Day 4 of the Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza

Hello, and thanks for dropping by for day 4 of our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza.

Today Mel and I have made some bunny softies using another bunny pattern which caught our eye out in blog-land. This bunny pattern has been designed by revoluzZza, and here is the link to the RevoluzZzionary Easter Bunny pattern and tutorial. Mel and I made this pattern into little bunny toys, but the pattern is great as a template for any Easter craft, as you will see in RevoluzZza's post.

 

This bunny pattern is so quick and easy to make, you'll be whipping up several of these little guys. I have used some pinwheel corduroy I bought recently from Spotlight. Spotlight had some gorgeous bright colours available in this material. The patterned fabric on the fuchsia bunny belongs to the Park Slope fabric collection by Erin McMorris. The small blue printed fabric on blue bunny is from Spotlight. Rick rack trim from Ribbons Galore.

 

 

 

Mel's bunny, Cocoa, can be seen on her blog. She has used a felted sweater and buttons to make Cocoa and she looks good enough to eat!

Hope you have a great weekend, and find a little time for your Easter crafting. See you Monday for our next post with some Easter crafting ideas.

 

Cheers

Fiona x

Day 3 of the Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza

Welcome to day 3 of our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza. Mel and I are sharing some Easter bags and pouches ideas today. Our little bags and pouches are perfect for filling with Easter goodness and sharing with friends.

Mel has made some very cute little bags, you can find her post HERE.

I have made some Easter pouches. Last year I made little felt Easter egg bags which were super easy. This year I've changed these a little to make pouches from bubble corduroy and ribbons. These require a little more sewing than the felt bags, but they are still very quick and easy to make.

Easter project: Bubble corduroy Easter egg pouches.

Here's some step by steps to making my Easter pouches.

Step one: Cut fabric pieces 12cm x 28cm. Turn top and bottom hem over and sew.

 

Step 2:Create little ribbon tabs for threading ribbon in a later step. I cut grosgrain ribbon approximate 5cm long and sewed them onto the fabric approximately 2-3cm from the hemmed edges.

 

Here's a close up of the ribbon tabs:

 

Step 3:  Sew a piece of ribbon across the fabric. I've used some cute bunny ribbon from Ribbons Galore.

 

Below is a photo of what the pieces of fabric will look like at this stage:

 

Step 4: Fold fabric right sides together and sew side seams.

 

Step 5: Turn the little pouches right side out. I often talk before about production line crafting when making several pieces of the same project. This certainly can be applied to this project. Take one step at a time, cut all your fabric and pieces of ribbon. Then have your little pile of fabric at the sewing machine and stitch each step at a time. You'll soon have a little stack of bags.

 

Step 6: Thread ribbon through the tabs. Fill you little Easter pouches with goodies and you're ready for giving.

 

 

Thanks for joining Mel and I again today. We hope you'll visit us again on Friday for our next egg-ceptional egg-xtravaganza posts.

Have a great day.

Cheers

Fiona x

Day 2 of the Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza

Welcome to day 2 of our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza, thanks for stopping by. Mel and I have been busy working on some little bunny softies. We have a couple of patterns picked out to make and share with you during our egg-xtravaganza.

Today's bunny comes from the very talented Betz White. Mel and I are using Betz's Cashmere Bunny pattern and tutorialto make our bunnies. Betz's tutorial has very clear instructions and photographs.

Here's my version of Betz's bunny.

I made my bunny from a soft polar fleece fabric. This fabric is thinner and softer than the regular polar fleece, it has a gorgeous velvety feel to it. I did see some in Spotlight the other day, but have forgotten the actual name of this fabric. It is VERY stretchy, so I backed it with some iron-onbatting and quilted it before cutting out my pattern pieces. This process just helped stabilize the fabric before sewing.

During the stuffing process I also added some lovely dried lavender along with the stuffing. So not only is bunny super soft, she smells good too. We've just had a couple of built-in wardrobes installed in our house and I thought this little bunny would look cute sitting up in Phoebe's wardrobe and make it smell nice too.

Make sure you visit Mel's blog for her gorgeous bunny. You can also see a few more bunnies over HERE.

Thanks for stopping by. See you on Wednesday for day 3 of our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza Easter craft ideas.

I just have to add, if you live in Sydney and are looking for a fabulous wardrobe company, you should consider SOHO Designs. From the design stage to installation they were great to deal with, very professional. I'm in storage heaven!

Cheers

Fiona x

Day 1 of the Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza

Mel and I are sharing card and tag making ideas today. Mel has created gorgeous bunny cards today on her blog, take a peek HERE.

I've made an Easter bunny tag using one of my favourite little rubber stamps. Stamps are a great addition to your craft collection. You only need a few favourites and you can re-use them over and over again. I've made a larger tag so there is room to write a message to your tag recipient.

 

Here's a some steps to creating the tag.

Stamp the images onto smooth cardstock. I used StazOn ink this time as I didn't want to heat emboss my images. The StazOn dries quickly and I was able to colour the images without smudging.

 

Cut the images from the sheet. I will be framing my images, so I cut them slightly larger that the inner shape of my chosen frame.

 

Colour your stamped images:

 

Paint the chipboard frames:

 

Stick the stamped images behind the chipboard frames:

 

Cut a piece of felt slightly larger than the framed image (no need to attach at this point, I'll be stitching it to the card in a couple of steps):

 

Draw some lines across the tag. There are many journaling or ledger themed stamps available which you could also use. Drawing your own lines is very quick and easy:

 

Sew the framed bunny image to the corner of the tag. I sewed around the frame to hold this in place on the tag. I finished the felt piece off with a running stitch of embroidery thread:

 

Finish the tag with a big ribbon bow at the top.

This framed stamped image idea could be used on the front of little gift cards and on larger cards or added to the front of some packaging, like below. I have glued the frame onto the front of a pillow box which can then be filled with little chocolate Easter eggs.

   

Hope you enjoyed day 1 of our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza. If you make an Easter card or tag, leave a comment here on the blog with a link to your project. We'd love to share your creations as well.

Thanks for visiting. Until next Monday for our next Easter craft idea installment. Have a great weekend.

Cheers

Fiona x

Mel and Fiona's Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza

I hinted yesterday in my blog post about something egg-citing coming up.

Well I'm very happy to say that my crafty buddy and fellow Easter lover, Mel Goodsell and I are teaming up to bring you some Easter craft ideas over the next few weeks.

Starting Friday, we'll be creating Easter themed projects... some sewing, some cardmaking, some cooking, some surprises. Hope you will join us and visit us regularly to see what we come up with.

Now, you can look through Mel's previous Easter craft ideas on her blog. I thought I'd just list some of my Easter craft/cooking ideas from previous years below:

• little felt Easter egg bags

• decorated Easter eggs (polystyrene eggs)

 

• Easter egg cupcakes

• Easter egg slide cards

• Easter banner

• bunny-sized Easter bonnets (idea can be adapted to human sized Easter bonnets)

• mini moopy bunnies

• wee bunnies by weewonderful

We hope you will join us on our Egg-ceptional Egg-xtravaganza, see you on Friday for day one.

Cheers

Fiona x

long time...no blog...

...but it is summer and school holidays.

It's been about a month since my last post. We've been enjoying the laziness of school holidays. I love having my girls home.

Christmas was nice and relaxing.

New Year was... nice and relaxing. We were at Hawks Nest for about a week... nice and relaxing. We packed a picnic and headed for Jimmy's Beach for New Years eve to watch the fireworks over at Nelson Bay. There were hundreds of people on Jimmy's Beach (busiest I've ever seen it!), many bonfires were blazing. It was a great night.

January has been nice and relaxing. Many trips to the beach, catching up with friends, movies, shopping, staying cool during our hot weather.

Here's a photo taken at Balmoral Beach. There have been several days spent sitting under the trees chatting with friends while we watch the kids enjoy themselves.

 

I have created a few projects during January. CHA-W 09 is just around the corner, and I have sent a few projects off to the US for the Maya Road stand. Here's one of the my mini albums... using a new chipboard suitcase book. You can view the new Maya Road catalog HERE.

 

I still have lots of photos on my camera which I haven't checked yet, once I have I'll post more project photos very soon.

These little cupcake cards {below} were made for the Maya Road Design Team blog. We, the design team members, are now writing posts on the blog. Every few days a new post is published over there. So far there have been lots of great ideas, so make sure you bookmark it and visit regularly.

I've used the Maya Road Cupcakes stamp set. Instructions are on the MR DT blog.

 

 

 

I LOVE this set of stamps, and I actually have ONE SPARE. So I'm going to start the new year off with a RAK. If you leave me a comment here on this post by January 31, your name will be included in the draw for this set of MAYA ROAD CUPCAKES STAMPS. I'll post anywhere in the world! edited: thanks for all your lovely comments, I now have a winner.

Good luck, have fun and thanks for visiting my blog.

Cheers

Fiona x

Maya Road "Home for the Holidays" contest

Maya Road is running a new contest. It's called "Home for the Holidays". Decorate one or more of Maya Road's chipboard houses to enter the contest.

You can read all the details on the Home for the Holidays Contest page. The great news is international entries are welcome!

Edited to add: I'm trying to compile a list of stores/online stores here in Australia that sell the Maya Road chipboard houses. So far I have found two stores. They are:

Scrapbook Central : email Ruth if you would like to place an order, info@scrapcentral.com.au

and

Scrapmoore

Earlier this week I wrote a quick step by step guide to making a simple cupcake card on the Pursuit of Craftyness blog. I coloured Maya Road chipboards with the new Maya Road Maya Mists. Here's a close up of the chipboard cupcake I created for the card.

Hope you have a great weekend. It's a long weekend for us here. Looking forward to some relaxation.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Cheers

Fiona

fuzzy flowers

I made some fuzzy flowers for a tag project over on the Pursuit of CraftYness blog. The theme of our blog projects for this week was "something old, something new". If you visit the blog, you'll see all the projects the lovely ladies have been making over there.

I thought I'd share my "how to" make my flowers. I've called them fuzzy flowers after the funny fuzzy effect you get when you felt the centre of these woolly daisies.

Step 1: I've used an old daisy maker to create my wool flowers. This old daisy maker was my nana's. She used to use it to make daisy decorations on knitted booties and knitted coat hangers that she used to make. You can still buy these daisy makers in haberdashery stores.

Step 2: Remove the daisy from the daisy maker. I actually really like the daisies like this, and have used them quite often in this form.

Step 3: I've used my new favourite gaget to "felt" the centre of the daisy. This needle felting tool is by Clover (once you click to the Clover website, you will have to click the link to felting needle in the left side bar to see the details), and I've had so much fun felting little bits and pieces. By felting the centre of these daisies, they become quite secure and will not unravel.

This is the interesting effect. I did not expect this. When I felted the centre of the flower, the wool loops "pulled" slightly creating a fuzzy look....

The fuzzy flowers:

And the tag that I created with them which is over on the Pursuit of CraftYness blog this week:

I now have several of the Clover crafty gadgets. I own several Yo-Yo makers (these use up all those fabric scraps), their Pom-Pom makers and now the Needle Felting tools. They are lots of fun to make little embellishments and they are a great activity for the kids too (great for their fine motor skills!).

I'm wondering what your favourite flower is to create? Let me know, leave a link in the comments field so we can see your creations.

Thanks for visiting...

Cheers

Fiona x