Crafty Thinking

We have moved premises to a new home. You can now find all of our new posts here at : www.sewcraftyliving.blogspot.com.au. We will endeavour to move our previous posts to this new address but in the meantime you can still find our old posts here.

Thanks for your continued support. 

Deb xx

I am in the process of changing our house around a little and we have come up with the plan to move the dining room onto our little deck area and the dining room will now be a dedicated craft space - yippee!! This is something I've dreamed of for years and now that it is becoming a reality I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. So much stuff to organise and I want to do it properly. So I've turned to the wonderful space of the world wide web to find inspiration. Thought you might like a peek too...

I'm loving these storage ideas from A Closer Look at Ottoman - the pegboard is a must and what I would give for a set of flat drawers!

And who doesn't love this Cath Kidston inspired colour scheme from Whole Lotta Lovely...

I do love a cascade green colour scheme - it so reminds me of my early years. More than that though I love great organised storage and these Elfa drawers and shelving from The Container Store are really doing it for me.

How cool is this idea for storing ribbon. Thank you Creating Keepsakes!

For more fabulous, inspiring ideas follow my Pinterest page where I have a whole board on craft rooms..

So now it's back to it. I promise I will post the finished results - hopefully they'll be as spectacular as the gorgeous spaces here. xx

Currently I am loving the many different 3d craft printables I am finding online. Our family have spent a lot of time indoors during this last month due to flooding. We've just about exhausted all of our board games and craft activities so I printed off a couple of beautiful templates for the kids to build their own city.

A quick google search will bring up plenty but some of my favourites are the following:

the neighbourhood - a range of houses and community buildings (American but can change to suit our Aussie lifestyle). This is also a wonderful site with tips on living a 'green' and happy lifestyle with lots of great links and projects.

digitprop.com - this blog is amazing. There are an enormous number of *free* projects here. Our favourite - a complete alphabet represented by an animal or thing that starts with that letter.

printables4mom.com - this site has a great range of 3d crafts plus links to many others. You could lose yourself here for a day or so.

And once you get entirely hooked you can take a visit to Etsy and find yourself some awesomely 'cute as' 3d projects for sale. All are reasonably priced.

My absolute favourite (because I'm a bit of a fan) is our very own Queenslander, Mel Stringer. She has an Etsy shop - girliepains - featuring some of her printables plus her awesome artwork.

www.etsy.com/shop/girliepains

And last one to finish for all the little and big girls' out there who love to sew - perfect playtime!

From Etsy shop - Fantastic Toys

www.etsy.com/shop/FantasticToys

Kawaii inspired and beyond cute!

So much talent out there. So much goodness for us here!

❤

I've just realised that Valentine's Day is creeping up and I've done absolutely nothing. What a romantic I am!

Anyway given that I am so hopelessly disorganised (read: busy) I thought I'd share a couple of quick ideas with you to help you (and me) get the creative juices flowing. We've still got a couple of days to go ...

In store at Sew Crafty Goodness we have a number of great items for doing it yourself gift wrapping. These pretty gift bags and tags are available and of course the ever-popular washi tape is a must to finish off any project.

If you have a spare hour or so you can easily make a bunch of little knitted owls. Full instructions will be coming to our tutorials.

It is so easy to make the simplest little gift look extra pretty and you don't need expensive materials. We created this look using newspaper, a paper doily, paper straws and a pom pom flower made from a red serviette. You will find full instructions at our tutorials. We sell paper straws in our party supply section of our Sew Crafty Goodness shop.

 Clay gift tags are the easiest little projects to make and great fun for the kids. Just use air drying white clay from the $2.00 shop, roll out with a rolling pin to about 3mm, stamp with anything you can get your hands on and cut out with the top of a glass. Let dry, sand the edges with an emery board and attach to a gift with a length of baker's twine. Voila!

For full instructions have a look at our blog post on Clay Tags and check our tutorials.

 Got some scrapbooking paper lying around - if you're anything like me I've hoarded forests over the years. I do a lot of my scrapbooking nowadays digitally so I'm always on the look out for ways to use my extra supplies of paper and card. Very simple little shipping gift tags can be cut out with a hole punched in the top and some stamping on the back for your message. Thread with a length of baker's twine from our store.

 Another fun project for the kiddlies - magnets!! We used cabochon glass pebbles from the jewellery making supply section of our shop and washi or deco tape for this project. So quick and easy to make a whole bunch of these little cuties. Full tutorial for this project can be found in our projects section.

Enjoy your day on the 14th February ❤

We've been on a prolonged festive holiday break and boy do I feel so much better for it!! Spending time with my lovely family and enjoying their company has been just the right medicine for my soul. Not only did we do the fun stuff like going to the movies, pool, visiting friends but we also spent time working in the yard and taking on some great house projects - creating an under house music/play room, doing up the kid's cubby house, an outdoor dining area and we've started on my dream project - a dedicated craft space!! yay!

The lead up to Christmas is always busy and it's lovely to get the chance between Christmas and New Year to connect as a family and spend quality time together. The madness starts again here in our household after the New Year as my youngest has her birthday early January so we often find ourselves organising a birthday party.

This year she really wanted to make her cubby house look pretty for the day so she and older sister got to making pom poms to decorate the windows and also helped make a quick bunting for the front.

So so simple to create - a long piece of ribbon, cut out some triangles with shearing scissors, hand sew the triangles onto the ribbon in a contrasting embroidery thread and add some pretty embellishments (we used some crocheted flowers and gingham bows from our Sew Crafty Goodness supplies - you can purchase them here).

Here are some pics of the end results and my crazy little family  ❤

Chillin' taking in the view!

Tea time! Love that my 13 year old son indulges his little sisters..

Yes they are a bit mad! Grover clearly unimpressed..

Very happy birthday girl!

Love these crazy kids ❤

❤

This month has been overwhelmingly busy with preparations and facilitation of our paper crafting workshops for our local Sunshine Council. What with the end of the school year and sporting groups for the kids, Christmas shopping and preparations for Christmas plus fulfilling orders for Sew Crafty Goodness, December seems to be disappearing into a blur.

Thought I'd quickly share some of our activities from the workshops with you here. Maybe a bit of inspiration for the kids over the holiday period coming up. We will be endeavouring to compile all  workshops onto our website in the coming weeks/months under a section called "Tutorials". Please keep a look out for this because we will be featuring a whole lot of fun activities (all for free!).

Busy hands at work!

Molly loves to get involved with the workshops..

All age groups catered for!

The always beautiful Molly and one of her creations!

 Fun for all ages and genders!

Workshop at Noosa Botanic Gardens over the festive season.

I love facilitating workshops and am looking forward to doing many more in 2013. Hope to see you at one soon.

Deb ❤

With the lead up to Christmas and all the busy-ness that goes with it I thought I'd better find myself some time to do something crafty with the kids before the big day approached.

I've been wanting to make some clay gift tags for a while now and thought Christmas was the perfect opportunity. We could hang them off our little gifts for the kid's teachers. 

We happened to have some DAS modelling clay on hand and so the experimentation started.

So firstly I wanted to emboss the tags with pretty patterns. We gathered some leaves from our back yard and found some stamps with pretty swirls that I have in my collection. We also needed the clay, some glasses to use as templates for the circle and I used a metal skewer for the hole. I also used the glass to roll the clay out but of course a rolling pin would probably be better (do you think I could find mine anywhere?!).

I rolled the clay straight onto my laminated table at a thickness of about 3mm (any thinner and they would break). I then pressed the various stamps and leaves firmly into the clay to create the designs and pressed the glass top into the clay to cut out the circle shapes. Finished by pushing a skewer through the top to make a hole for the tag.

Once finished, leave to dry (overnight) or 24 hours if possible.

Now here is where I made a mistake.. I had to turn them over frequently as they got really stuck to the table and in doing so they got quite squished, curled up around the edges and lost their shape. I've since discovered that the best option is to roll them onto baking paper and leave them there until they dry. Will definitely try this next time. Once dry I used an emery board to smooth around the edges and smooth out any lumps and bumps.

As a final touch I experimented with stamps and inks to use on the blank stamps. These lovely alphabet stamps can be purchased through my shop at : www.sewcraftygoodness.com.au

Lots of fun and quick and easy little project to do with the kids. The next batch I make I will use air drying clay and I will also try with polymer clay. I will experiment with different borders like scalloped edges (using cookie cutters) and would like to try using textured fabrics and crochet doilies and lace for the embossed designs. Anyway for a first go I'm pretty happy with the end results.

Happy crafting .. ❤

I am totally into paper cutting at the moment and am a huge fan of Julie Marabelle of Famille Summerbelle and the fabulous Rob Ryan. I've seen a lot of wonderful paper cutting recently and so have been inspired to give it a try. I read on a blog recently saying it was one of the most relaxing and rewarding crafts that this blogger had ever tried. OK, that was my cue - relaxation is always high on my agenda.

Beautiful paper cut work by Famille Summerbelle - a map of Paris!!

The brilliant Rob Ryan!

Another wonderful website I've come across is Scherenschnitte by designer Cindy Ferguson. Cindy offers lovely free templates to try paper cutting for yourself.

So, my first attempt was to try something small scale - a little card for a friend's birthday.

Obviously I discovered that you need a really good blade (hence the poor little birdie's broken leg and lack of detail). So the results weren't as spectacular as I was hoping. Now the hunt is on for the perfect blade. This next attempt is from the freebie from Scherenschnitte.

This is a fabulous website - very inspirational and loads of free templates to try out. I must say I'm a bit hooked on this craft now and just have to get myself that new blade! Love, love, love what you can do - the possibilities are endless.

I'll finish with this beautiful film clip by Nina McSweeney "Lost in Translation" featuring beautiful paper cutting images and music. If this doesn't get you hooked I don't know what will!

One of the great things about living in an area like this is the number of fabulous community run events that we can participate in. I was asked to set up a little stall at the annual "Op Shop Bop" at our community hall in Pomona recently.This is a joint event run by the Pomona and District Community House and our local "Op Shops", Options 4 U, Red Cross and Lifeline, to raise money and awareness of the great work done by these wonderful organisations. If you're anything like me you love a good "thrift" through an op shop. I am so grateful to the gorgeous folk who put in lots of hard work and volunteer their own time to keep these little businesses thriving. For me these shops provide an opportunity to find a treasure to make my own. For many others however these businesses provide them and their families with the opportunity to purchase clothing at a cheap price to get them through hard times.

The lovely people behind the scenes put on a scrummy morning tea and a very fashionable fashion parade. It was most entertaining and very inspiring - some spectacular outfits were created for just a few dollars. We were also entertained by our local belly dancers - woo hoo!! and live music.

So a big thank you from me and my daughter Molly - we had a great morning and will be back again next year. Here are some pics.

 Our paper flowers on stage with vintage sheets as the backdrop. Flowers and tables arrangements by the lovely Dawn Gwynne of All Things Floral...

 Molly manning our stall....

 The fabulous Pomona belly dancers...

The fashion parade...

 Molly trying out the morning tea...

 Great morning... xx

Every week I hold a little craft group here in Cooran and every week I walk away inspired and motivated by the lovely folk I am lucky enough to share my time with! What a talented bunch they are. What I love most about our get-togethers are the connections that are made and the sharing of skills. We have youngsters who are keen to learn to knit or crochet along with some of our elderly community members who are just as keen to share their skills. When I first thought about starting this group my intention was to get people out of their houses, connect like-minded folk and share ideas and skills. Loving that my wishes are coming true...

 Many and varied activities going on...

  Belinda and Wendy deep in discussion...

 Di showing off her lovely appliqued blanket...

Kate and Harriet (mother and daughter) working and learning together...

Could Mia and Davina be having much more fun?...

Pretty little felt birds...

And here's Sam creating them...

Beautiful, almost finished quilt by Wendy...

Janine making bibs for her grandkids...

Scrapbooking...

Working out the intricacies of making a quilt...

 Tammy refashioning an outfit...

What fun!! Thank you to my lovely, inspirational friends. xx