my ramblings

maya road scroll binder book & chipboard wings album

Here's a couple more Maya Road project using two of their new chipboard books, the Scroll Binder Book and the Wings Album, both released last week at CHA-S 08.

First up is the Scroll Binder Book. The shaping of this book is gorgeous. The paper I've used throughout this book is from the Office Lingo collection by Pink Paislee, one of my new favourites.

The "phoebe" is made from the Maya Road Noah chipboard alphabet set. The letters in this set are a great size. Being smaller than the original MR chipboard letters you can fit a larger title to the front on a book:

The 100% Girl Sheer Calendar Turn fitted well with the theme of this little book:

Inside page, a MR chipboard tree shape and a new sheer ticket:

And a few inside pages from the book, my favourite photos of Phoebe growing up over the last 10 years:

And another newly released album from Maya Road, their chipboard Wings Album. This little book now documents the lullaby I used to sing to my girls when they were babies and little girls. They used to love this song, and as they got a little older would sing along with me. I wanted to put the words down in writing, just so we have them around. Papers used inside the book are by Sweetwater from their Giggle Girl collection.

Some inside pages:

That's me and Emily over 12 years ago:

And me and Phoebe over 9 years ago:

I've a few smaller Maya Road projects to show, but I think that's about enough for today's blog post!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you're all having a great week.

Cheers

Fiona x

maya road projects for CHA-S 2008

Maya Road is making some gorgeous stamps, both in sets and single stamps (which are called singletons). You can see the stamp sets (including new CHA releases) in the Maya Road CHA-S Catalog.

A couple of my favourites have features in some of my projects which have gone to CHA.

I've used owl stamp (below) on a few little projects.

The tiny owl stamp and the 'what a hoot' have been used below, with Pink Paisley paper on the background.

The owl stamped on acetate and coloured and mounted on a round tag with Scenic Route paper:

These owls were stamped on linen fabric then embroidered:

And while I was making little fabric hanging ornaments, I used the new Maya Road cupcake singleton stamp for these:

I love cupcakes. And now Maya Road have several new cupcake themed products. There's the stamp (which I mentioned above), but also there's

• a cupcake stamp set (with six cupcake stamps plus more),
• a cupcake chipboard album,
• cupcake rubons sheets,
• a cupcake sheer ribbon,
• a cupcakes chipboard set and
• a cupcake coaster album.

Below I've used a chipboard cupcake shape from the cupcake coaster album as the base for the felt cupcake below. This book is a Maya Road sheer tab binder book, which I covered with fabric slip cover which I sewed.

And a few pages from inside my cupcake book. This book holds most of my cupcake secrets, the recipes, the frostings, the fun stuff. Being the binder style book, I'll be able to add more pages as I go along, with more fun ideas.

This book was lots of fun to make.

That's all for today, I'll gather some more photos of my Maya Road projects and post very soon.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

Ribbons Galore update: new fairy tale ribbon, Christmas ribbons and ribbon handbags

This is a Ribbons Galore update.

There's a new fairy tale ribbon available at Ribbons Galore. "Goldilocks" is gorgeous with Goldilocks eating the porridge in the woods, with the bears' cottage and three chairs nearby.

There are some new Ribbon Bundles, Pink Grosgrain and Blue Grosgrain, which are available in limited quantities.

 

New ribbon handbags are now in store.

We are starting to stock up for Christmas. Our Christmas Trees and Christmas Cakes ribbons are in store again. These are beautiful quality jacquard ribbons. Perfect to start your Christmas projects early.

Also, the Tiny Cakes ribbons in blue, taupe and blush are back in stock.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona

snapshot from sydney

It's a beautiful sunny winter's day here in Sydney. Just thought I'd share a photo from this morning's activities.

Taken from the headland between Curl Curl and Freshwater beaches. Looking towards Manly beach.

We walked between the two beaches this morning, then had morning tea/coffee at the cafe at the South Curl Curl Beach SLSC. Gorgeous location right on the beach.

Hope you're having a great day.

Cheers

Fiona x

short break and some sewing

We're back from a short break at Hawks Nest. It was a nice six day escape. Lots of relaxing, eating, climbing giant sand dunes, boating up the river, eating, visiting the beach, walking through the rainforest, playing monopoly and sewing.

Yes, I put the sewing machine in the car with my fabric box, as well as the girls growing fabric supply, with the aim of us sewing the week away. The girls and I were very industrious. We've made some bags and pouches. Emily has made some progress with her quilt, which is looking good.

We made several visits to a lovely little fabric shop at Tea Gardens called Black Possum Gallery to stock up on even more fabric.

I've only taken photos of one project so far, my new bag. I've finally made myself a bag with some Amy Butler fabric. I love it. Here's my lovely assistant modeling the new bag.

I quilted the outside fabric, and left the inside (lining) unquilted.

This is just a favourite photo from our break... taken on Bennetts Beach.

Fabrics used: (Amy Butler Midwest Modern fabrics) Ivory/floating buds (ab-33) on the outside; Grey/happy dots (ab-29) on the inside.

A friend has just popped in for a cuppa, so I'll be back in the next few days with some pictures of our other projects when I've taken some photos.

Hope you're all having a lovely holiday (for those with kids on school holidays).

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

Early July catch up

It was my turn to post over at the Pursuit of CraftYness blog a week or so back (yes, just catching up now). I created a little farewell book with Phoebe for one of her friends. I've posted more about it over at the POC blog.

This is a little project I had in Stamping and Papercraft magazine a couple of issues back (yes again, just catching up now). This project used an Urban Lily Secret Keeper Card as the base. The card slides open to reveal the invitation details.

 

Speaking of Urban Lily, I spotted some new releases on the Scrap Genie blog recently.

I've been very busy working through my Maya Road projects for CHA-Summer. They are now in the mail making their way to the US. There's lots of yummy new products coming out for Maya Road, and the sneak peeks will be starting on the Maya Road blog this week.

Some other sneak peeks from some of my favourite companies are:

Pink Paislee (lots of sneak peeks happening on their blog, love the owl on the Vintage Moon paper).

Luxe Designs (Sugar Cookie and Gingersnap, and can you believe there is a holiday range preveiwed for October release - Candy Cane, love the bright colours in this one).

fabric and patchwork

Several weeks back I discussed with my gorgeous girls a project (or projects) I wanted to make with them.... patchwork quilts. We talked about them creating a patchwork piece with me, so they would have something we've made together, to keep, hopefully, for a long time. They seemed keen on the idea. We'd start simply with a square patchwork. So I let Emily loose on my ever growing fabric collection, she looked for a while, pulling fabrics together and came up with this collection:

I cut the squares of fabric for her, she started sewing the blocks together. I had trouble keeping up with her, madly cutting the squares to supply her sewing frenzy.

She did well, I tried to teach her about matching the seams/corners, etc (reminded me of a project I had to complete from my Clothing Manufacturing TAFE course many years back). Within a few hours she'd completed the patchwork top. She's only 12 and I think she did an amazing job, and I'm really proud of her!

We now have to find some backing fabric and the wadding, etc. Then we can finish this quilt. Now if anyone has patchwork/quilting experience, I'm wondering what sort of wadding you use, I'd like to hear what is your preference and why. I've started looking at the different types and I'd appreciate any advise.

Phoebe has her fabric picked out, and has already discussed some design modifications from Emily's quilt. I'm looking forward to starting that project next and working with Phoebe.

I went to the Craft Fair last week with a friend. I was so nice wandering around. We both enjoy different crafts so I was nice looking at what each other enjoys. I was mainly looking at the fabric stands. Loved the Vintage Comfort quilt on the Amitie stand. Unfortunately the kit was sold out. Material Obsession and Quiltsmith both appealed being Sydney based stores, which I'll be visiting very soon. I bought the Material Obsession book, which offers beautiful (and simple) projects, with gorgeous photographs and easy instructions. It was a good book for the girls to look through as well and gather ideas.

Well that's about all for now. Life's very busy here with lots of girls things on at the moment. I'm helping to make costumes for the school musical Emily is in. Both my parents are not well, so there's been extra visits to them, cooking dinners, making sure they are OK (thank goodness they live close). And of course ribbon orders are always being packed.

Thanks for visiting, thanks for the birthday wishes/emails to Phoebe and myself over the last couple of weeks.

Have a great weekend.

Cheers

Fiona x

happy birthday

Phoebe, my baby, turned 10 last weekend.

She had a good weekend. A visit to the Beanie Cave to add to the collection, a visit to the hairdressers for a side fringe, a visit to the Lindt Cafe at Cockle Bay for afternoon tea, presents from her birthday wish list, pasta dinner at Galletta Bar in Leichhardt, several candle blowing ceremonies as we visited family and friends, a sleep over with a friend.... I think that's about all.

It was a fun {long} weekend.

Then 36 cupcakes were sent to school yesterday just so the celebrations could be extended an extra day (and I thought there were only 29 in her class?)

Thanks for visiting, hope you have a great week.

Fiona x

Scrap-n-Crop, Malaysia

Valerie from Scrap-n-Crop in Malaysia asked me to be a guest designer for her store this month. Here's a little look at a few things made. The full gallery is up on the Scrap-n-Crop site now. Thanks Valerie for inviting me to work with you this month, it's been fun creating!

Here's a few of the new things I made...

This layout is just about documenting my girls at the moment, a little memory for the album, about how they make me laugh in such different ways.

I was just trying to take a photo of them together. Phoebe stood and waited patiently... and Em, well she was just being Em!

After a short time Phoebe looked at me very seriously and said "can't you just photoshop us together?"  A classic Phoebe comeback.

I love writing little messages on my layouts, like the one above "good idea gorgeous!" I'm thinking well into the future here, when, hopefully, my girls might look through these scrapbooks and read little thing's I've written to them.

Another project for the store, Maya Road Bottlecap Memory Game...

I've used the Maya Road chipboard Motifs set and set them into the Maya Road Mega bottlecaps.

I've been enjoying many Memory games in the evenings recently. Phoebe beats me every time.

I also made a set of cards, this one was a spare one, the rest are in the gallery.

The rest of my projects are over in gallery at Scrap-n-Crop.

That's about all from me today. Thanks for visiting.

Hope you have a great day.

Fiona x

Birthday month

June sees the start of birthday month in our house. Both Phoebe and I have June birthdays, my niece and a few friends also celebrate during this month. But for some reason Phoebe's birthday celebrations seem to last the whole month... (usually overshadowing my birthday completely).

On the weekend we took Phoebe and a few friends to the Sydney Observatory for her birthday celebration. She wanted to go to the Observatory last year, but we left it all too late to arrange, so this year we started early. Just as well, as we couldn't get in next weekend as planned (that's the Observatory's 150th birthday and there's big things planned there) so we had to go a week early for Phoebe's birthday.

We arrived at Observatory Hill early, and the girls had fun running around the rotunda. They watched a bridal party have their photos taken, then the girls insisted the bride and groom kiss, which they willingly obliged.

I tried to take some creative photos, but without my tripod, they didn't really work out. Here's one of the better ones.

The view from the rotunda was beautiful looking north over the harbour to the Harbour Bridge and Luna Park.

The Observatory was great. We looked through two big telescopes including the large one in the domed roof. The most amazing thing we saw was Saturn, we could actually see the rings around the planet. Quite amazing.

After the visit to the Observatory, it was back home for the Starry-Starry night pinata cake. We saw this cake being made several weeks ago on Better Homes and Gardens. Phoebe loved it when she saw it and ordered one (from mum) for her birthday.

Armed with wooden spoons the girls had to smash their way through the chocolate outer shell to reach the cupcakes and lollies hiding underneath.

Phoebe and I made little starry time capsules for the lolly bags. We found the plastic containers at Reverse Garbage. We then wrapped a strip of Scenic Route paper around each container, added a scalloped punched oval shape, a star shape (with doodling) and a Maya Road chipboard letter to finish.

I just have to say I love my new Marvy Uchida scalloped punches. After searching here in Australia for them, and not being able to find them, I finally bought several from Papertrey Ink in the US recently.

That's about all for now. Thanks for visiting!

Cheers

Fiona x