Hanies: September 2008

Greeting Cards

Robin zingone very generously sent me these cards.

Aren't they great. I love the fact that the strip of pattern on the sides of the card is continued on the inside cover of the card. And I like the lining of the envelopes.

Great cards Robin.

Thank you very much.

Kris's Color Stripes is one of my favourite blogs. Kris is an artist and fashion designer with passion for home design. The blog is her colour diary. She posts photos of objects and then extracts a colour palette from it. Very inspirational.

Stamping on Umbrellas?

Has anybody tried to stamp on an umbrella? I am wondering if normal fabric paint is good to use or should I use something else? How about heat fixing it? With a hair dryer? For how long?

If anybody has any advice I would love to hear.

Thanks.

Make it, Blog it, Shop it Berlin

This was a great event here in Berlin. Thanks to DaWanda, Holly from Decor8, Nicole from Luzia Pimpinella, Nadja from Smil and Britta from Bloodbunny for a great time.

The afternoon just flew by. Holly and Nicole spoke about the importance of blogging and how to get more traffic to your blog. Very motivational stuff. I am sure the majority of us went home that day and immediately blogged! I am certainly going to try to be more consistent with my blogging. Not so easy with two little ones but I can try!

Nadja and Britta then gave a screenprinting taster. We each got to choose a motive to print on a bag. I chose the cat designed by Nadja. Amelie has already appropriated this for herself!

See pictures here courtesy of Holly and here by Dawanda.

On my desk Wednesday

I have seen a lot of bloggers playing "On my desk Wednesday" and it seems like a lot of fun. So I am thought I might play along.

Here is my desk today. Most of my bits and pieces have been put away to get ready for visitors we are having for the rest of the week. But this is what remains:

My Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes Robot sketches
A lightbox
A book on German taxes as we have to file by the end of the month (Oops how did we let it get so late!)

Other players

Flower Basket and Meadow

Lu Summers of Blu-shed asked for help recently in naming her new screenprinted fabrics. She needed names for the flowers on their own and for the flowers on the check background. Michelle suggested "Meadow" for the flowers by themselves and I suggested "Flower Basket" for the flowers on the check background and she liked it. Lucky me then got an envelope in the post with these lovely three pieces of fabric in it.

I already have plans for how I am going to use it and I am seriously considering buying up the teal and rose and plum colourways as well. They are gorgeous. Check the fabrics out here.

But you have probably already heard about Lu Summers in Modish, Design Sponge and Poppytalk.

Fabric Stamping

This was my original pile of fabrics for a blue baby quilt. But I felt it lacked a little something. A personal touch and something more childlike. So I dug out my fabric paints and an eraser stamp I made a little while ago.

Using a plastic knife I smeared some fabric paint onto a piece of foam to make a stamp pad. Jezze from Jezzeblog has great advice on how to make a stamp pad using felt and table salt. I did not need to add salt to this fabric paint as it was already fairly runny. But I am going to try it out next time.

Next I lined my fabric up on my cutting board and worked out where I wanted to stamp.

Luckily my fabric didn't move around too much but I think it would be a good idea to spray some temporary adhesive on a board so as to make sure the fabric doesn't move at all.

The main problem I encountered was that I couldn't easily regulate how much ink was applied to the stamp. Because of the size of my piece of foam I had to press the stamp into the stamp pad rather than dab the stamp pad onto the stamp. Next time I will cut the foam into smaller pieces.

Turnenschuhe

Amelie is starting sport in Kita. Very exciting for her. She just adores climbing and jumping and running. So this weekend we bought some turnenschuhe for her. Like ballet shoes they are very light but have a lot of grip. Perfect for the little ones. And it gave me the perfect opportunity to stamp them with her name stamp!

Etsy Shop

I have finally taken the plunge and have listed some of my quilts and toys in Etsy.

http://www.hanies.etsy.com/

Please cross your fingers and wish me luck - or even buy something!

So much time, so little done....

The last couple of weeks have been extremely hectic. Luis has been home on holiday and we decided not to go anywhere as we are going to Chile in January and that is going to be an expensive trip. So instead we planned to do all sorts of jobs around the house. But somehow or another we achieved almost nothing. How can it be that with 2 adults and 2 children we managed to do less than when I am alone with the 2 children? The time flew by and our list of jobs remains almost untouched.

Nevermind. We will gradually get round to it.... Maybe by the time our children leave home. We did manage to put smoke alarms up in all the bedrooms, choose a paint colour for our entranceway, move the sitting room around so we are not staring at toys all day long, bagged a few leaves and put up a shelf in the kitchen.

I have been making some more memory games as the first was a success.

Anyone in Berlin?

Can't wait for this event. I am particularly looking forward to the screen printing. Anyone else interested in coming along?

Diggers and Cars

I have been working on a new baby quilt. This time using some of my hand stamped fabric. I stamped some white cotton with diggers and cars some while ago but since then it has languished in my project drawer. The other day while tidying up I came across them and was suddenly inspired to start a new quilt. Hanna and I spent a happy morning diving into boxes of fabric. Up to now Hanna definitely seems to share my love for fabric thank goodness as she is surrounded by it most days!

Yesterday I had a lovely surprise as the postman brought me a packet from Valerie of Being Crafty. Valerie has been clearing out her craft supplies in readiness for moving and very kindly offered to donate stuff she no longer needed to others. Thank you so much Valerie for the lovely fabric. It was extremely generous of you - especially with international shipping. I am very lucky to have "met" someone as generous as you.

T-Shirt Printing

There is about to be a flurry of birthdays as all Hanna's little friends are about to turn 1. So I have been printing some t-shirts to give as birthday presents. It is great fun and I am very pleased with the outcome. I am not going to blog the finished results of all the t-shirts as some Mums might be reading this!

I also printed some t-shirts for Amelie and Hanna. Amelie requested a giraffe and I found this cute little giraffe in one of my Japanese craft books. I finished it off by stamping her name on a piece of twill tape and sewing it onto the t-shirt.

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