Two Brown Birds

Bella Ballerina

 Meet Bella!

Bella loves pink.  Bella loves ribbons.  But most of all, Bella loves to dance!!!

Happy stitching,

Nine is fine!

Recently we celebrated Lily's 9th birthday with an ice-cream themed party with a group of her friends.

 
Ice cream clipart from here 

We had ice-cream decorations

and ice-cream themed food  - ice cream cupcakes (chocolate cake baked in ice cream cones with piped frosting), and ice cream cake pops (in mini ice cream cones). After a pizza dinner, there was the DIY ice-cream bar.

 After having fun with the chocolate fountain, we had a craft activity.  The girls made pretty ice-cream bracelets.

Then it was time for birthday cake!  Lily chose to have cupcakes stacked to look like ice cream cones. Inspired by this.

 

 The party bag were filled with everything ice-cream : Ice-cream lip-gloss, ice-cream bubbles, ice-cream pens, erasers, bookmarks, rings, craft kits, stickers and activity sheets.  I purchased bags and attached these cute tags from here.

 

  You may like to download the Ice cream "Word Find" that I designed and added to the girls party bags here.

Happy birthday Lily!  xxxxx

Happy stitching,

 

Photo a Day

I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and join in Chantelle's Photo a Day challenge.   She's devised a list of ideas of things to photograph each day, then upload them to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or  Tumblr.  Each day, check out everyone elses photos too!  It's fun to see what people in other parts of Australia and the world are up to!

Today's picture is "my view".  Well, my view today was my baby starting school.  Amazingly, there were no tears (from either of us!)

Happy stitching,

 

 

Sand between the toes.......

Today the weather was just beautiful, so we decided to head off for the beach to see "Toytopia", a sand sculpting exhibition at the Frankston waterfront.  It was amazing!

 

If you're in that neck of the woods, why not visit?  It's running until 26th of April 2012.

Happy stitching,

 

Hey Girl........porn for crafty girls

^{Far be it from me to state the obvious, but clearly, a girl can't have too much craft or Ryan Gosling in her life.  You may have seen these photoshopped images of the ever spunky Ryan G popping up on Pinterest, and Tumblr.  I love them - funny, funny, funny stuff!  There are stacks of them, but here are some of my favourites.}

   

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  Happy stitching (Ryan would want you to be happy while stitching lol!)

 

 

 

 

 

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My garden

My garden 2011

Happy stitching,

Fabulous Fabric

What better way to start of the new year than with an awesome competition?!

 If you regularly browse the Fat Quarter Shop website (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?!), you may have noticed the Bloggers choice fat quarter bundles.  This is where a well known blogger has been invited to choose 15 co-coordinating fabrics (12 prints and 3 solids) to be packaged as a fat quarter bundle for sale.  Now we have the chance to co-ordinate 15 fabrics, and enter them in the competition – the prize? An entire half yard of each of the chosen fabrics!  Woo hoo!
All the details of how to enter are here.
Here is my entry:

1. Essential Dots Butterscotch Yardage SKU# 8654-12
2. me and My Sister Favorites Pink Rick Rack Yardage SKU# 22073-32
3. Babysaurus Orange Tiny Stripe Yardage SKU# 106101-02-3
4. Peacock Lane Grass Falling Flowers Yardage SKU# DC5084-GRAS-D
5. Tutti Frutti Aqua Dots Yardage SKU# C8889-AQUA
6. Michael Miller Pink Cotton Couture Solid Yardage SKU# SC5333-PINK-D
7. October Skies Rosehips Pinstripe Yardage SKU# PWVM056-ROSEH
8. Ooh La La Aqua Bouquet De Fleurs Yardage SKU# DC5198-AQUA-D
9. Ooh La La Lime Pirouette Yardage SKU# DC5202-LIME-D
10. Ooh La La Yellow Cercle De Fleurs Yardage SKU# DC5203-YELL-D
11.     Bella Solids Clover Yardage SKU# 9900-73
12. Heart Garden Pink Tonal Swirling Swirls Yardage SKU# 11908-262
13. Little One Organic Aqua Tonal Star Dots Yardage SKU# 11482-70
14. Ooh La La Yellow Coeur De Fleurs Yardage SKU# DC5196-YELL-D
15. Free Spirit Designer Solids Aqua Yardage SKU# S20-AQUA

 Go on, have a go – apart from it being a great completion to win, it’s always fun to browse online fabrics!
Happy stitching,

Out with the old, in with the new!

 Wow, Christmas was great!  Everyone at my place was spoilt!

As usual, I was up finishing off a few home-made presents while watching the carols.  My nephew Noah, loves robots, so I created a robot softie for him.  Noah LOVES him.  He has named him “George”, and has cuddled him in bed every night so far (I love that he loves him so much!) 

Now I knew I’d be in the bad books with Noah’s sister, my cute niece Ruby, if I didnt make her a present too, so I made her a “mini-me” doll.

 I’d had lovely ideas of stitching all through the Christmas break, but it just hasn’t happened.  There have been so many spring cleaning jobs to do while we have the chance – the good news is that it meant that I’ve had a chance to tidy my studio, ready for creating in 2012!  I’ve also been tidying the garden.  In spring we had a huge amount of rain, then lots of lovely warm, sunny weather, which has meant that there are lots of pretties in my garden, including these beauties:

 

2012 will see my “baby” (sorry Charlotte, I know you are really a “big girl”!!) starting school.  This should free me up for more designing and creating – bring on 2012!! Out with the old, and in with the new I say!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, full of fun, health, and creativity!

Happy stitching,

 

Christmas Wishes

  Well, as my girls keep reminding me, "It's two more sleeps til Christmas!!"

From my little family to yours, we send wishes for a wonderful Christmas, and a fun, healthy, and inspired 2012! 

 

Blythe outfits from The Stitched Bluebird

Happy stitching,

Still pinching myself.........

Yes, I’m still pinching myself, because I have a project published in a hard-cover, internationally distributed, US published book!!  I know many of you will have the amazingly successful book “One Yard Wonders”.  As it was such a hit, it was decided that there had to be a follow-up, so Storey Publishing  brings us “Fabric by Fabric one yard wonders”.

I was so thrilled when the authors of the book contacted me to tell me they’d love my Barnaby Bear design to be a part of the book.

If you read this post, you’ll know that we enjoy having holidays at Coffs Harbour.  When we visited a few years ago, I made a trip to The Hunters and Collectors Barn  (as I always do when in Coffs!)  Amongst other things, I bought some lovely pale blue chenille fabric with a wave design.  On returning from our holiday, and I decided I wanted to make a softie, and Barnaby Bear was born.

While the authors loved Barnaby, they needed more projects in corduroy, so Barnaby was remade in orange.  Here he is with the original blue Barnaby.

“Fabric by Fabric one yard wonders”, is a fantastic book!  Inside you’ll find projects for toys, clothes, bags, and home décor projects, - all made with no more than one yard of fabric (that’s 91.44cms for us metric users!)  The projects are made from a wide variety of fabrics – corduroy, wool, cotton, fleece, coated fabrics, woven fabrics, flannels and home decorating fabrics.  The book includes instructions and diagrams for making the projects, and inside the cover there is an envelope stacked with all the patterns that you’ll need – it really is an awesome book!

Barnaby as he appears in the book

“Fabric by Fabric one yard wonders” was recently released in the US.  I haven’t yet seen it in Australian book shops (has anyone else seen it in shops?), but I couldn’t wait and bought mine on Amazon. 

 

Barnaby hanging out at the book launch party!

“Fabric by Fabric one yard wonders” would make an awesome Christmas present for any crafty friends (and if you zip on over and buy it from Amazon now, you might get it just in time!)

Want to know more? Here is a list of some of the other contributors that are also hosting the  Fabric-by-Fabric One-Yard Wonders Blog Tour! - check them out!:

12/12/2011 Becka's Project Journal

12/13/2011 Craft Buds

12/14/2011 Patch Work Duck Designs

12/15/2011 Patch Work Duck Designs

12/15/2011 A Spoonful of Sugar

12/15/2011 Nifty Kidstuff

12/15/2011 Becka's Project Journal

12/16/2011 Nom Nom Nom Nom

12/16/2011 Quaint and Quirky

12/17/2011 ikatbag

12/17/2011 Two Brown Birds

12/18/2011 Sharon Sews

12/19/2011 LBG Studio

12/19/2011 Carolina Fair Designs

12/19/2011 Under Construction

12/20/2011 Little Blue Cottage

12/21/2011 Craftzine

12/21/2011 Neuroses Galore

12/21/2011 Emily Steffen

12/22/2011 Jenna Lou Loves You

12/23/2011 Spincushion

12/27/2011 One Inch World

12/28/2011 Sew Sew Etc.

January ‘12 Lu Lu Carter

January ’12 Fiberosity

January ’12 Zuhause

January ’12 Obsessively Stiching

January ’12 No Bad Days

January ’12 Craft & Cackle

January ’12 AfricanKelli

 Happy stitching,

 

PS – ”One Yard Wonders” was so successful it was later released in metric measurements for us Aussies and other metric using-friends.  I’m hoping that “Fabric by Fabric one yard wonders” might eventually be published in metric measurements too!

And the winner is.............

Thank you so much for your entries into my Blog-aversary give-away.   I used a random number generator to draw the winner, and the lucky winner was Samelia’s Mum!  Congratulations Samelia’s Mum (Anorina).  If you can email me your address please, I’ll mail off your prize!

 

Thanks so much to everyone for your entries, interest, and following my little journey.

Happy stitching,