Button Box

Finally I managed to steal some time and make this button box :)

I found this beautiful label at Graphics Fairy (I guess everybody knows lovely Karen who is so generous and shares her great work daily). The label was made by Cathe Holden at Just Something I Made using Karen's image. You can find the project here.
This reminded me of my Grandmother's button collection, started by her mother. My mom still has it - several precious boxes, but I moved to another continent a couple of years ago, so I had to start from nothing.
Anyway, I have started my own personal button collection with this box. I hope Mom will share with me too... :)

Love,
DK




Sharing at:

 My Romantic Home

 The Shabby Nest

My (Re)purposed Life

Merry Christmas

Happy Father's Day

To all Australians: Happy, happy Father's Day.
I hope everybody's having lots of fun.

Just days ago, we have lost a family member who was a father of four. We are all still coming to terms with what happened, so I almost totally missed on this holiday.

I was going to devote a post or two to it. Maybe next year.
I hope many fathers got their cufflinks with initials made with scrabble blocks or key chains with family pictures. Those seem to have been popular for some time now but I still find them great gifts for Dad.

There are so many great things we can say about fathers and their role in our lives. I wish I had my father with me for longer. He died many years ago, but I still think a lot about him and how much he influenced my personal development by just who he was.
Also, we should never forget that there are so many 'second fathers' on the world who embraced the role although we're not their children really.
God bless them all!

As a gift to all the fathers who have to exercise heaps of patience with growing children, here is one from Mark Twain:


When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Lampshade Decoration

Here is an excersize on lamshade decoration.

I've had this little lamp shade for several months (I got it for next to nothing at 'Bunnings'). I almost forgot I had it and then I found this simple, but beautiful lamp base at 'Reject Shop' in a basket with 'rejected stuf' for $7.5 :)

I love how these two guys fit together and, in fact, this is already a beutiful little lamp for me.
However, I'd like to give it some personality and make it more of 'my lamp'.
So I thought we could go for an excersize and think of a few things that could be added here. I decided I would use only material I already have at hand and here are the outcomes:

These are wooden buttons with floral prints.

This is a rose made from my son's old polo shirt. If I chose to use roses, I might make them smaller and glue them all around the shade.

Here I tried using shells - and loved it!

Raffia will always give a simple, warm and rustic look to everything. I like that very much, but this lamp base calls for shabby chic to me.

The twine was pre-cut already for another project, but I just wanted to show you what you can achieve with this inexpensive material.
You can always go and repeat along the top line the same (or similar) thing you did on the bottom line, but I wouldn't recommend adding embellishments only on the top (looks kind of heavy).

So, these are only some options I could go with for this particular lamp. For another lamp, I'd probably go with pearls, glass beads, lace... Always try more than one variant (make sure you use some kind of temporary fixing)
My choice will probably be this one:

It looks grat in my room. I'm tempted though to add a little something - if I go for it, I'll let you know :)

Have a great week!

Love,
DK

Sharing at: The Shabby Nest

Precious Gifts

I've been very sick lately and haven't done much. My head is full of ideas, they come and go - I don't write them down. Let's hope the lost ones will come back when the time is right.


I hope I'll be able to do something tonight or tomorrow.

In the meantime, I just have to share these wonderful gifts I got from my dear friends Apoorve & Subhashni. I love many things from their culture (A&S are from India), but I truly believe everybody will agree the colors of India are fascinating.

These are little birds! :)

They also gave me this beautiful silk scarf (I love scarves!)

Everything about this scarf is just perfect for me!

The gifts are so precious, they brought a lot of light into a painful day, but I can't stop thinking of how much more precious friendship is to me.

~ Friends are gifts from God. ~

Love,
DK

Decorate with Fabric Flowers

Remember my failure from the last post?

:) Not really an orb.

I filled it with fabric roses and leaves and made a 'rose ball'. Well, not a ball really. If it was a ball, I could have added a baw on top and hang it somewhere.

This way, it would make a nice little centerpiece.

This is a super quick decoration and requires only some glue and flowers.

Of course, you can use a styrofoam ball from a craft store and dried flowers would work even better, but this is what I've done with what I had at hand (and that's the whole point of it).

And it looks good in my entry too.

Love,

DK

Simple Handmade Home Decor Item

These decorative balls have been around for a while. Sizes and materials vary. I find them attractive and fun and always feel like touching them :)

Here's how you can make your own decorative balls:

That's all you need - balloons (1 for each ball), jute twine (varieties of yarn would also work well - depending on the final look you want to achieve) and some craft glue diluted with water (1:1).

Soak the twine in glue and water mixture and just wrap the balloon randomly. If you work with yarn, be careful and do not soak too much at a time - it gets hard to work with.

Once you're satisfied with your ball, just leave it to dry over night. Cut the balloon, take it out and that's it - you have a new decorating item to play with!

Here is what you don't want to happen:

Make sure the air is not leaking from your balloon or you'll be surprised next morning, like I was here :)

I kept this 'ball' too and will let you know what can be done with it.

Have a great Monday!

Love,

DK

Thornbury Craft Market

Here are some pictures from Thornbury Craft Market held last Friday:

Alex, my son took the pictures with his Nintendo - I forgot my camera :?

Anyway, I loved being surrounded by all the gorgeous things 'made'n'Thornbury' and the lovely girls there.

My favorite crafter this time: Madeleine Somers - Very Cherry Stew

Refreshed and inspired - I can hardly wait for the next weekend when I'll (hopefully) have more time for crafting :)

Love,

DK

Girly Bookmarks - Part Two

Thanks to all of you who gave a 'like' to my girly bookmarks.
You encouraged me and here is what I did last night:

The ones with hole are not even finished yet, but I needed to share...:)

If you're in Melbourne, I'd love to see you at Thornbury Craft Market on Friday.

Love,

DK

Girly Bookmarks

I keep buying craft supply - staff that I need and some that I might never use...

Once I bought these 'jewels' for a project, but when I took them out of the package I decided the quality was too poor for that particular project.

Last night I finally found a fun way to use them - I one of them on each side of a giant paper clip and taa-daaa - they made great girly bookmarks.
Take a look:

I think buttons would work great too. I'll try to  make some and let you know :)

Love,
DK

Thornbury Craft Market

Looking forward to this :)

See their blog at:

http://madenthornbury.blogspot.com/

Love,
DK

Yo-yo flower embelishment

Here is how to make a yo-yo flower and some ideas on how to use it.

This is how I start. You can use a template to draw a perfect circle. I just folded this piece like this:

Then I just rounded the ends of the triangle and my circle was good enough.

I didn't need the perfect shape and an exact size for this project, so I started with a piece that measured approximately 15x15 cm and the finished product measures around 7 cm. 

Once you cut your circle, just fold it like this:

and go through it with the straight stitch:

You can choose to do this part with more attention to detail and then iron the finished product - it all depends on what you want to achieve.

Now pull the tread and there you are:

So this is what we wanted for a start. I was to embellish a white little-girl crochet hat, so I added a crochet flower (just chain forming five petals).

Finally, I added one of my m&m's beads. Here is the result:

I could have added just a button to my yo-yo flower and it would still look great. 

If you want to make broach, you can cut a piece of felt and glue it to the back of your yo-yo flower. Then add a pin. 

You can also use yo-yo flowers to embellish hair accessories,cushions, curtains, hand-made cards... Possibilities are endless, really.

Let me know what you use your yo-yo flowers for.

Love,

DK