I love Christmas - part 3 - The wreath

I tizzied up a plain ikea wreath this year. I like the simplicity of it.

I love Christmas - Part 2 - Knitted Nativity

This feat of magnificence was knitted by my mum. I'm a very basic straight scarf knitter and this knittery is waaaay beyond my skills. My mum's crafty expertise is in knitting, crochet and quilting. She's an insane crafter like the rest of us and always has a project on the go. I love the detail in all the characters. She did a great job. My dad got involved in this crafty project and soldered the shepherd's staffs and painted them in the appropriate brown. Nice one mum and dad!!

I love Christmas - part 1 - The Diorama

This is a joint project that I completed with my 7 year old niece. It's a bit wacky spectacky, but she loves it. This is our diorama we whipped up for our amusement this year. Since it's sans snow around here at Christmastime we thought we would bring a Christmas winter wonderland to our new cabinet. I must admit my purchase of new cabinet was based heavily on that little window display area. Although it does have a great sliding bottom storage area as well. It's a 70's number and is actually made in Australia - rare these days! I got quite giddy thinking up all the dioramas I could produce and display throughout the year. I remember, being fascinated, watching lots of American TV shows as a kid and American kids always seemed to be making dioramas for their school projects. I don't remember ever making a diorama for school - wish I had though I would have gone off!!!!

Now, as for the features in our spectacular, spectacular display. The log cabin I constructed out of sticks and cardboard with a bit of fleece and wadding for the roof. I then sprayed the whole thing with fake snow in a can, which was both stinky and weird. I then lit the whole cabin both inside and out using tiny strands of battery operated lights. So incredibly cute. I then constructed an ice lake/ice skating rink out of opaque plastic, tissue paper and blue fabric. I glued all the layers together and then used a hot glue gun and swirled glue all over the plastic so it looks like people have been skating on the ice. The rink is then lit from underneath with icy white, battery operated, LED lights to give a lovely glow. The other little houses, which aren't exactly to scale, but very cute were bought at a junk shop for $15 each and have optic fibre lights inside each. The snowy grounds were made with wadding on the bottom, to give a snowy depth, and with white fleece on top.

Stay Tuned for tomorrow's post on the knitted nativity scene.

Some Cute Things

Here are some new dolls I've been working on. The top one is Barry and the bottom one is his mate Pepe. They're funny and cute and ever so stylish. I had a smile on my face the whole time whilst making these cool dudes. They rock the Amy Butler print on their shirts don't you think?

Now I've got to make a girl to go with these guys because they are such chick magnets and at the moment are chickless. Stay tuned....

Here is a super cute fabric that I bought at Spotlight. Spotlight is usually a dead loss when it comes to cute prints, but voila here is proof that once in a while they have the goods! I love it and it is the most lovely voile and very breezy and cool.

Market Roundup

Here are my Christmas Tree Softie decorations which went gang busters at the market. I did the prawn softies last year for my tree and thought other people might appreciate a bit of prawn action and I wasn't wrong. The Joy to the Thong (flip/flops I think in the UK and US) proved very popular as well. The Joy to the Thong also doubled as my Christmas card this year. Thongs are big time here in Summer so a Christmas tree of thongs, I'm sure, many Aussies would appreciate at this time of year. Me, I can't wear the thong they just don't stay on my feet. They just sort of flop sideways and an unbearable pain develops between my big toes, so I've given up on the thong even though one of my friends has even offered to jimmy up the thong with velcro. Sounds a bit ouchy so I'll leave the thongs to my mates to flip flop around in.

Markets have been stealing my blogtime. I did the Laman Street Art Bazaar, for the first time, which was really great and also did the Olive Tree twilight market. I got to do a bit of shopping and found a fellow novacastrian who is very funny and has some very cool Newcastle souvenir stuff. Check out Trevor's website here. I'd like to thank all my loyal and lovely customers and my fellow carnie peeps. Markets are a hard slog, but when there are such lovely customers and market friends who really support you throughout the year it is all worthwhile. So Merry Christmas guys and I'll see you in the new year with new stuff I'm already cooking up in my weary market brain. Now it's time for Christmas fun.......

Note: Comments have to be moderated at the moment. I've been targeted as a person very interested in escort agencies and viagra, cause you know craft and smut are such a great match, great marketing on their part, I know! Sorry for those people whose comments have been slow to appear. Thanks everyone for all your comments I really appreciate your support and lovely comments.

November Happenings

A quickie cake, if you can believe it, for the family function for Miss Seven's birthday. My sister and I did a collaborative effort on this one. The birthday was well and truly stretched for maximum party fun. This cake was constructed from a bought block cake and jam rollettes, hmmm, weird, but yummy.

Miss G's quilt is finished. Needs an iron and the pic is a tad crap, but hey crafters photographing a quilt is hard.Some lovely press from the lovely Julia from rudy and the dodo. As I am a tad slack on the marketing front, Julia's marketing skills and getting my stuff out there is much appreciated.

Have you been to ikea recently? They have the cutest fabrics and am just loving them. This hat is made with the pink and green fabric that has foxes, squirrels and deers. So damn cute!

Talking of fabulous materials. Newcastle has finally got some decent fabrics coming out of a little shop up the road from me in Hamilton. Sew City has been taken over by a lovely lady called Sharon and she is getting all the best fabrics in. Amy Butler, Michael Miller and Saffron Craig are just a few. I have been travelling far and wide for decent fabrics so hopefully I'll be able to get my fabrics a bit closer to home from now on. Sharon is even hosting the Amy Butler Trunk show from Monday 23rd November to Saturday 3rd of December. A select range of Amy Butler patterns and prints will be made into gorgeous items. Then she has a special night on Wednesday the 25th of November from 5.30 to 7.30 to celebrate the trunk show and her new ownership. So all you Novacastrians out there show Sharon some support and get along, she's also offering 10% off all fabrics and patterns on the night with lucky door prizes and giveaways.

Lolly Buffet - Part 2 - The Main Event

This is my sister's piece de resistance of birthday parties so far. Takes the cake and the kids were jumping for joy. They were a bit scared at first to hook in, but once silver shovel in hand they scooped away with gay abandon. Oh the joy to be seven and come home with your little mates from school to be greeted with a lolly buffet- heaven!!!! Happy Birthday Miss Seven. Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!

Still Partying!!

My sister has gone all Martha Stewart/Amy Atlas and made these caramel popcorn cones herself. How cute and clever!!! The border on the popcorn stickers she got off the Martha Stewart website and she whipped up the stripes herself in illustrator.

My sister is putting on a shindig 'lolly party buffet' for my niece who will be turning 7 in 4 sleeps. The countdown started last year so you could imagine the excitement around here. As a lolly lover, miss six and 3/4 is getting a lolly a-la carte buffet to rival the local lolly shop. Argh, my teeth are hurting just thinking about all the sticky goodness. Don't worry I'll take plenty of pics for all the other kiddies out there to drool over. I was a chronic lolly lover as a kid and remember one time I had a stash under my bed in a big glass jar that I secretly made my way through. The secret lollies were soon found and emptied by my guts-ache brothers. I think! The frustrating thing about it was, I could never question any of my brothers and sisters because it was illegal lolly to start with.