birthday

My "little" girl turned ten this week, a big mile-stone and she was very excited and pleased with herself for getting to such a great age.

 My other daughter bought her a cup-cake stand (pink!) as a present.  I have wanted one of these for quite some time, but no-one bought me one.  We now have one in the house, but I shan't be allowed to use it.

 My other daughter also made her cup-cakes to put on it and made decorations out of paper to stick on top of the chocolate cake that I made as her birthday cake.  It is a depiction of the family: Me, my husband and big sister, and a nice flower.

She got other cool pressies and had a sleepover swimming pool party, ate too much unhealthy food and felt quite poorly.  It is quite amazing how much noise six small girls can make inside a car on the journey between the swimming pool and home.

flotsam and jetsam

Over the weekend the weather behaved much better than recently and we had sunshine, hooray!  We went for a lovely walk along the boulder bank by the sea and were supplied with a fresh breeze and crashing waves, so all very invigorating.  I decided to collect bits of coloured plastic, instead of the usual driftwood and pebbles and soon my little girl got in on the act and found bits for me too.  she was much better at it than me.

We managed to find almost a whole spectrum of colours, and all sorts of items, pegs, a bouncy ball, a hair tie and a nasty brown flip-flop amongst other things.  I was going to chart the colours on my new colour-map for the computer, but as yet haven't, quite.
I am not sure what I will do with them, probably leave them around to gather dust and then chuck them away.

denim and lace bag

over the weekend, under great command and complete control (hers, not mine) I made a bag for my thirteen year old daughter.  She picked all the fabric and all the ribbons and bibbons and told me how many pockets were required and handed me a pile of old nonsense that she absolutely needed to put into it on a regular basis; ipod, cell-phone, pen knife (every teenage girl should have one), bag of crisps, DVD, three juggling balls etc...  She picks stuff I would never choose myself, and I eventually get my head around it and then quite like it.

 above, all the lace came from friends and the op-shop.  I love this little bit of circles.

 above, the perfect accessory was this little badge/button of vintage fabric that my friend made for her.  cute!

and the lining was this lovely silk (will probably shred in about a week) with little elephants on it and some pink spots for added strength.  here are essential items 1-3.

Her friend was impressed and said I could probably sell these for loads of money, when pressed farther on, how much this could mean, she thought maybe even as much as $20 nz. I have decided not to take it up as my new career, as it took me about two days to make.   

10 minute sketch apple blossom x3

I have drawn the blossom before it all blows away, from my little apple tree which will hopefully have some fruit on it this year.

 I am quite happy with the pencil drawings, but not sure about the black pen, not the right medium for a delicate blossom I think.

Oh I do love blossom it's such a lovely time of year now with all these lovely flowers popping out all over the place.  And they all smell good too. And they are pink.

side-show dollies all sewn-up

I have spent some time sewing up my cut and sew dollies that I had printed out at Spoonflower.  My daughters and I spent an evening painting the B&W one and her clothes and then I did a little embroidery on her also.  I was planning on really changing her a lot, but then my daughter said she would like her, and so it was all quite mild mannered after all.  below, B&W left, coloured right

 I love how they have sewn up and that they always look different from what I expect, it's always a nice surprise.  This is them in their undies.

 above, I sewed up their skirts with added lace and used black ric-rac for the tops straps.

above, wearing a dress made from the background fabric.

This the painted version of the B&W doll.

new fabric arrives

I have received some more fabric from spoonflower, I waited very impatiently and it arrived when I was away on holiday, so exciting to come back to.

 above, this was printed onto silk and I think I would like to make a party dress out of it, but I need to order more, I just have a fat quarter at the moment, makes a good head-scarf though.

 above, one of my cut and sew dollie kits, I need to make her now.

 above, I love the big bold scale of this, I have changed the colour of the red to a less orangey red and removed that strange little red bit hanging off the cloud.

 above, these were on a painting I did on brown paper and newspaper, I am going to make a cushion cover for each of my daughters with them. (whether they like it or not)

 another cut and sew, in B&W this time.  I am going to paint and embroider her I think before I make her up.

 above, two different scales of the same pattern.  I wish my girls were still small and I could make them little summer dresses out of these.  I think I will make a skirt or two for me.

 above, the photo is in focus, the fabric is an out of focus design, I am going to make a summer dress out of this.  I have 2 yards.

I rather like how this printed out some pencil marks from my original drawings that I didn't know were there.  This is just a test swatch so only 8"x8", there is more to the design, and I have done some different colourways too.

I was v pleased with the way they all printed, I just need to get sewing with them.  All my sewing stuff is in the garage, so I need to go get it and sort out my sewing room. And keep my younger daughter out, cause she makes a dreadful mess.

start with sun-rise

I was woken at six by the dog this morning and took her outside to see the sky was crimson, so I quickly got the camera, although my eyes were hardly open and took some shots.  I missed the most dramatic minutes, but still bright.

WE went to the beach, but were blown away by a southerly wind which was kind of crazy.

then me and my girls made some christmas angels for my mums friend who wanted some for the church fair, they may not be what she was after, but it kept us happy for a while and my girls quite got into the peg doll thing.

and then we went to the groovy old Geraldine cinema, old couches and blankets and an interval half way through,  and watched "snow-white and the huntsman"  which was fab, Charlize had the best out-fits and was the best evil Queen, I really felt for her and her fading beauty, I spend a lot of time myself looking in the mirror at my wrinkles these days.  I haven't removed anyones heart yet though...  The huntsman was rather swarthy too which is always a winner.  

road trip

We have been travelling to visit my mum.  It was an eight hour drive with a slight detour in Christchurch to pick up some climbing shoes we had bought on Trademe.  We only got a little bit lost.  The kids took some photos on their ipods on the way.  These were all taken around Kaikoura on the east coast of the South Island.

 Cute

change of plan

I decided to change my Spoonflower zombie plushie cut and sew design so that the dolls would have arms sticking out.  This involved a lot of faffing around on my behalf, and I spent 3 hours on photo-shop one evening, only to mess up my evening s work with my own incompetence.  Anyway, I then realised that the only way I was capable of doing the change was manually with scissors and glue, and then onto photo-shop and begin at the beginning again.

 You can see they still have their arms behind them, and I cut off the tops of their heads.

I drew new arms and cut them out and stuck them on and then scanned them, and then spent some time fiddling around with them until I was happy with the result.

This was my first design.  I decided to remove the black outlines so that it would look better when sewn up (more room for error). it's hard to imagine it would take so long to make so few changes.
the original design is still on spoonflower, but i entered the new one in the Zombie Plushie competition.

dawdling and doodling

I have been rather slack on the blogging lately, and hopefully will soon have more stuff to put on.  I have been relying on other people and their lovely creations, as I haven't got any of my own.  But some creativity is bubbling away hopefully ready to surface at some point soon.  A few random ideas in my sketch book.

 above some card ideas, christmas decorations?! whatever.

 above  Lace ideas taken from some old lace, some old medals, and some books from the library on textiles/old fashion.

this rose was on a chinese top I recently aquired.  I thought it was very pretty so I drew it.  I have a mission this year to get the rose drawings sorted, as I do love roses so and I want to be able to draw a fine lot of them.  Not happy with my efforts so far sohopefully will be some more posts on these later in the year, once the roses come out, and a good excuse for rose stalking around the neighbourhood.