits off to make it a narrower but hopefully but no less fabulous bed head and foot board.

Coincidentally the bed base is also an old letter holder I sawed up. I actually could do with a letter holder, and this one is so pretty, but, oh well, there have to be sacrifices in the pursuit of doll-house beauty!

And hey, the parquay is in!

I won't bore you with the trial that laying it was. It looks goooooood, that is all you need to know.

I still haven't decided on what colour I'm going to stain it.

This room is going to be the mid-century-lounge-cum-dusty-victorian-library. Heh!

I'm going to make all my own fixtures and fittings. Double heh!

All I have so far is the fabric I'm going to upholster the sofa (I make!) with

$2 from the oddments bin at the local curtain place for a massive piece.

Handy for if when I go wrong!

The bits are from a 'kit set' pew I bought. Yikes!

Making your own HAS to be easier than putting that together!

There are 4 pages of instructions. Double yikes!!!

And finally, this is the vague plan I have for the bathroom.

                          I'd love to use one of these shells for a lampshade but they're so fragile.
         If any clever crafty folk have a clue how I might (easily!) cast or coat or copy this to make
                                          it impervious to child bashing please let me know!

                                                      Get me, I'm an (giant) interior decorator!

Until next week...

Doll House do-up #2

Where to begin, where to begin, where to begin. I've been very busy on the doll house do-up front, enthused, to put it mildly! So here is...well, where I'm up to. Now, some of these ideas won't surprise those of you who follow my blog actively; such as a plan for map wallpaper in one bedroom; and this washi paper room plan...

This is for the 'grown ups' bedroom. The crazy drawers I found on a junk stall at the local school fair on Sunday. I think it was supposed to be a jewllery box, but had a handle missing. The tortoise shell mirror is made by moi from an old hair slide and the mirror out of a broken compact. I've got a couple of tortoise shell hair slides to use as handles too once I've sanded and stained the handle patches.

I've also ordered the craft gadget, called a 'yo yo maker' to make the following quilt for the bed...

Isn't it awesome!

(and totally in-keeping with the 'crafty' vibe I want the dolly-house to have)

I spied it at a doll house show held last the weekend in Christchurch. Whilst the show was VERY victorian doll house heavy, there were a couple of charmers I though you guys might like too...

                         And for Christchurchians, this might bring a tear to your eye as it did mine...

The Piko whole foods store, destroyed in the earthquake along with nearly all of our other beautiful redbricks. Sniff.
                                             Anyways, onwards and downwards to la kitchen.

This is the colour inspiration, the last remnant of my fave ever op-shop fabric find from years ago

Not quite sure what colour to ask for down the Resene shop... dead daffodil for my kitchen walls please? I'll make some little cushions with the last bits for the kitchen seating (ideally a miniture Saarinen tulip table and two chairs, but more likely a homemade from op-shopped balsa wood scrub top table and chairs).

Hey, check out that flooring...and this flooring...

Oh the things I've learnt about lolly sticks. The main one being, you get what you pay for cheapskate. What I'm going to do with 1000 crappy splintery hopeless-for-parquay-ing lolly sticks I don't know. Actually, does anyone know of any cool lolly stick crafts? Seriously, I'd hate for them to go to waste. Maybe I'll weatherboard the outside and turn it into a villa...hmmm. It was my own fault though. Normally I wouldn't quibble over the price of lolly sticks, but it is turning out to be a rather expensive exercise this dolly-house doing up. Lamps for example were $10 each at the show. Obviously I didn't buy any, and was later chuffed at my savvy when I found these buttons down the local craft store for a dollar each instead

   I'm trying to save my cash for one special piece of furniture, or something I just couldn't find or make.

                                             When I saw this at the show I got pangs

The A.G.A. A.h.h.h.h!

Wouldn't it be perfect in my Country Living (UK) style kitchen?

Given Aga's here cost 3 times as much as they do in the UK, where they cost loads anyway, my chances of getting the real thing are slim to say the least so I felt I deserved a miniature version.

'Only' 55 pounds when I googled it, eeeeyyyykkkk! Right scrub that idea then!

To stop me obsessing about it I went down the 'free-shop' (the backroom at the local charity barn where they let you sift stuff before it goes to landfill; where everything costs nothing).

Pah! Who needs an aga when they have...

                    A snazzy-placky microwave; plus kitchen friends! Zero dollars, hey, thats more like it!
                          Can't you just smell that roast chicken. You want to move in don't you?!

                             I also got the makings of a couple of beds for free, and some other bits and bobs.
                                                                     Long live the free shop!

 

                                                Other stuff I've been playing at making are:-

                                                             Mini pom pom bunting!

and

Lego mantelpiece-makings

Blimmey, this is fun!

I could go on, but phew for you, I think thats quite enought for one blog post, and certainly enought to cover my creative space; flea market finds; mantelpiece Monday and the 'I'm a giant' challenge for this week, heh!!!!

See thee next week x

My creative space

 My creative space this week, aka 3/101 things to do with a Martha Stewart snowflake cutter

Bunting (of course)

Gift tags

Westling balls

Yes, it's early, but if I'm to catch the cheap-by-ship post to the UK I need to get cracking!