Little pretties!

I'll start by clarifying this isn't a post about miniatures. My dear friend Frederica always gets confused when people switch from minatures to 'real life' LOL!!

I was in one of my favourite shops in the city the other day, it's called 'Japan - We sell everything $3' except now there's an economic decline everything is $3.40! They sell almost anything you can imagine there, it's a great place to rummage, it's so jammed packed with stuff. Anyway, I saw these gorgeous little mugs there and I commented to my friend that I was sure I had some scrapbooking paper that looked a bit like that. I bought the cups and came home to find that I had the exact same design on my scrapbook paper! How amazing is that! The scrapbook paper came in a pack of 'Dena's Closet' and I bought it in Australia about two years ago.

I used the paper for Liberty's second birthday scrapbook pages. Unfortunately I only have a little square of it left now 'cos it would have been funny to have been able to make coasters to match the cups.

And Emma I can almost hear you saying, "Only YOU could find those cups"!

Hope you've all had a great day!

Mercedes

A little book

Here's a little recipe book I made in a big hurry for a friend in Texas (two evenings to be precise - her mum was coming here for a day and I'll do anything to save on postage!). I only had time to include a few recipes so I chopped up a vintage map of New Zealand and stuck it on every other page. I'll send more recipes for her to stick in when I have time.

Speaking of having time - the school holidays are almost over - yipppeee! The holidays (almost 8 weeks!!) have been long and at times arduous, there are many difficulties in having a son and a daughter with a large age gap (7.5 years between them). Finding things they can both do together is almost impossible. The only thing they will both happily watch on tv is Spongebob Squarepants - but that's only on at 4pm for 30 mins, the rest of the day they spend annoying each other!

There are soooo many things I want to get done when I'm kid-free. Watch this space!

Make mine vintage!

Who would have thought I'd be neglecting my blog so soon! All I can say is that it's a very crazy time of the year...so many projects to finish before Christmas and every day a new idea pops up of something else to be made. And way too many friends of mine have birthdays in December. Yep, I know I do too, but at least mine's after Christmas!


Anyhow, here finally is a pic of the blocks I made for myself. I just love, love, love Daisy D's papers, so that's what I used for mine. They're sitting on our servery so I made sure they looked pretty all the way round.

And here's something else I used the Daisy D's papers for. I made these Christmas houses to sell so I wouldn't feel so bad about spending way too much money on all the papers!

The tin stars on top were from a wire garland-ish thing that was meant to go around a Christmas tree. I bought it a couple of years ago in an after Christmas sale and then never really liked it that much, thankfully it was exactly what I needed for these.


The houses were made with more offcuts from Freddy's factory. I got managed to get hubby to cut them into house shapes for me.


Was also selling these little lovelies at a market last weekend. A little girl came along, she would have been about 10 years old and she absolutely loved these little houses. She called her mother over to look at them and then later her father. Then both her parents together. Sad to say her parents were pretty disinterested and I was feeling really bad for her. However about half an hour later she returned with her mother to buy three of them. She said she had to have the library, she wanted a little row of them for the desk in her room. So I said she could have an extra one for free, the hapiness on that kid's face was priceless. I was pretty happy too, that someone loved something I had made just as much as I did.

New Beginnings

Well, here we go! Finally after months of thinking about it I have a blog. Thanks to all the encouragement from Autumn and inspiration from the many fabulous blogs I visit.

Many (far too many) years ago I read a quote from Theodore Roosevelt which said,"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." That quote has stuck with me and really sums up most of the crafty things I do.

My father-in-law recently gave me a huge bag of parquet flooring that he hadn't used in the house he had just sold. I have a dollhouse (more about that another time!) and he thought the small strips of wood may have been useful for making miniatures. After a few days these little number houses are what I came up with. I've put magnets on the back of them but they can also be blu-tacked on to the wall.

And here they are on the wall in my daughter's room. She's four years old and just loves them.

And here's a close-up. You can probably tell I'm a scrapbooker but more about that in the future too!
Sometimes I even surprise myself with what I come up with! I couldn't believe how cute these turned out.

So hopefully with this blog I'll be able to inspire a few more people to do what they can, with what they have. It's really all about having fun and making pretty things!