Origami star boxes

What is it that is so satisfying about origami, I wonder? Maybe it's the concept of making something 3D from something flat. I particularly find making box or cup shapes fun as they can actually hold something.

I made these classic origami star boxes for my brother's wedding on the weekend as a table decoration/take-home gift (I'll show you my dress and the big girl's this week). And as I can never remember the folding instructions from one time I make them to the next, I used these online instructions.



Each one was made from an A5 size sheet of metallic paper trimmed to a 148mm square. I sat up the night before the wedding making 43 of them, and though it started off slow I got quicker as I went and was not too bleary-eyed the next morning :-)



A piece of metallic silver tissue paper was placed into each and then a chocolate placed in the centre. They make a pretty little decoration and are fun to make if you are looking for a satisfying project.

Indoor hopscotch

I've had extremely limited internet access this week and I've got to say that I feel extremely disconnected from the world without it!! It's one thing choosing to lie low or have a break, but when it's enforced, now that's hard!

Plenty of things are being made late at night this week but I can't show you anything, hopefully next week that will change though...



In the meantime, I've been meaning to post on this indoor hopscotch game for a while now. I made it last Christmas for the girls. I think I had as much fun making it as they do playing with it, as is often the case :-)

My inspiration came from this fabulous book Cool spaces for kids. First I got a huge rectangle of hessian (burlap?), backed it in non-slip backing and bound the edges with calico.



Then I painted on the numbers and lines, made some little beanbags for tossing and a matching bag to hold it all in.




I hope you've had a good week, see you Monday (hopefully) with some new pics, technology pending ;-)

Covetted kids playroom furniture

In my dream house I would have a big dedicated playroom for the kids with all sorts of interactive things to play with and inspire creative play. It would be a place where they could just chill out or bring their friends to. Of course this would also give me some time to chat to the parents over a coffee and homemade snack, which is one of my favourite things!

Here are some dream items I'd have in that dream space...


Me&U upholstered indoor swing chair hung by wire from the ceiling. Design by Busk+Hertzog


Grand Prix decorative rocking chair


Donut pouf

Not drowning, waving

Actually, make that drowning...

Well, I think I've topped my record lately in the "set yourself too many tasks, fail miserably and fall into a heap" stakes. Of course, setting yourself lots of tasks isn't a problem if you've actually got enough time to execute them... which I did have a while ago but haven't had lately. Just to let myself off the hook slightly though, having the Mr away all last week did set me back a bit. After parenting solo one school kid and two cranky toddlers I was just too knackered to stay up crafting, sewing or blogging and most nights fell into bed and dragged myself out again the next morning, having been joined in bed by anywhere between one and three little buddies sometime through the night.

So on my list of things to do by about now was (she takes a deep breath):
- Sewing myself a dress. From scratch. No pattern.
- Sewing my big girl a dress including petticoat & decorative flower (see 'next up on my sewing machine' over on the right)
- Finishing the hand printed Christmas paper & tags
- Buying and making various gifts for family & friends for our early Christmas celebrations (more on this later when it's not a secret :-)
- Making a birthday gift for a friend

Hmm. Some of them are almost done, but others are nowhere near done, and I'm going to have to come up with alternative solutions or just accept that life's not prefect. I've given myself a serious talking to and decided that my new year's resolution will be to do less projects and give each the time they need to be done well rather than raced through.

Anyway... let me show you something I have been able to do a little on...

I finally decided on the style of dress to make for my brother's wedding, then agonised over the fabric - went to my favourite fabric shop hoping to find some Japanese Echino light weight cotton in one of their beautiful prints. But they didn't have any and nothing else jumped out at me. So after wasting my precious child-free couple of hours I headed home feeling defeated and deflated. Out of precious fabric shop browsing time, I trawled the net and finally decided on the Alexander Henry "Imperial Kiku" from Kelani Fabrics.



As the dress is such a simple design I felt that the fabric needed lots of personality. I made a 'muslin' to check on my pattern in a solid purple colour which looked pretty boring. I have drafted the pattern myself after taking pointers from "Design-it-yourself clothes", so we'll see if it's a total disaster or not!

Homemade decorations

With the kids getting excited about Christmas coming we've been digging out a few favourite decorations from storage before we go into full decorating mode, including these red glass candle holders and string of pretty lights on balsa wood circles from Ikea. And we've also made a few homemade decorations lately.



Inspired by the projects in this newsletter, and many others on all those great craft blogs out there, last week we made our first handmade advent calendar.

We stamped the Christmas tree (getting tired of that one!) onto the fronts of small envelopes, then stamped the date, added some fine red glitter, put a small peg onto each one then hung them on a length of string. I suddenly realised late last night that it was the last day of the month and at least one small person would be very excited about opening the first one this morning. It was my job to fill them and I found this the only non-fun part of the activity. I couldn't think of anything to put in them apart from lollies and chocolates, which would have been fine with the kids of course, but not so fine with me. I already feel like I spend a considerable amount of time listening to repeated requests for treats. Does anyone have any ideas? Maybe a handwritten note promising some sort of activity? Hmm, sounds like too much prep and follow up. Oh dear, I can see the lollies now...



I'm hoping advent calendar making will turn into an annual event, as it was fun making it with my big girl (the littlies are too little to tackle this one), and maybe next year's can be more purposeful and less sweet!

Flower love

I don't think of myself as a particularly patriotic Australian, but then I think about how much I love our wildlife, our landscapes, our scenery, and especially our lovely flowers... and I guess I kinda am.



Not traditionally thought of as 'pretty' as English Cottage garden flowers are, ours tend to be unusual, striking and sometimes quite odd looking. I have raved about them previously, so will restrain myself this time :-) But I did want to show you these Grevilleas, glorious in their shape and colours, which range from the delicate soft pale yellow through to blushing pink and bold bright red.



And all are found on our walk to school. Ahh.



PS. I'm solo parenting this week so might be quite quiet on the crafting & blogging front. No speed sewing for me this week!

Half finished projects

While recently trying to get onto my projects that are quite pressing now (all needing to be done in a couple of weeks) I stumbled upon one of the many half-finished projects I have hanging around.

With both the littlies miraculously napping at the same time I knew I had a small window to get something done. But doing a small part of a big project just didn't suit my mood. I needed something that would give me an instant gratification fix, possibly as an antidote to the incredibly stressful and frustrating time I've been having with my two toddlers lately... if I could achieve something then maybe the day wouldn't feel like a total mess, know what I mean?



Anyway, down in my sewing area, two embroideries I'd done in winter jumped out at me, crying out to be finished. Back then I'd put a woolen cardigan from an op shop in a hot wash in the machine to see what would happen - either it would felt well and shink and fit me better... or not. I figured I had nothing to lose as it was unflattering as it was. Well, it did felt but it mainly shrank vertically so ended up too short in length. I decided to cut it up into a bolero, and with the remaining corners I did these embroideries with the intention of making brooches.

The red one represents Australian flowering gum (show you a pic of the real thing when our tree flowers soon!). And the yellow is just an organic shape like a fern frond unfolding.



I took them and cut around them, cut some backing from a scrap of black wool felt, and pulled out a couple of bits of wadding to sandwich in between to give them a bit of structure.



Then I machine stitched around them and hand sewed safety pins on to the backs.



It was pretty satisfying as far as instant gratification goes, though the brooches are really more suited to winter clothing so probably won't be worn for a while yet. But, that's not the point... they're finished! Yay!

It did make me think too, yet again, about how many half finished projects I have lying around that I'd love to have finished. So I've decided to declare January my "Half-finished projects month". Do you have any of these around? Maybe a half knitted scarf, a pair of trousers waiting to be hemmed, patches to be sewn on etc? Why don't you join me in getting all those little projects done and out of the way. Imagine the feeling of satisfaction we'll have :-)