Cake

This was going to be a post about pinterest.com, but really it is about cake.

I resisted Pinterest for a while because (a) it is hard enough keeping up with Facebook and Blogger, (b) I didn't really get it, and (c) you have to 'request an invite'. Clearly I was not cool enough to just start pinning.

But a few weeks ago I thought maybe it would be useful for keeping track of tutorials I want to try, gifts I might buy, recipes that look yummy. You set up as many 'boards' as you like, 'pin' images to them as you surf the interweb, and then it saves the links for you.

I wasn't so interested in the social networking part, it is a bit weird people knowing what I might make or buy before I do it (but I am here if you think you might like what I like!)

However it is great for searching for things, a bit like google images without all the ugly crap. That's the best thing about pinterest, things are only there if someone has liked them in the first place, so they are usually pretty.

And if you see something you love, you may want to follow the board it was pinned on, because clearly that person has great taste. I am following Adventures in Dessert. Enough said.

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Every Teardrop is A Waterfall.

So ... I took a little cat nap in the camper this evening ... with the radio on ... to a station I never listen to ... and I came out of my sleep to hear the most wonderful song ...

... I immediately rose to my feet ... began to dance around the camper ... tears flowing ... arms wrapped around my shoulders in a self embrace ... loving every second of the energy I felt from these words, this music ... and had to share it with you.

Every day is a new day of self-discovery. With this song as my new mantra ... I am on a new path ... an awakening.

This song did not create this new path for me ... but it's timing was total perfection.

Thank you Universe.

Love,
Jodi

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Tool box 3

I've just finished making another batch of quilled items for my 3rd tool box yesterday. I think this will be the last tool box I'll be making because I need to concentrate on other projects in the next few months. Making these quilled items for the tool box is very very time consuming as you all know. And if I were to make another one, it will probably be for me hehe! Coz I would like one for myself as well haha! :D

It's a big relief to be able to get this tool box done and I am really in need of a holiday. I will be taking one soon next week and I'm just counting the days now. Been working non stop for two months straight and it's nice to take a long break for a while. Want to go hunt for new supplies as well. Visit new craft stores and feast my eyes with beautiful things hehe! Do fun stuff with friends too! :D

So I will be away till 4th of July and will resume back to work on the 5th. Have a good weekend everyone! ;)

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Room 2: fairytale dream land

Right. The countdown is on - 6 sleeps to go until we move house. I'm absolutely rapt that my little miss five is excited about moving and when we were checking out the new house she had the great idea that her little sister could move in with her. Ever since I've been day dreaming and pondering how to combine the décor ideas and patterns of my two girls’ current rooms into one, so that it suits a new, shared room for a five year old and a nearly two year old.

Princesses and fairy tales seems the obvious age-spanning choice, but I’m trying not to be obvious! So instead I’ve been searching online under my “big idea” theme of whimsical and restful. This has opened me up to a whole world of possibilities including fairy tales and vintage themes.

Miss five's room was only just recently completed using quaint Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty fairy tale fabric in pale pinks and greens from Heather Ross' Far, Far Away II collection, so that will stay. Miss Two's room was all done in vintage-styled owls and birds when she was first born - so I'm thinking that I will extend this theme while matching miss five's quaint style, and bring in some Heather Ross' soft duck egg blue-coloured Owl and the Pussycat fabric, from the same range/s.

On the bed I'll shabby-chic it a bit with a pink/brown damask and spotted reversible fabric quilt for miss five, and keep miss two's much-loved duck egg blue/brown damask and spotted fabric quilt from her old room, from my lovely sister-in-law's homegrown business, Holly Chic.

Both little girls will have gauze canopies on their beds...and I've nabbed a gorgeous old fashioned white dressing table with an oval Sleeping Beauty-styled mirror off trademe. I just need to find a dressing table stool or vintage piano stool to sit in front of it. The finishing touches will be an amazing pink, funky-styled chandelier, from Chicos online, and I have nabbed two 'tree hangers' from Mocka to sit in the corner, like in a fairy tale forest, and hang all their dress ups and dancing costumes.

I’ve also got my eye on this gorgeous “up, up and away” hot air balloon themed print from carodandelion - or this other whimsical print by sweetwilliam here, from www.felt.co.nz . Both local New Zealand artists, these talented Kiwis specialise in mixed media prints and I love the layered effects of the watercolour and whitewash-effect of damask patterns and vintage wallpapers.

I may have to sleep (or dream) on it…but only for six more nights!

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New Dates: 2011 Annual Pet Portrait Contest!

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Quilled butterflies bookmarks

BM009

BM010

BM011

Recently I received another order to make some bookmarks with butterflies and stars as the subject matter. My customer requested that the butterflies be in brown and soft purple in color. At the last minute she requested one more bookmark but with a color of my choice and I chose red! :)

It's a very simple design as you can see....and the stars were made using colored foams which I cut out myself. I wanted to make quilled stars and almost succeeded in doing so but I felt like they were not good enough. I still need some practice in making them so that's why I decided to use foams instead. And I decorated the stars with silver glitters. Love that effect on the star foams. :)

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Spoonflower Update - Free Shipping and Kids Contest

I have been spending too much time working on a Spoonflower project I am not quite ready to share, but if you have ever thought about trying out Spoonflower...

Free Shipping
On Monday 20th June (US time) there is free standard shipping internationally, details here. Remember you don't have to design your own fabric, there are thousands of designs by other that are available for purchase, here are some of my favourites -

(Clockwise from Top Left - Movie Characters, Tea Party, Summer Rose Garden, Space Alphabet)

And remember that the US dollar is very weak at the moment, and fabrics are available in 8inch x 8inch swatches, or fat quarters, so you can just get a little bit and make some gorgeous little things (see Aimee's fabric scraps post).

Kids Contest
This week's design contest is for children 12 and under - so they do a drawing or collage and then you take a photo or scan it to get a digital file to upload (details here). Entries close Tuesday, how gorgeous is this one?

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Planning my new house: Room no 1 - lounge

Wallpapers by the great Amy Butler; green shag cushion with tutorial from V and Co; white plantation shutters; modular corner sofas in browns (here from Freedom); white lacquered furniture; artwork by Gretchen Albrecht; factory and topography inspired artworks; antique photo frames; lily pad fabrics as cushions.

The lily pad household is on the move, and the excitement at nesting in a new place is mounting. Every spare second (of which there are really none) is spent thinking about what items of our furniture to take, and what to start fresh with.

Room One taking up most of my dreaming and planning is the lounge, mostly because I am going to relegate my current black couches to the family room and buy new sand/brown ones for the big 'adults' lounge. While I still love my black-white-red theme in the kitchen and family areas, rather than creating yet another room in the same style, I've dedicated to be brave and expand my colour palette and bring in browns, navy and teal greens.


The colour combo was initially inspired by my favourite designer of all time, Amy Butler, and her new wallpaper ranges (see above), as well as my research in new season colour influences from colour expert Pantone, as well as a spread in Homestyle magazine. But it has also allowed me to incorporate my love of pattern, and so I'm going to use my highly decorative, damask navy and green lily pad fabric on some cushions for a personal touch and make a shaggy green cushion. I'm also loving all these cool accent pieces below from http://www.felt.co.nz/ - oopsey daisy, I might have already bought the decorative mounted deer head even before we move!

tinch

$109.00

studiok

$65.00

snowfawn

$150.00

snowfawn

$45.00

elowezil

$40.00

unhinged

$45.00

I'm also brainstorming my own large scale canvas multi-media artwork for the lounge wall - more on that later. Clue One: Hessian coffee sacks from NZ company Avalanche thanks to a friend of a friend (thanks, Paul). Seriously such good coffee, have you bought some yet? Clue Two: Sewing and layering. Clue Three: Pattern and shape. Clue Four: oil paint?

But for up on the stunning wall with an original plaster fireplace mantle built in, I'm looking at purchasing this gorgeous 'Winged Spill" print by New Zealand artist Gretchen Albrecht pictured above. I love the mix of deep, mulled wine and forest colours - and it reminds me too strangely, of my daugher's love of rainbows. A little bit of playfulness in my otherwise seriously 'adults' retreat' style room.

Next up: ideas for my girls' new shared room.

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Apps for Kids

I wasn't sure what people used iPads for until we were given one (a very generous birthday gift for my husband), but I can't believe how much we use it. And of course the kids are all over it, but I have found it hard to figure out in the app store what games would be suitable for Miss 4. 

This week I discovered Toca Boca (via Li'l Magoolie and Meet Me at Mike's) and it is EXACTLY what I was looking for - cute, fun, a teensy bit educational, and completely intuitive for little hands, no instructions needed. Toca Boca have a range of games and the favourite in our house so far is the Toca Doctor puzzles (pictured above), but by far the cutest is the tea party - choose the tablecloth, plates, drinks and cakes for your tea party, lie the iPad flat then sit special toys around the place settings! So clever.

Toca Boca Tea Party

A friend of ours has launched another great game, Little Fingers Nursery Rhymes, which records voices so children can read a story and choose who will be reading it to them. Of course my daughter thinks recording and listening to her own voice is hilarious.

Little Fingers Nursery Rhymes

The other app that has been a hit so far is Park Math, a supercute puzzle game.

Park Math

Note: this is not a sponsored post, I am just an iPad convert! I would love an iPhone too (mainly because I am lazy and the thought of having an iPod/phone/camera/video camera all in one appeals!) but I don't think Mr Toddler and I can be trusted with one yet, I do like being able to throw my ageing phone in my handbag, and it surviving toddler-drops...

Do you have any iPad or iPhone apps you would recommend? I would really like some old-fashioned fairytale picturebooks but have only found ugly ones so far. I didn't know if I would enjoy reading a grownup book on the iPad but it has so many great features - you can change the brightness of the page, the size of the type, leave lots of bookmarks... and the best thing is downloading a book is so quick and easy - did you know Amazon now sells more digital books than hardbacks and paperbacks put together?

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Red and black

TOY002

My first order of the tri-shutter card :). Very nerve wrecking actually. Things got even more worse when I was asked to add photos inside the card and I'm just not good at making the photos look good when printed. I'm still learning how to edit photos and the progress is pretty slow. But somehow I have to make it work and make my customer happy. And this is the end result. :)

For this card, I tried to make a patterned paper that would suit the colors I was going for such as red, dark red, black, white and silver. I stamped some black dotted swirls clear stamp on white paper and then decorated it with punched out red heart shapes. You can see it at the photo above. The dotted red on white paper is a patterned paper I got from someone. I thought it would be perfect for this card. The colors matched and so I didn't hesitate to use them. 

Now I understand why my fellow card maker, Miss Azilah have had headaches before when making this tri-shutter cards......as I almost puked making this myself. It's just too much to think about really. Everything has to be balanced. It has to match up otherwise it would look weird. It took me a long time to figure out the design. Perhaps in time I'll be finding it easy to do but for now, it sure isn't huhuhehehaha :D.

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FC Barcelona theme birthday card

HB090

First time for me to get an order to make a FC Barcelona theme birthday card. This order is from the same customer who ordered the teddy bear bookmarks recently. He loved the HB088 design I made and wanted me to do something similar to that but with the FC Barcelona theme of course :). And so I did! :)

The design for the front of the card is always tricky to do. Especially the quilled swirls. It can never turn out the same each time I make them. The first time I did it, it was a bit wavy and now it's just a simple bend. But I did put a lot of red seed beads this time around at the quilled swirls. Love doing that :).

I really wanted to do a Bookman Oldstyle Font for the alphabets like the one I did for HB088 but this time around there is one extra alphabet in the name and therefore the space is a little limited  to do that on the card in that style where I drew the outline of the font with gold glitters. So, I decided to just arrange the quilled shapes first and later line some gold glitters exactly at the side of each quilled alphabets. This method is much easier for me to do. And I really like it this way. I'm so glad that my customer didn't mind me doing it like that too. Yay! :)

I also did the pop up cake like the one in HB088 except that I changed the logo and  of course changed the  colors of the heart shapes a bit to blue. As long as it has that FC Barcelona colors in it, it's all good :).                                                                

 

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Upcycling my fabric scraps just a tinch more...

I'm loving making as many things as I can out of my fabric scraps. It's a wonderful side effect of having the opportunity to buy bulk fabric lots for my lily pad liners - their unusual shapes mean I end up with a large stash of scraps perfect for crafting.

Mostly I cover unusual shaped tins and boxes, to create more storage; or I make face washes with flannel on one side; or I make cushion covers. At Christmas time I made Santa Sacks with appliques. Waiting next in line for a rainy day are fabric covered buttons and pegs.

But I also love to share my fabric scraps around, as one girl can't use them all! Recently I sent some to one of my favourite crafters, Helen at Tinch Design Studio.

I was delighted when she sent me some photos of what had become of them - gorgeous little bird magnets.

Only one or two of each colour exist and they are up for sale on her felt.co.nz store.

Do you love upcycling fabric scraps? If so, leave me a comment below - I've bagged up three bags of mixed offcuts and I will randomly pick 3 New Zealand bloggers addresses next weekend to send them too - just tell me what your project will be by either leaving a comment here - or on my facebook page.

Each bag contains a random collection of offcuts from designers such as Amy Butler; Anna Maria Horner; Valori Wells; Studio E; Patricia Bravo or Robert Kauffman.


FREE IDEAS AND PATTERNS!

This week I was also delighted to find a funky collation of 24 projects on Make It: Love It full of ideas for how to make great modern stuff by upcycling fabric scraps. All the projects and patterns are all free!!! What a find. Two of my favourites are below. I hope you find something you love in there too!!

Check out everyone else's loves over at Paisley Jade this week.

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