Get ready for some Adorable...

One of Eloise's ballet class friends wore her flower filled fairy skirt to class this morning.

Have you ever seen such cuteness?

Thank you so much to her Mummy who said it was okay for me to share these with you!

Father and Son

Father's Day is this Sunday here in New Zealand and I'm taking advance orders for Father and Son matching necktie t-shirts. They will be available for pick up at this Sunday's Devonport Craft Market. They are also available for just men or children. Men's t-shirts cost $28 and Childrens' t-shirts are $18. Buy a Father and Son (child) matching combo for $40. To order for pick up this Sunday, please email me by Thursday 2nd September 11am at the latest. My email address is in the sidebar of the blog. The t-shirts will be white with an appliqued vintage tie motif (tie colours will vary but all are funky!). I'm also happy to post these but they may not arrive in time for Father's Day.
Have a great day.
Sarah 

30

Just thought I'd show you what I made for our nephew's 30th birthday gift.

The tie is a vintage one.

If you would like one of these for a man in your life, I'm happy to take commissions. Just email me (you'll find the address in the sidebar). I can make father and son matching t-shirts too.

Bear-loved

I have a thing about old toys, especially handmade ones and especially bears. I suspect this love was ingrained at an early age. Here's a photo of me at a couple of weeks old. See that orange bear?

He's still hanging around.

He is a rather special bear because he has travelled with me around the world for nearly 40 years. He has survived the move to 8 different countries and numerous different houses. He survived 2 boarding schools and he has survived the love and cuddles of my own children.

Most of all, he is special because he was made just for me.

I love handmade toys for that reason. There is so much love, care and attention that goes into each one.  I know that when I make softies I think about who might take them home and in my head, each one has a personality all their own.  

My Nanma made the little crocheted undies on this bear. She died when I was 14 and I love that I have something special that she made so that I can share something of her with my own children. I can tell stories about her and show them photos but having something that she made with her own hands, that they can touch, seems to mean so much more to them (and me).

Look at this little guy with the blue shorts. Isn't he amazing? I found him in an Op shop in Devonport. I don't know who he belonged to but he has obviously been incredibly well loved and he now lives in my sewing room. If he belonged to you and you need him back, do let me know and I'll happily return him!

This is Colin. He's a new handmade bear. Doesn't he have the most gorgeous face? He's made by a lovely friend of mine, Jess of Teddy Bears Wednesday. Jess  makes very beautiful and special bears and each one definately has it's own personality. Each is made with a wonderful amount of care, love and attention. I think they are just gorgeous.  

 Do you have a special bear?

My Creative Space - Buttons and things

My Creative Space is sewing buttons on Robot T-shirts

Sewing flowers on fairy skirts

and button eyes on sock monkeys

And sometime today, I'm hoping to talk the small person into modelling some flower filled fairy skirts ready for my Felt shop.

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo

Beach Break

We just got back from a much needed weekend break at the beach.

There's nothing quite like a weekend away from the housework, TV (and the sewing machine!) to recharge energy levels! Hope you had a great weekend too.

My Creative Space is definately girly

It's quite hard to avoid girliness in our house. We're going through the 4 year old pink stage. I'm not complaining. It's great having a willing model and prototype tester! I've been busy making flower filled fairy skirts this week.

This one went to a new home this morning. It's a birthday present for a 4 year old. The transaction had to be conducted with extreme secrecy as the flower filled fairy skirts the lady buys often don't make it out of the house as gifts because her daughter snaffles them. Very cute! 

 

I've got some new sparkle skirts too.

 They really are hard to photograph. You can just about make out the glitter in the skirt in the one above. It's part of the fabric and sparkles like you wouldn't believe.

The glitter skirts have Miss Eloise's approval.

She's testing this one out for me. So far she has left a trail of sparkles everywhere she has been. Apparently that's okay because that's what fairies do. The skirts may have to come with a glitter-distribution warning!

What do you think? Would you buy one dispite the glitter distribution? It's not that bad but glitter does get everywhere!

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo.

She just seems to know.

We've done three loads of washing this morning. We've been to the post office. We've been to the fabric store. We've done the school run, the ballet class and the breakfast dishes. I've sat at my computer for an hour doing my twice-daily email catch up. And I've written a list of all my orders to fill today. Eloise has happily amused herself through all of this. She is sitting happily playing with her toys right now. The only thing that frustrated me briefly was the very slow speed at which she chose to walk up the path to the house. She came in, finally, smiled and popped a little gift on my list of orders.

She just seems to know exactly what to say.

For sisters

One of my wonderful school friends, Melanie, had a baby girl the other day. The new baby's name is Olivia. Isn't that gorgeous? She makes Melanie's other daughter, Chloe, a big sister, which, as many of you will know, is a very important job. I sent them a parcel full of bunnies today. Sisters looks so cute in matching outfits.

My own oldest girl was told off this morning by her little sister for being too bossy. "Mummy said not to boss your little sister around!". 
"Yeah?" was the indignant response from Miss Bossy. "Well that was yesterday."

Don't worry, she's cuddling her, not strangling her!

Who thinks I've got my work cut out for me with that one? Too smart for her own good sometimes!!

Lucky Me!

I was lucky enough to win a giveaway for one of Hannah of Chicken Willow's beautiful iPad cosies a few weeks ago. Now I don't actually own an iPad but it looked so beautiful I couldn't resist entering the giveaway. Look at that gorgeous fabric and how well it's made.  Just amazing!

Click on this picture to enlarge it and check out that beautifully neat stitching!

It has been reinvented as a camera cosy. I regularly take my camera out with me in my handbag and worry about it getting bashed about. Now it will be all snug in that fleece and I'll be able to grab it a lot quicker too so thank you Hannah!

I was also lucky enough to have my friend Joanna at Little Minx think of me while she was out op shopping. She found this incredible 20m long tape measure and wondered if I might like it. That would be quite an impressive tape measure rose brooch! I'm really looking forward to the challenge of making it. I think it will have to be a display piece as I don't think even I'd be game to wear something that big! Thank you Joanna.

Joanna's planning a Rosy tea party for her little girl's birthday and has been out collecting the most beautiful teacups and saucers for the party. I can't wait to see the party plans unfold over the next few weeks. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

There's a peek of sunshine through the clouds out there today. I've actually managed to get some washing out on the line today. It's been so wet lately. I really can't wait until it gets a little drier and warmer. Come on Spring. Hurry up!!

Baby Wallabies

I finally got around to restocking some appliqued t-shirts and onesies yesterday. I got two orders for appliqued baby onesies on Thursday too, which was lovely. Friday is (usually) my child free sewing day but Maddy was home from school yesterday with a cough, so she came with me to buy the onesies to applique.

This is my new favourite fabric combination for the baby elephants.

Maddy was very helpful in the shop, although we did have a little negotiation over exactly which onesies we needed. I have no idea where she gets the strong minded nature from ;o) .

This is unfortunately the last of this toadstool fabric :o(

If any of you have seen it anywhere, do let me know.

Maddy was helpful again in the car, taking all of the tags off so the onesies would be ready to do the pre-shrink wash when we get home. 

This is fabric and a design that Sarah M of Songbird Designs gave to me when she stopped making t-shirts.

We were nearly home when Maddy suddenly started asking about wallabies and when were we going to see some. It took me several minutes and lots of questioning before I clicked that she had heard me talk about the onesies and thought I had said wallabies. Very cute! Poor love was a little disappointed when I cleared that one up. I think we might have to plan a trip to Auckland zoo soon to make up for it!

Hope you are managing to keep dry on this horrible wet day. My girls are having a great game with the dolls house. I might have to go and join in in a minute!

My Creative Space

My Creative Space should be making a whole pile of flower filled fairy skirts after the lovely write up about them by Aimee on the Baby Bites website.

I've done all the cutting out, but the pile of tulle has been hijacked for fairy mountain purposes so the sewing is just going to have to wait until the fairies (and Dora) have moved on with their adventure.

For more Creative Spaces, pop over to Kootoyoo.

Playdough Fashion Design

Maddy, Eloise and I made some sparkly playdough to give as party favours a couple of weeks ago. The playdough never made it into the loot bags however because, in the end, it was just too big to fit. We didn't let it go to waste though. Eloise got it out this morning and we did a little playdough fashion design.

First she made a cardigan. She used the sleeve of her cardy and the buttons on it to make cool patterns.

(I won't tell you what sort of a state her sweater is in now though so best you use an old one if you are going to do this!!

Then she made a princess gown. We added even more glitter to the playdough for this one.

She got out some beads and cut up some doilies to use as decoration and she used an ink stamp cupcake to transfer a design to the dough.

Then some sort of explosion happened and the design process went all Vivienne Westwood.

The designer was pleased with herself and chose to sing Happy Birthday to celebrate her sucessful fashion design debut.

The party

Well needless to say, I am totally and utterly exhausted after Eloise's 4th Birthday party. She had a wonderful day. Here are a couple of photos of the day.

Our little fairy.

The food table

Gorgeous cupcakes made by Eloise's Godmother, Melanie

The paper flowers (I stuck them on balloon sticks)

Dainty fairy sandwiches made by Eloise's other Godmother, Carina.

The branches have pom poms and butterflies glued onto them.

The pink lemonade (made by mixing lemon and raspberryade).

It tasted truly revolting but the kids loved it!

The fairy Queen.

We set up a throne in the corner and every child had their photo taken on it (to be turned into thank you cards later on. We borrowed the fantastic toadstools from Eloise's ballet teacher.

 

Our other fairy Queen, Madeleine. She was such a huge help on the day!

And finally, our two gorgeous girls playing pass the parcel.

We also played Musical statues and pin the star on the fairy wand (Maddy and I painted a fairy on a big piece of paper and the kids had to stick gold stars on the picture and try to get it on top of the wand.

We also had art activities so that everytime there was a lull (or there was a queue for the pin the star game), they could go off and amuse themselves. They made butterfly wands (I used butterfly cards from the John Sands range, cut in half to make single butterflies.) The kids decorated them with stickers, pens and glitter and then glued them onto lolly sticks. We also had the fairy colouring in pages to keep them busy if they finished their butterfly. I really couldn't have managed the party without an awful lot of help from my lovely friends and of course from Richard who spent the vast majority of the afternoon washing dishes, taking video and making coffee whilst I had all the fun directing the party games.

Eloise had a wonderful day which was of course the whole point of it. Now I have to just get used to the fact that my baby is 4 years old and this time next year she will be starting school. I am so going to miss that funny bunny when she does!