sailing…

Master Four taps me on the leg as I stand doing the washing up. “Can we do some craft, please mummy?” he asks. I know exactly the box for the job, and send him off to dig through the recycling box (our favourite source of craft supplies – reduce, reuse, recycle!), and I am just drying my hands as he presents me with his finds, face beaming with pride. We settle ourselves in the loungeroom, a few bits I’ve collected and the boxes in front of us. Some sticky tape here, a piece of paper there, and we had ourselves some boats!

 

And of course, what is a boat without an ocean to sail on? So off we trundled to the large crate of fabric that lives under my desk, and the perfect piece of blue fabric procured, we made ourselves an ocean, and passed a very peaceful half hour or so playing boats and singing boat-ish type of songs. Well, peaceful, that is, until Cyclone Bubba Boy decided we needed some waves!

 

 

The boat making rounded out the awesome-sauce that was yesterday morning. More stories than I can count, biscuits baked, songs sung,  boogeys danced, colouring in and drawing. All round wonderfulness. And today is brimming with the same brand of awesome-sauce. We’ve played in sandpits. We’ve danced. We’ve sung. We’ve played with little baby girls who fill our hearts with joy. We’ve seen some dolls clothes, and watched the walls go up on our new house. With all three children asleep, I’m parking myself in front of the sewing machine, and getting busy. So much creative mojo filling my world at the moment, and too few hours to run with it. But they sleep. And I’m running.

 

Happy Thursday everyone!

toasty

The bubbles swirl around my wrists as /i wash up, the children lost in chatter at the table behind me. A little voice pipes up. “Mummy, I know what we can do for craft today – a toaster! And some toast!”

 

Uh. Ok. Hmm. I head to the craft stash, to find our random-box-that-look-interesting stash is sorely depleted. The panic starts, I know ther’ll be tears. What to do, what to do? Then, I spy a small box that has fallen down beside the desk, perfect for a mini-toaster. I trimmed some toast-ish looking shapes from some spare chipboard, and with a small child either side of me happily colouring their “toast”, I got busy with the craft scalpel to carve out some toasty slots. A little handle on the side, a bit of foil, and two little boys had their morning planned. It’s a good thing the bacon & eggs they served for me with their toast were just prented, that’s for sure!

 

 

The studio is nearly clean. Yesterdays bikkies are nearly gone, and in their place a nice warm tea cake. I have a secret santa to sew for, some scrapping to do, a few ideas swirling rapidly around my head. A crochet rocket to design (hmmm….). Some clothes to sort. Some books to read and cuddles to share. And a weekend in sight. Happy Thursday everyone!

nappy pouch.

We aare soon travelling, and with two small children, that means a large bag of nappies, clothes, toys, snacks, drinks,and assorted toddler paraphenalia that two small children seem to require. Running Bear tends to get frustrated come change time, as it means hauling large bag out, sifting through to find the nappies that have invariably drifted to the bottom, change child, rearrange bag so it closes, load child and bag back in car.

To make life easier, I whipped up a little pouch to hold one or two nappies, some wipes and a couple of nappy sacks. And the ever-important hand sanitiser gel.

The top of the bag comes from a pair of jeans that needed taking up. Purchased when pregnant with Bear four years ago, they are my pregnancy staple. But being a bit long, and given my propensity to walking everywhere, the cuffs were worn, frayed and plain old daggy. So out came the scissors and up went the jeans. Unfortunately, we recently cleared out a lot of excess “stuff” from my studio, and it appears the pedal for my overlocker has been put somewhere “safe” – take my word for it, overlocking two legs of wide jeans using the advance wheel, not so good for your wrist!

I had intended on French-seaming the sides, as the bag isn’t lined, but the bulk was too much, between the two layers of denim (and more up the top with the “hems”), plus the two layers of rubber-backed curtain fabric I used for the foundation, so I simply stitched right-sides-together and added a basic grosgrain ribbon binding.

Today was supposed to see the quilting of one HST quilt done, and the other started. My deadline for quilting + binding attached is this weekend. However, a certain small toddler has decided that sleep is over-rated. I had time for lunch and getting two small triangles quilted before he woke, and now he’s refusing to sleep. Of course. So it seems a change of plan is in order. A cubby house. Some Lego and trains. Plenty of books. Maybe some baking since it appears someone has inhaled the chocolate we baked only yesterday. A hot coffee while watching the rain fall. Best laid plans of mice and men be darned, these boys and I shall find some fun!

Sock it to me…

The sky was a deep grey, filled with the promise of a cosy inside day, warm drinks, crafty projects & snuggles on the lounge. With the requisite housework dealt with, the baby asleep, and the morning’s coffee disposed of, the toddler and I settled ourselves in the studio, and got messy with socks, buttons & glue.

 

 

These little monsters live on buttons, apparently. My poor old button collection has spent many hours strewn over the studio floor, awaiting their fate as puppet fodder.

 

With socks puppets, books, autumn leaves & meeting with friends, today has been fantastic. After an action packed morning, both boys are slumbering peacefully in their beds, and I have an itch I need to scratch. To paint, to sew, to get messy & creative & DO SOMETHING. Maybe starting with a coffee as I bask in the glory of silence. Music, drawing, painting. I need to do some photo “stuff”. A chapter or two of my book. Relaxing, unwinding, being. I see a long weekend heading this way, and I’m in holiday mode already… let’s do this!

Autumn blooms

There is a rare & delicate flower, I have found, that dares only bloom when it’s true beauty may be appreciated. When most others tremble at the though of a frost, and their petals wither & fall. When a small boy reach for glue, paper, scissors. And of course, the ever-handy egg carton!

 

So much fun we had to do it all over again this morning

 

Love, love, love toddler craft. Messy, crazy, unpredictable. My little man is a child after my own heart, and loves cutting, gluing, painting. Creating. And being with Mummy. He loves to sit on my lap as I  sew, watch me cut fabric, draw when I draw, getting messy together. Though sometimes I wish his drawing requests would bo for something other than “Thomas please, Mummy, a real big one. In yellow. And maybe some green”, I love nothing more than exploring our creativity together.

 

I’m riding the “don’t think” train today, and feeling like I’ve accomplished a lot (not that it looks like it). With children mid-nap, I’m going to roll with the motivation, and after a spot of housework, I’m going to tidy this studio and CREATE. Sew, paint, scrapbook. I have a creative itch that needs scratching, so let’s do this!

Just a gentle reminder…

…to myself.

 

Mondayitis hit me over the head yesterday, and the wheels came off my “don’t think, just do” campaign. But I’m back on the bandwagon today, and thanks to several strong cups of coffee, I’ve found my groove!

The current favourite toddler activity is painting. Anything & everything. So what better way to enjoy the warm sunshine on a lovely autumn day, then to lay a ripped sheet on the back lawn, break out the paint bottles and let  little feet go nuts?

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it now – maybe just save it for cubby house building?

 

Another fun project was potato stamps.

Being a ‘seat-of-my-pants’ project, I just squirted paint direct on the stamp and swirled it with my finger. I think next time, I will use tray of paint to make it easier/messier/funner (is that a word?) for Bear.

 

It would appear that my children have conspired to hatch an evil plan to prevent their poor tired mama from doing anything fun, and are refusing to nap at the same time. *sigh* The quilt will just have to take a back seat to trains and Bubba’s favourite game of “eat the mama – or drown her in drool trying”. Eh, just a different kind of fun this Tuesday has in store for me! Loving it!

Don’t think, just do.

Seeing as winter was upon us, it was time to upgrade Bear’s winter shoes. The boxes were too good to chuck in the recycling straight up, and I couldn’t be bothered storing them, so out came the craft bo, and the boxes became a house (left box is an open plan lounge/kitchen, right box is bedroom with ensuite), complete with a spoon person, aptly named “Person”.

 

And the title, you ask? My motto for this week. I think I’ve mentioned before that I am a procrastinator. Big time. I’ll even procrastinate about fun stuff. But over the weekend, I had an epiphany.  (And for those EBers playing along at home, not that kind of epiphany).

 

Don’t think about it, just do it. Then it’s done. It’s working so far. I had a very productive weekend, the house got clean, I finally caught up on all that washing, finished the top of the D9P, made an art smock for Bear, and also made him a little sleeping bag. Very productive indeed. Today is shapng up pretty good too. I may even get the D9P quilted today. But I might just have a coffee first…

Nope. No excuses. Let’s do this crazy little thing called Monday!

Snap snap snappy…

Also known as “The Revenge of the Krispy Kremes”.

 

The boy was doing his best to create a carpet with the contents of the recycling bin. The final thing he pulled out (after being told several times to leave the recycling where it was, for goodness sake!) was an empty Krispy Kremes box (which appeared to be the latest victim of the sweet-tooth monster. I swear, by the time I find the bugger who keeps eating all my yummy treats, it’ll be too big to be easily removed from the house!). Open, shut, open, shut, open… Light bulb! After putting everything bar the KK box & a couple of other bits & pieces back into the recycling box, off we toddled to the loungeroom for some craft, and created a “cwoh-o-diwl”

 

The only issue now is how to convince a small boy that we don’t let our “cwoh-o-diwl” try to eat the baby? I must say, I never imagined my vocabulary would include the phrase “no, we don’t eat our little brother with the crocodile”!!

 

Happy Thursday everyone!

Another “Repair” ACEO

Too tired for the words to come easily today, so just a photo!

Acrylic wash & ink on cardstock, repurposed cardboard backing

An experiment in book-binding.

After seeing some gorgeous books on Etsy, created by “Paperlion“, I was intruiged by the idea of making my own books. I gathered some old cardboard, some excess computer paper & some funky hot pink embroidery floss, and got to work, following a tutorial for coptic binding that I found with assistance of Professor Google. The end result:

And a shot of the binding stitches:

The cover is nothing spectacular, I know, but I only had a spare 2 minutes, and wanted to jazz up the plain cardboard. Now I know what I am doing, I’m going to dig out my old paper-making equipment, and have a go at a bigger, fancier book. I’m still undecided as to what I’m going to use for the cover & binding fibres, but I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied while I make up my mind!

 

The creative rush is still on, I have just finished another ACEO collage, with another in the works. Plus I have some new stuff coming from Lime Tart which will be lots of fun to get stuck into, and a million and one ideas racing around my head! All I need is the time to bring them all into being…