Happy new year!

No pics, no birdies, just one wish for you...

Happy new year and watch out with fireworks! Tomorrow I'll be back with a real post (and probably a legendary hangover)...

Thanks for making blogging fun for me this year!!!

Yummy! (3)

More cookie posts! I finally used a cookie cutter that I bought years ago, because I was curious if it would actually work...



And yay! They worked!



So after I used my poor piping skills on this cool cowboy, I ended up with this one...



And after some more practice I ended up with these! Not bad, huh!



My husbands grandma (she's going to be 95 next year) has moved house, so I am planning to make her a cookie house when we go visit... I need all the practice I can get!!!

Yummy! (2)

Oh yes, another cooky post! Inspired by all the lovely cookies I found on Pinterest and the book that I showed you yesterday, I tried my best... I do realise I will need a lot of practice! It's harder than it looks. I still think they look pretty yummy! All the ingredients for the next batch are warming up as we speak!

Edible buttons

Hope you hade a really nice Christmas! Thank god we didn't spend two days eating. I hate having to sit around and stuff myself for two days.

Of course I did make sure that others could stuff themselves anyway. I saw this picture on Pinterest and I loved it so much that I decided to make something similar as my christmas present for my parents and my brother.



Those who know me, would know that I never copy anything without adding a personal touch. So I made star shaped cookies with two holes, tied them together with a nice piece of string and added a cheesy card.




In return, my mom bought me a craft book (yay!) that came in very handy! I can't wait to try some of those cookies!

On Christmas eve...

The 2010 Christmas tree

With the dynamic duo in the house, I really didn't want to put up the christmas tree this year. My little boy (11 months old now) is quite the little entrepreneur, and I am sure that he would have tasted all the decorations before christmas day. But the munchkin (now 2 years and 4 months old) loves, loves all the lights with a passion. So we found a way to keep it safe and pretty at the same time.

We dug up the tree (yes, it is fake, 100% poly-made-in-china fake, that's how much we love christmas, hehehehe) and put half of it in the living room, so we still had room to walk around it. And then the dynamic duo and I went to the supermarket, where we bought a pound of salt, two pounds of flour and some cookies and other edible but decorative goodies. And then we went to work.

I made some nice dough with the salt, the flour and some water and together the munchkin and I made the most delicious looking fake cookies. They went in the oven for 1,5 hours and came out so hard that you could bash someones brain in with them, which we won't do of course, since 't is the season and all. I just advise you not to break in to our house next couple of weeks.

The tree is not finished yet, but I can show you some pictures of the decorations...

The munchkin made the ones in the front. They are the prettiest ones of all!









Anyone wanting to try this at home: mix 1,5 cups of flour with 1 cup of salt and 0,5 cup of water. Knead well and make something pretty. Bake it in the oven for 1,5 hours at 150 degrees celcius. Happy baking!

The red front door

Somehow I have always loved the idea of a red front door. My last house had a yellow front door, I painted it the sunniest yellow, so I could tell people who were coming to visit to go to the house with the yellow front door. It sounds nice, cosy and inviting. The house we currently live in has the front door on the side, so you can't see it from the street. Which is a shame, because if I paint it red, people will still not be able to find it when I tell them it's the house with the red front door. But I'll probably paint it this summer, anyway.

Wow, I don't think I ever wrote "front door" so many times in such a small piece of text.

Anyway, I was planning to make a binky-rag with a house cross stitched on the front. If you know me, you could have guessed that I would just start and see where I ended up. My first attempt was not what I envisioned though. The colors just weren't right and the windows and the door were too small.



So I started over. I selected the colors first and then started cross stitching. It came out really well, exactly as I wanted! I think it is too pretty to be a binky rag, so I'll probably find some other use for it. Maybe I'll use it as a keychain. Or something. Or maybe I'll just hang it in the kitchen, it does look kinda cosy... Or I'll stitch a little card on the back and use it as a luggage tag. Or as a gift tag. Oh, the things you could do with it!





I'm not done with houses yet. I don't know why, but I'm really into cosy homes right now...

If you'd like to make your own little house, send me an e-mail and I'll send you the chart that I made for free!

Felt roses

Today I finally had the chance to make and post the pictures of the felt roses that I made! I hope you like them!

Christmas cards

Today was Christmas card day in our house. I bought a silver stamp pad and some blank cards, and off I went. I made about 30 cards, using the scandinavian style christmas tree stamp I carved some time ago. Maybe I'll make some matching napkins with fabric paint, for christmas dinner.

Anyway, these are all the cards and envelopes I made today.







Tomorrow I'll have to write them all... Yay...

Something new

Yas, today there was light (no sun, but quite a bit of snow, so at least it wasn't as dark as yesterday)! So I could finally take pictures of one of the stars I've been making for Christmas. They are called Finnish stars and they look really complicated, but are quite easy to make if you follow this tutorial.

My first attempt failed miserably, so start with some cheap paper...! :-)





Right now I'm working on a combo of the binky-rag, the house-stamp and the bunnies... Hmmmm....

Gloomy

Could anyone please confirm that the sun still exists? It was such a gloomy day, that I had to have the lights on all day... That is soooo depressing....

There is one thing that really cheers me up though... Did you ever hear of flash mobs? I've never seen one in real life, but the clips on Youtube always make me smile...

This one was kind of eerie...




This one is just loads of fun!
 



But this, this one is my alltime favorite. It never fails to make me smile!
 



I hope I just gave you fifteen minutes of fun!
 
Back tomorrow, it was too dark to make nice pictures... I did make some stuff though...

40 years?!?!?

Sorry, no pics today. I have been busy last night making a small biedermeier of felt roses, Betz White style... This is a picture from her blog, it looked something like this, but more roses...



I made them because they are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary! I think that is quite an accomplishment... They didn't want any gifts, they wanted all their guests to give a donation to their favorite charity, but I couldn't let my little girl go to opa and oma emptyhanded! It flet wrong to make a picture before they saw the present... So I'll see if I can do that some other time!

Tomorrow I'll be back with something handmade, I promise!

A new friend (2)

Oh yes, I just couldn't help myself, I made another new friend. This one was for personal use. I liked this one so much that I made another one in pink that I sent to my friend. I made it just a little more modern, although it is inspired by a design by Aranzi Aronzo. They really make the cutest things EVER!!! Maybe it's time for another craftbook post, I have three of their books and I love them!!!

Anyway, this is the new addition to the family. I put the bear on Etsy too, even though I didn't make it for commercial use, I wouldn't mind making another one, just because I love the way it looks!






I'm not sure which one of the bears I like better... The one in the previous post or this one. My baby boy doesn't care! He just wants his binky!

A new friend

I made a new friend today. Her name is Barb the Binky bear and she holds the binky for your baby. I made her for a friend as a gift for her little girl that was born last week, to send her instead of a card. Doesn't she look sweet?

Just in case the new mommy reads my blog and sees this before it arrives (you never know now that TNT keeps going on strike and stuff)... A word to you!

Dus, Linda, mocht je dit lezen voor je m hebt gekregen, ik heb deze speciaal voor Yenthe gemaakt. Knuffel je meisje nog maar eens extra van ons!!!

It's a sad, sad world...

Yesterday I read some blog messages about designs being stolen from designers and being mass produced and sold. Of course that is an outrage. I would be very upset if that happened to me. I commented on the blog and that didn't make me very happy either. It was confirmed again that I am not a designer (I know I'm not, and I've never pretended to be!) but just a crafter, and that it was really easy to make books and cover them in someone elses fabrics. And even though it almost brought tears to my eyes, in essence, they were right. It is really easy. But it is also fun!!! And the fabrics are so yummy that it's almost a crime not to use them!

Anyway, I did decide that I need to make some more original pieces. So today I made a small start with some book covers that I will be using soon inspired by our lovely little country. I hope you like them.

Nostalgia

Another Dutch tradition! When I was a little girl, a long, long long time ago, all little girls had a so called Poesie-album. It was a little book where all your friends and family would write down a little rhyme, or a sweet verse, and they would decorate it with all kinds of adorable little pictures that you could get, with flowers and butterflies and doggies and kitties, and all kinds of things sooo cute, they would give you an instant toothache. Some even had sparkles! I loved those pictures!

And... Good news for all nostalgia lovers... They are back! I recently found them in craftstores and bookstores! Yay! So let me share something that makes me really happy on a drab day like today!

(I'm probably breaking all kinds of copyright laws by showing you these, but I have no clue who to aks for permission...)








More nostalgia soon!

It's a girl!!!

A friend of mine just had a baby girl. And I do hope she doesn't read this blog, because I am going to share with you what I made her to celebrate this happy (yet for the mom: painful) event...







My right hand is all sore from cross stitching. But no time to rest, since my new leather will arrive tomorrow or monday and I have finally received my hoppin up buttons, I need to have some books ready so I can start using it all rightaway!!!

Playing with leather

Last week I noticed that I seem to sell more cahier style notebooks than regular books. I do love the leather covers, so I tried to make a couple of Cahier style notebooks with leather covers. It wasn't easy, since the leather has to be thinner than usual to get it to look good. And I only have two kinds of leather that are thin enough. I do like them though, but I'll be glad when the other colors that I ordered arrive, so I can make some nice red notebooks and other colors! TNT really picked a nice time to go on strike...