This is another really neat idea from Craft Hope. Their Etsy store has all sorts of donated handmade items for sale. Right now it’s raising funds for Doctors without Borders. They seem to be getting tons of donations from the crafty world. I checked it out last night and already this morning there’s a whole other page of listings. I need to get to my sewing machine and create something for this!
The other day I thought I was pretty smart when I got out a roll of transportation stickers I had kicking around and made Wesley a little paper with a road, train tracks, an airport, water and a train station (that looks a lot like a dog house I know). He had a blast sticking on all the stickers and making a cool picture. He asked to do it again a few days later.
Today after setting up my lovely table from IKEA I brought the box upstairs to flatten out and draw some roads on. We made roads to Grandma and Grandpa’s, our house, Nana’s, some of our friends houses, the preschool, the indoor play place we hang out at and “Daddy’s friends’ house”. I tried to get some specifics about who those friends were but that was the only answer I kept getting. So while Daddy indeed have friends, apparently Wesley isn’t too concerned with their names.
That's 'Mommy's van' and 'Daddy's car' in the dirveway.
Of course after I had drawn all those places and added some trees, bushes and flowers Wesley requested an airport. Into city planning mode! I found some space behind the preschool for it. Hope Grandma and Grandpa don’t mind. When they got their 17 acres out in the country they probably didn’t think an airport was going in across the street.
I really wanted to create some cool wall art, like this for our living room. But it’s a bit of an involved project that will take time to organize and make so I had a brain wave for a smaller project with the same effect, only it will decorate my cute little new craft area (once I finish organizing it).
How’d I do it? I just cut 2 circles of fabric, one green and one cute Heidi Grace patterned one and cut them in two pieces. I though I might make another one later so I wanted some fabric ready. Then I sewed the patterned fabric to the solid colour piece. A while back when I needed 1 embroidery hoop I went into Value Village and picked up a back with 5 in it for some insanely low price, like $1.99 and I remember thinking, “But I only need !” good thing I have many now. I fit the circle into the hoop with a little cute ribbon covering the seam.
Then I sat down to think of some fun little words I could pencil onto the green that would be inspiring and motivating. I penciled them onto the fabric, grabbed some floss I thought would go nicely and sat down to make it prettier. I went a little free form on the leaves and heart *shrug*. Then I added a few buttons in colours from the patterned fabric and voila! Now I just have to get downstairs and set up the other table I picked up on Tueday night so I can begin the great craft space organization of 2010.
Making this!!
I wanted to try to make a messenger bag and I’ve been holding onto this super cute Heidi Grace fabric for a while and was happy to finally use it.
I added the little green heart just for fun. The inside is just a cute swirly orange fabric I found somewhere. I’ve been reluctant to use the fabric since I had to get it on one of my road trips to Joann’s, and those don’t happen as often as I like! If anyone from Joann’s is reading this, please build some stores in Canada! I beg you.
I’d still like to make the strap adjustable but I was being impatient and wanted to take the bag on the plane with me.
After a recent power outage our printer wouldn’t turn back on so I finally broke down and went out Friday night and got us a new one. Which meant I could finally print all the images I’ve been saving to put in my Style School binder!! Usually when I bounce around the net while browsing my favourite blogs I save pictures of neat ideas here and there to inspire me. I’ve been bad and I don’t know where most of them have come from, so I suppose as a sort of new start for 2010, I’m going to save the files with a name that lets me know where I saw the image. So here’s some of my favourite things I’ve collected over the last few months.
I have one of these already, but after seeing this I think I need more!
I love the idea of this shelf, and how the toys are all underneath out of the way. In our house, the shelves would need to be empty for another 2 years or so!
I love this little bench and the arrangement on the wall. See the makeover and rest of this little nook here at the purple pea.
Great looking storage for all your craft supplies! From somewhere on apartmenttherapy, I’m pretty sure.
Love this idea! Find the tutorial here.
In the spirit of needing to organize my seemingly ever expanding craft space, and wanting a cool bike, I must have these!
Yellow cabinet from IKEA. For *my* good looking fabric storage
I saw someone buying this in Walmart. The picture doesn’t do it justice, it’s a really looking neat bike.
I need an eclectic collection of plates to hang on one of our walls.
This one just makes me smile, from weheartit.com. What all our scales should say.
While in England I picked up a decoratable binder for my Style Binder assignment for Style School. While watching part 1 and 2 of the BBC remake of Day of the Triffids I decided to work on the cover. Inspired by my location at the time I designed it using a London Underground theme.
There’s a bit of a shine to the binder so it was tricky to get a shot without a glare, but you get the idea. My only available tools were the Lightening McQueen coloured pencils my son had from Christmas. So all things considered, I think I did very well.
By the way, if you’ve never been to London and would like to scramble your brain for a few minutes take a look at the map for the underground. If you live in New York City, never mind the link, you have your own brain scrambler.
Seems our house is still an explosion of luggage and laundry. So in lieu of an actual useful crafty post allow me to I bring you, ‘The things I bought while away on vacation”!
A lovely sewing box from John Lewis. I loved the craft section there and wanted to get more but the first day we went we had the kids and then when we went back it was to a different location and it was also insanely busy with the post Christmas shopping. So I grabbed a sewing box and ran. I would have gotten the slightly bigger one but I was worried about having to pack it.
And of course, any trip for me wouldn’t be complete without the purchase of a bag or some sort. So on our last trip into London I found this little cutie! It was meant to be since the price tag matched exactly with how much money I had left in my wallet. Clearly it was asking to be taken home with me.
I hope to get creating again on the weekend for sure. I’m off to scrapbook on Saturday and Style School starts Sunday so it should help kick start me for 2010!
Here’s my stash of juice pouches from the trip! Not sure why they’re in German since we were in Spain . . .
I can’t wait to make myself a little bag that, hopefully, no one around here will have!
We got in from England on Friday night at about 9:30 and were ready for bed! With England 5 hours ahead we were a tad tired. Then of course my wonderful little baby boy woke up at 4:30 Saturday morning. He was ready to go, it was 9:30 for him. The rest of us weren’t so ready. Wesley spent about 10 minutes awake before he had a meltdown and I marched him back up to bed. But being up early wasn’t so bad I started to explode our luggage and dig out all the gift and souvenirs we bought, and the Christmas tree needed to come down!
So, while Christmas is over I had ornaments on my mind while I took down the tree and unpacked some I had bought on the trip.
Now while I didn’t make these, they would be pretty easy to whip up some that are similar. They’re by Maileg. It’s been our thing when we travel to get Christmas decorations/ornaments so I picked these 2 up sort of for the boys. Most of the decorations on our tree are painted by me. I used to buy some every year and sit and paint them. I figured I’d have a tree full in a while. Travelling and collecting them is just as much fun.
This one is just cute! It has 2009 on it and says Rudolph on the other side.
I haven’t had much time to be crafty with the trip and returning to work today, which is going to be tough after over a year off! I fully intend to keep crafting in 2010, and posting, and creating, and being me.
