Iron on Patches

These cute patches have been added to the shop this weekend.  

Catch them while they're there!!

Yay for labels!

The 600 labels that I ordered at the beginning of the month arrived on Thursday...which means that my Ready to Colour softies will now be making their way into the shop.

Fabric covered peg magnets

I am sure that there are many tutorials out there that show how to make pegs pretty and magnetised, so no tutorial here....just pictures of those that I made in my limited me time today.  They are going to be bottled and tagged and will go in my Christmas gift drawer.  I might just keep a set for myself too.

I took Chloe for her 2nd set of vaccinations today.  I don't know if they are hurting her {1 in each leg - ouch}, but she is a bit whingy and clingy today - so I haven't had as much lovely free 'Wednesday' time today as I had hoped to.  I did manage to expose 3 screens in this mornings sunshine - so when I have time to use them and process the fabric, more goodies will be added to my shop.

Shop progress is frustratingly slow at the moment.  I exposed 5 screens in the weekend sunshine and not a single one of them was a success!  So, hubby is going to make me a stand to mount a light on, in the hope that my success rate will improve by using the artificial lighting method.  Lots of ideas rattling around in my head...sigh....

More nappy box crafting

All these soft toys needed a home.  Chloe has taken residence in Ava's old room, which has nice wall shelving and is where many of these guys have been living.  Ava's new room has no real storage just yet.  A temporary home for these chappies was needed.

{My mom made this gorgeous colourful ladybird quilt}

{More after the jump}

What to do with nappy boxes?

....other than recycling them in the rubbish bin....

When you have 2 little people, or even 1 for that matter, you go through a LOT of nappies.  We get our nappies from Costco, so they are in bulk quantities and boxed.  We seem to be getting a box for each little person (they're in different sized nappies) every 2 months or so...making for a lot of recycled boxes.

When Chloe arrived, Ava decided that her dolls rather enjoyed occupying the basinette when it wasn't being used by Chloe.  As I kept having to evict a doll to put the real baby in her own bed, we figured that Ava's dolls needed a bed of their own to share.  There was no way that we were going to pay £20 for a doll sized moses basket!!  This led to us making this little dolls bed out of a nappy box.

For the box all I did was:

Draw a freehand line on the box where I wanted to cut the sides

Match the sides at the top and bottom of the bed and use a ruler and craft knife to cut nice neat straight lines

Cut the sides of the bed with the craft knife - freehand - following the line I drew earlier

I added ribbon handles by making holes in the box, threading the ribbon through and knotting the ribbon

For the bedding all I did was:

With some left over batting and fleece I made a loose fitting mattress by simply wrapping the fleece around the batting and pressing it into the bed box

You could of course be clever by:

Adding feet with anything lying around - maybe little yoghurt pots

Painting/wallpapering/decoupaging the box

Sticking foam shapes or other embellishments on

I have another nappy box craft idea to share for another day....and I am sure that there will be more to come.

Birthday PJ's!

I am feeling really pleased with myself.  I pulled out some Speedball opaque fabric paint that I have had stashed for ages.  All the paints in this set have a slightly pearly appearance and are intended for darker coloured fabric.  I usually print on light colours, so this was the first time I have used the opaque paints.

What fun!

Pressed for time, I decided to make just 1 stencil and print it on to 2 pairs of pj t-shirts and 2 pairs of pj shorts - all from Primark.  I went simple and printed my text on to paper, cut it out with a craft knife, then taped it behind a blank silk screen and squeedged the blue paint on.  I could have done much the same with freezer paper, but it takes time to iron and peel x4...

I hope Daddy likes them.

Silk screening busy-ness

I am busy updating the soft colouring toys for the shop.  Changing them from hand drawn to silk screened - a little more finished in appearance, I hope.  At the same time I am also adding to the animal range...an elephant to start with.

Progress is slow, but I had a wonderful 2 hour time slot the other day when Lily was at nursery and Rose was having a lovely long nap (times like these really don't come often enough!) to focus on printing.  I have also ordered some sew in labels, which I need so that I can finish these off and get them loaded into the shop.  They're coming from Worldwide Labels on Etsy...I hope they arrive soon!