The Great Pencil Roll Experiment...

Here is a little pencil roll I whipped up on Sunday evening. I used this excellent tutorial from Kirsty over at Kootoyoo (which is actually for an embroidered carry all!) but the instructions lend themselves to a pencil roll just as well, the instructions are very easy to follow and the pencil roll came together in about half an hour. Thanks Kirsty!

Please take no notice of the fact that I only stitched enough pockets to hold eleven pencils. Clearly I need a tutorial which reminds me to count the number of pencils in my child's pack before marking and stitching all the rows.

  

Here it is rolled up.

Next time I would use ribbon to tie around the roll instead of elastic, I think it would be prettier.

Since I am pretty much a complete novice when it comes to sewing, this was actually a practice run for a knitting needle roll which I want to make for my mum, so I will keep you updated with the progress of that, but I'm feeling more confident after the pencil roll experiment!

**Apologies to Kirsty for completely disregarding the 'embroidery' section of her tutorial - despite the wonderful instructions I'm just not that confident yet!

Lazy Sunday

Ah, a lazy Sunday morning, warm and cozy inside listening to the rain on the roof, still in PJs, sipping coffee and blog surfing. Does it get any better than this?

I see a pattern forming...

I seem to be obsessed with personalising things with the name of the recipient. My daughter's friend Ruby loved the name wall hanging I made Zahra, so I whipped one up for her birthday last week.

MDF letters again, and scrapbooking paper, and a small quilt hanger from Patchwork with Gail B (I love love love this shop! More fabric per square metre than any shop I've ever seen! Once while shopping there I asked Gail if she offered classes at the store. "Not enough room," she replied, "too much fabric!" You should defibnitely check it our if you are in Melbourne.

Birthday Cake

My son turned 4 yesterday - what a great excuse to dust off the old cake tins and give some fondant a workout!

I realised about halfway through that I was actually a bit more rusty than I had anticipated, which got me thinking about when was the last time I created a fancy-schmancy birthday cake? Surely not too long ago...I love cake decorating...I do it all the time...right?

Actually, it turns out, the last fancy cake I did was exactly one year ago, when my son turned 3. Oops.

Late apologies to my daughter for her 7th birthday cake which was truly a shemozzle (in my defence I was 7 months pregnant at the time), my long suffering husband (sponge cake from supermarket *gasp* ), my Mum, my sister and all the other people I DIDN'T make a cake for this year!

So the cake came together in the end, (except for poor Thomas the Tank Engine who was too big to sit on my train tracks). My son loved it, the yummy chocolate mud cake inside was a hit with the parents, and it was enormous so we'll be eating chocolate cake at my place for at least a week!

(Inspired by this fantastic cake)

Alphabet pocket wall hanging...

This is a wall hanging I made for my nephew's first birthday. It was my first attempt at anything like this, and I couldn't find a pattern/tutorial anywhere so I kind of made it up as I went along! I did use a fantastic tutorial on youtube to construct the pockets - if I can find it again I will post a link!

I had a set of wooden letters I picked up at a sale last year, so I sized the pockets to fit.

The alphabet template was printed using Word and the letters were applied using Vliesofix and machine applique (thanks to Liesl at HoppoBumpo for introduing me to the wonders of Vliesofix last year!)

Here's one I prepared earlier...

 

This is a wall hanging I made for my daughter's room. The letters are KaiserCraft's MDF Funky Alphabet, which I picked up at Spotlight (unfortunately Spotlight don't carry this range anymore, but I notice they are still on KaiserCrafts website so may be available elsewhere.

I painted them and covered the front with assorted scrapbooking papers. I picked up the frame at my local op shop for $1 *yay* sanded it back (it was mission brown!) and painted it white. The letters are attached with ribbon using a staple gun.

Here it is hanging above her bed.

Let's start at the very beginning...

...it's a very fine place to start.

So I'm totally new to blogging, but have been crafting for quite some time. Although I do consider myself a 'beginner' in crafting as I'm still experimenting, trying new things and generally finding my crafting feet. So I will attempt to publish new craft projects as I do them, but will also randomly publish projects I have already completed.
I have three young children, Princess Z aged 7, Mr Jumping Bean aged almost 4, and Poor Point 3 aged 6 months, so forgive me if my posts are spasmodic and/or slap dash at times!
Crafting and being creative is the thing I do to keep me sane, have a break from my everyday life and to have some all important ME TIME! I love it.
My gorgeous friend Sam recently moved overseas and bequeathed me her Janome, so I dived into 2 terms of beginner sewing lessons and now the Janome and I are in love and are quickly becoming inseperable. I am about to attempt a quilt *gasp* for Princess Z, so will keep you updated on the progress of this project.

TheCraftGypsy
xx