Knit One, Bangle One.

I have been a naughty blogger. Not making regular posts which I know everybody is just dying to read. Well here I go again: my third attempt at blogging. Properly.


I had seen these upcycled knitting needles around online and thought, 'how hard could it be?'.

Take a pot of boiling water, some tea towels a rolling pin and some thrifted or orphaned knitting needles.
I found the slimmer ones bent like spaghetti the thicker ones took a few goes to get a nice curve.

Place the needles in the water. Don't worry if half sticks out you can bend one end a little then it will most likely fit in the pot and you can try again.
Being careful not to burn yourself take a knitting needle out of the pot with tongs and using a tea towel to hold the hot needle bend it around the rolling pin.
You may have better luck using two hands. Some required a bit more brute force than others.
See the photos.

here are the required materials (wine optional but highly recommended)

take some knitting needles

plonk them into boiling water

bend the hot needles around the rolling pin and...

...secure with sticky tape to ensure they hold their shape. they will cool down quite quickly.

great little bangle for kids to play with

great to stack on one's wrist 80s style :)

Feathery Fun!

Today I dropped off my entry piece into the Gleaners Inc 'Feather Your Nest' exhibition. Gleaners Inc is a delightful shop in Ballarat Street Brunswick (just back from bustling Sydney Rd) where you can find handmade and vintage pieces - individuality reigns here!
See http://gleanersinc.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/feathery-details.html to keep track of the exhibition as it will be a part of the Craft Cubed Festival coming up.
I have attached a pic of my entry. Do you like it? It's made with scraps from my Upcycled Greetings paper goods.

Fun in Sunny Y-town!

Lenny and I are enjoying some family time in Yarrawonga this weekend without Pete. The trip is solely because I insist on sticking with my hairdresser who is 3hours from where we now live. So I make special trips home 'to see family' when really I just want a hair cut haha.
But it is wonderful to come home.
Lenny helped Aunty Joanie rake the leaves...
Cousin Al showed him a crayfish...
I held the very gorgeous Riley Conner Wallace...
Tried grilled stras and a poached egg for the first time...
Lenny had a swing...
And met Teddy, Laural's big black lab..
And had a wonderful time with his nanny joanie and uncle moogie!

Market Musings

This is my second market and it is going well - several sales and lots of interest and admiration. I am so so tired though! And it is hard to keep my eyes open. I still have to get through the Abbotsford Market tomorrow too! Eeeeep!
I love the enthusiasm people show towards my product and the idea of of upcycling regular old things into something wonderful.
It is incredibly hard not to spend a fortune at these markets with sonmany beautiful handmade things about.
The creative women out their are so inspiring!
Can't wait til my next market and the next and the next!

List update: Lamington Success!

13. Make some Lamingtons. They’re my favourite but I’ve never made them.


Number 13 on my list that I want to achieve this year is copy and pasted above. Consider it done!


See below for my attempt at baby lamingtons from the Julie Goodwin cookbook. Delicious! And so easy I can't believe I have never made them. 
I took most of the batch to a little luncheon with some former colleagues who have all had babies in the last year or two and while we chatted and laughed (and ran around after our little ones!) we hoed into some delicious home made goods.
See my lammies below :)

Washi Tape Bonanza!!

Well finally I got my paws on some Washi tape! What is washi tape you ask? Apart from amazing, fun, quirky and hard-to-find-in-shops, it is just hyper coloured masking tape.
Made in Japan it has long been favoured in Japan for its ability to transcend gift wrapping, turning the humble act of wrapping up a gift into artistic expression.
The tape is so easy to use and can be repositioned on most papers and certainly on most surfaces.
If you google Washi tape you will find more than a million uses including sticking photos and posters to the wall (because the adhesive is super gentle and easily repositioned!).
It's easy enough to get online, howevr I like to touch and inspect the true colours of things before purchasing them so if you want to get them in store you'll need to go to somewhere like Paperpoint, Church St Richmond (just near the Alexandra Rd bridge) or Readings in Hawthorn (there are only a half dozen or so stationers that stock the m.t. brand of tape which is the main one.
I'm in love and if you love gift wrapping as much as I do you too will love washi tape.
I made myself a little washi tape dispenser out of an old wooden spoon and block of wood, and have inclded an example of my washi tape wrapping!
Go washi!!!

Orange Ya Glad Ya Grabbed That Stool?!

Orange ya glad ya don't hear puns like THAT everyday.. sheesh.





















Well anyway, it is hard rubbish pick up in our suburb at the moment, so that means I've been doing a lot looking around. Yes. I am one of thooose people. That pick up trash. Illegally! Come get me if you dare coppers but once you see what fabulous things I can create out of nothing you will not arrest me... except for crimes of fabulousness!
So I have a new children's desk for Lenny's room given to us by his Aunty Yol who inherited it from her Mum, Lenny's Grandma!
It's such a wonderful desk, but it needed the perfect stool. Ultimately I will win tattslotto and buy him a mini Eames to go with it, but until then this is what I did!
I saw a little teeny wooden stool all on its own out for hard rubbish, in the rain, because it always rains when hard rubbish is on. I stopped jumped out and picked it up.

Now I could have gone to Clark Rubber or somewhere and had custom foam top made for it but I thought it was worth a look at the op shops to see if I could find something that already existed. I did, a sparkly round cushion the perfect size and squishyness for this project!

I also found a Fireball Orange tablecloth at the op shop and headed home to get busy!

Now this is not my first Rodeo when it comes to reupholstering stools - I did Nan's old kitchen stool AND her old bathroom/dressing table stool so you could say I'm pretty darn experienced at stools.

Step one. Dry out completely soggy wooden stool over a heating duct. Done.

Take off legs and leg plates.




















Measure the top of the stool and measure fabric to cover stool and cushion and tuck under for fixing.

I cut the Orange fabric and tossed the excess and the cushion cover in my material box to live another day.

This stool was going to be as fancy as I could possibly manage so I decided to grab my trusty button collection (thanks Nan!) and find a big black button to go in the middle. Found one. Squealed in delight.

Tied a small white button to the back so I could get the right tension to pull the big black button in enough to make one of those big divots.

Laying the round cushion and material as neatly as possibly over the top of the stool pull the excess over and staple down. Staple the opposite side, then the two opposite sides - like N-S-E-W. Then all the excess around.

Screw the leg base plates back on at this stage as they also help to secure the fabric a little. 

For fancy I put some ribbon around the edge and then finished off with some upholstery tacks that I found in my husband's workshop a while ago.

And you're done! Very pleased with the result.

PS: I did this all in between cooking lamb chops and roast vegies for tea! So I don't want to hear people saying it is hard work or something!

I think it looks pretty darn cute there at the desk! And it was done with second hand and found items!

Even Prince's Like To Upcycle!

My darling boy Lenny loves to play and muck around and is impartial to some fancy headwear.

Adding to this is the fact that in the morning when I sometimes bring him for some quiet time in our bed (long after Daddy has left for work) I will pretend I am asleep and he will kiss me on the lips to wake me up. The first time he did it I was actually semi-sleeping haha, which made it even more gorgeous! He is only 16 months so I am unsure where he learnt that trick!

Whilst at Resource Rescue the other day I saw this pleather off-cut that looked like the ideal crown!
I have a growing collection of old buttons  - never throw away the ones that come with clothes and I inherited many from my Nan.

The spiky pleather didn't quite make it around my child's head (we are convinced that's because we passed down their 'big brain' genes) so I glued (super glued) some ric-rac to the bac so I could tie it. And that also means it will fit many a head!

I grabbed some ric-rac and my hot glue gun from my craft cupboard and set about arranging the buttons.

I sewed the buttons tightly to the ric-rac (wavy ribbon for the uninitiated) and hot glued the ric-rac to the pleather so that in the event the hot glue fails, the buttons won't end up as a choking hazard.

Now, seeing as I was one or two hands short I used a nearby vase to sit the crown on while I used my own two hands to glue.
















I added a gorgeously regal red bow to each end of the ric-rac and voila! A princely crown!

Lenny is so sick of me making him pose as you can tell from his haggard expression.

See what you can achieve with scrap and imagination!

Resource Rescue! A crafter's nirvana!

Despite the inclement weather, Lenny and I ventured out today to Bayswater where, nestled among the industrial estate of Hosie Road, we discovered the craft nirvana Resource Rescue!
Filled to the brim with the castaways and cutoffs from various industries you'll find everything you could ever need to create anything you could ever need to create!

From bottles, boxes and bollards to wood, fabrics and plastics. There is foams, rubbers, foils, various thingamabobs and whozeewhatsits.

I spent $8 on a bunch of boxes and bollards to help me present and mail out the garlands and present toppers I'm creating. Yep, all of that for just $8! Even if I filled up an entire garbage bag it would only have been $30!

I also spent $20 on two large wooden boxes perfect for display - they are actually wine storage boxes so maybe once I'm done presenting my wares I can use them for that.

The boxes I purchased aren't typically expensive at the Post Office but that's not the point. The point of Resource Rescue is to use up what already exists before creating something new. Considering there is so many perfectly good bottles, containers and boxes at Resource Rescue it really makes you think how many of the things we use at home could be used again instead of throwing away. Many people see the recycling bin as a get out of jail free card but the process of recycling plastics and papers into new plastics and papers has it's own cost to the environment.

Mostly, things can be reinterpreted. Take the the pleather off-cut I found amongst the treasures in Hosie Road that I knew was meant to be a crown for Prince Lenny!
It only takes a wee bit of imagination and you can make use of stuff that would otherwise go into landfill.
I loved my visit to Resource Rescue and would highly recommend it to anyone who is creating! Go to www.resourcerescue.org.au or like them on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/resourcerescuecraftsupplies

See my next blog for how I turned Lenny into a Prince!

Lenny's new Foxy friend!

At the Sisters Market a couple of weeks ago I couldn't go past Freddy Fox at Ladedah Kids stall. So gorgeous and brought back memories of Roald Dahl books, the Fantastic Mr Fox and Foxwood Treasure story books.

I finally placed him in Lenny's room and doesn't he just look dapper!
You can find all you need to know about Ladedah Kids via
ladedahkids.bigcartel.com or ladedah-kids.blogspot.com or www.ladedahkids.com.au/products or find them on facebook www.facebook.com/pages/La-De-Dah-Kids