Chelley Bean Designs Update

Michelle has just announced a new look Creative Team over at Chelley Bean Designs and I'm thrilled to be continuing on in my CT role and am humbled to be alongside such talented ladies as Lauren Bell, Tara Scobie and Sue Smith!

I have realised that I have been extremely slack and have not shared projects I have made for Chelley Bean Designs.  As a member of the Chelley Bean Designs creative team, I get to have an absolute ball playing with the goodies that Michelle creates.

Here are some of the items that I have had the pleasure of working with over the past year...yes it has been that long!

Crochet flowers
Here are the cards I made using the crochet flowers.  These were such a great size for cards...

Hand Dyed Paper doilies
I thought I would depart from cards with the paper doilies and go for little decorative items.

Painted Petals
These were just gorgeous - I loved playing with these flowers.

Stitched Sewing Rounds

Concertina Flowers
Perfect for cards!

I look forward to sharing more projects with you over the next year.

If you would like to see more of the lovely Chelley Bean Designs products, Michelle has an Etsy store or you can visit her blog for more information.

Ana's Birthday celebrations

I LOVE a tea party so when my friend Julianna asked me to help create a garden tea party for her daughter Ana's 6th Birthday I said ABSOLUTELY!!!


There was lots of yummy food to eat - plates of fruit, sandwiches and some yummy sweet treats.

Here's the sweet stuff...

I decorated cupcakes with little crowns on top and tri-colour swirl buttercream icing.

Biscuits were made as thank you gifts for the party guests with custom tags.

 

Little sandwiches cut out in the shape of crowns.

 
 The Cake
I had seen this icing technique and have been wanting to try it out for a while so this seemed like the perfect opportunity

and on the inside.....

 .....3 yummy pink layers - all different shades (another technique I've been wanting to try).


The decorations were kept quite simple.  The party was held in the yard of my church which has a lovely big overhanging tree.  We held a ladies high tea there recently and I'd made a bunch of tissue paper pom poms to hang from the tree.

 There were little handmade touches like these cute little personalised bonbons which held little gifts for the party guests.

Everyone had a wonderful time including the Birthday girl!

 Happy Birthday Ana...xxxooo

New Year

I've been taking some time off to spend with my family over the holiday period.  This week marks the end of school holidays here so it's back to school for the kids and back to creating for me.

I have been doing a few things to keep myself occupied over the time and during the next couple of weeks I will be sharing some posts detailing the projects. 

For now here's a sneak peek of what I've been up to over the holiday period...


Ana's party

Creating for Chelley Bean Designs

Teacher gifts

and some creating for a charity called Samaritan's Purse which I am yet to take photos of.


Happy creating and stay tuned for more detailed project updates.

Shirt revamp #2

 Following on from my last post I thought I'd show the second shirt I made from my bargain buy.

Starting with this $2 shirt....

I sketched this eagle picture onto paper and cut it out with a craft knife to create a stencil.

I painted the design onto the shirt by dabbing some black fabric paint over the stencil.

After I lifted off the stencil, I flicked and splattered some watered down fabric paint over the eagle design. I love grungy...it doesn't matter if you make a mess!

The finished design...

As you can see, it really doesn't take much to jazz up your plain old shirts.  Why not give it a go!

Happy creating!

Shirt revamp #1

So while out and about shopping for some affordable kids clothes, I came across two of these shirts at $2 each.

Great price - the only trouble was they seemed just a little dull...  so I decided I would jazz them up a little!

I got out my fabric paint and went in search of some stamps (thanks tan!).  I was going for a grungy look so I found a cross-hatch stamp and stamped with some watered-down black fabric paint.  I also splattered some paint with my paintbrush and squeezed the paintbrush for the larger droplets.

 

My son has wanted a 'Team Amber' shirt for a while so I grabbed my old foam alphabet stamps 

and started stamping TEAM when tragedy struck!! I stamped the E back-to-front......aaaaaaargh!

I could have gone for a funky 'I meant to do that' look but I think it would have looked strange so I ended up painting and splattering over it then re-stamping the right way around.

To do the 'Amber' text I wanted a hand-written type of text so I found a font I liked and printed out the text from my computer.

On the back of some cotton material, I ironed some Vliesofix  (Bondaweb) just bigger than my text and transferred the writing to it (reversed).  Then cut it out...

I then peeled off the backing and ironed it onto the shirt.

 Then stitched around the outline.

All done...xxxooo

Just like a bought one  :)