Amy Butler Apron Swap

Mommy Holly is hosting a great apron swap and if you love aprons and Amy Butler fabric then you are going to LOVE this swap!! You can use any apron pattern that you want but you must use Amy Butler fabric to sew a great apron for your swap partner. Hurry on over, you can still sign up until January 9th.

~ Rosina

Cloth Shopping Bags

The cloth shopping bags that I whipped up as a Christmas present for my mom were a big hit! She loved them :) I was actually surprised that my sister seemed to be really interested in them as well. She's not usually into anything that I make but she asked if I could make a couple for her to. Good thing the local fabric shop is having a super new year's blowout sale! I can't wait to dig through the bolts of material to load up on great fabric. Gotta love sales!

~ Rosina

Holiday Wrapping

I was totally inspired by Heather Bullard's vintage holiday wrapping ideas this season and tried to recreate some of them on some of my presents with older decorations that I had in the closet :)



They're not quite as pretty as hers but I did find a box of some great green mini glass bulbs that I fell in love with.



I'm going to have to keep my eyes peeled for some more decorations when I hit the thrift stores. There should be lots of great deals now that Christmas is nearly over and not to many people will be looking for stuff anymore *grin*.

~ Rosina

Sugar Plum Fairies

Well the kids are all tucked into their beds and they are definitely dreaming of sugar plum fairies dancing in their heads :) The gingerbread house is finished, the presents are wrapped and the secret Santa gift is hidden away in the china cabinet for tomorrow night. We follow my dad's European tradition of opening our presents on Christmas eve just like I did when I was a little girl, but my husband always opened his Christmas morning so we always have one special gift for all 3 of them that I tuck underneath the tree after they are fast asleep :) And the snow is still falling here so we are going to have a very white Christmas this year. This evening we went sledding after dark out behind our home and the kids had a blast! We had a spotlight set up for light and they climbed up the hill for a good 2 hours at least. We were all worn out after that. LOL.

~ Rosina

Coth Shopping Bags in the Works

I've been busy busy trying to get my last minute Christmas gifts sewn up :) There were a few special things that I wanted to make for my mom this year and cloth shopping bags were high on my list. She has bought a couple of the ones you pick up at the end of the grocery checkout counter but they are so blah and boring. Personally I would have loved to have made her some lime green ones or bright yellow because I just love those colors but she likes basic black usually so I found this great print at an equally great price and new it would be perfect for her :)

I couldn't leave them just plain though *grin*. So I appliqued some birds onto the front of them for a fun funky look :) I just have to finish sewing the lining in later on today and they'll be ready to be wrapped :)

~ Rosina

Great 3D Christmas Stars

Check out these really easy 3D stars that I made using 2"x2" pieces of scrapbook paper. And you can watch a great Youtube video below that Melleny made showing you step by step how to do it :)
~ Rosina

Free Printable Calendar from Mibo

You just have to go and check out this awesome printable 2009 calendar PDF that Mibo is giving away right now when you sign up for their newsletter! To see more of the calendar and to sign up click here :) Within 24 hours they will send you the link for the calendar in both A4 paper size and standard Letter sized paper which is really handy since I couldn't get mine printed on A4. Apparently we don't have that kind of paper available here. Can't wait until tomorrow when it's ready at the printers!!
~ Rosina

Inspiration ~ Foil Christmas Light Reflectors

When my husband and I were first married we didn't have a lot of ornaments for our tree, but his mother had a couple of boxes full of vintage Christmas lights and ornaments that were left behind by previous owners. They had been collecting dust in one of the closets for quite a few years and she gave them all to me! Thus began my love affair with Christmas ornaments *grin*. Some of my favorites are the glass ones in the shapes of acorns, pinecones, houses, and the most beautiful birds with long flowing tails that clip onto the tree branches.


With the revival of all things vintage this year I thought that it would be fun to do something different with our advent calendar. I was inspired by the metallic foil reflectors that they used to use behind the Christmas tree lights to add additional light and glitter to their decorations. I found some great silver metallic tuille that I gathered and layered with a finer blue tuille on top to create the the look of some of the flower or scalloped reflectors that you can find in vintage collections. I couldn't resist adding different colored buttons that I had found at a thrift store for the centers as a replacement for actual lights. What fun!

~Rosina

Christmas Card Swapping

We are in full Christmas craft mode around our house and a little while back we signed up for a Christmas card swap on the Kids Craft Weekly website. We had to make 10 handmade Christmas cards of any type and send them to 10 random swap partners :) Well we got them all finished and mailed out on time!!

Christmas cards made & mailed...... CHECK *grin*. Eight are on their way to the US, two to the United Kingdom and one to Australia. The kids are super excited to see where we will get ours from :) Now we've got to get back to making our own cards for family! LOL. I've got two more boxes that are ready to be packed and sent off for a Christmas book swap we joined in to, but I've got that one covered and don't actually have to have it mailed until next week so I'm up to speed with that one to :) Can you tell we just LOVE getting mail? *grin*

Are any of you participating in a special Christmas time swap??
Rosina

Lino Block Printing Course

I had the great pleasure a couple of weeks ago to travel to Quadra Island to take part in a day class with an amazing artist, Richard Calver, and get a crash course in the basics of block printing. I've ran across some really cool lino block prints done by my favorite artists and I have wanted to give it a try for some time, so when the chance arose to be able to learn how, I was there!

Our pre-class homework was to come up with a simple 3.75 x 5 inch drawing that could be printed in 4 different colors. I love Japanese family crests and the above tree trunk is similar to some of them and then I thought that it would be neat to make it with three circular tree tops joining together like a family tree :) And there you have my simple drawing all ready for the first printing.

Unfortunately there just wasn't enough time for us to make four different blocks for each stage of printing, so we used our one block cutting away sections of it each time before we reprinted it with a new color.

Until all that was left was my tree trunk and border :) I actually like the trunk all by itself to and did a bunch of black and white prints of just it to *grin*.

This is one of my final prints. I did 6 in total plus one on fabric to see how that worked out. It's a very limited edition. LOL. We experimented with different amounts of pressure to see how the colors would blend together. Above I used a lighter touch on the leaf area so that the yellow would show through the greens and browns making it look more like a fall tree, while keeping the trunk of it solid colored :)

All in all it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to trying more!
Rosina

Welcome to my new blog

Hello :)
I thought that I would start a blog where I could post about my crafty endeavors and ideas so that it wouldn't get all muddled in with my homeschool blog. I post a lot of what we are doing with our school time there and find that even I loose track of my crafty entries over there! LOL. Hopefully you will enjoy reading about what I am making or inspiring to do and I look forward to meeting new bloggers as well :)
Rosina