DIY Washi Tape Easter Eggs

I'm pretty excited that this Easter I finally have a child that is old enough to enjoy some good old fashioned Easter Egg decorating with me! Ever since I was little I've been a pretty big fan of Easter crafts, I remember making many Easter baskets throughout my childhood. But, now that I think about it, it was probably just because I was worried that the Easter bunny would forget me if I didn't have a pretty basket! There's no way I wanted to miss out on that chocolate!

Neon Granny Square Cot Blanket

I finished making this granny square crochet blanket, a number of months ago as a full sized cot/crib blanket for Willow. Yes, yet another baby blanket, my third one now! I used some of my favourite colours including this bright Neon pink! I love me some neon pink! I also incorporated, dark grey, mint green and an off white, natural wool colour. These will be the base of my colour scheme for her whole room! Which I have lots of ideas for but no time, so her room is a work in progress! When I started off I had no idea how to make a granny square, so the first few were very slow going, by the last ones I was speeding through! Alright maybe not speeding, but I definitely was moving a whole lot faster than the beginning.

D.I.Y Chevron Baby Headband

Although I named this a tutorial for a baby headband, it would also work and look really cute on toddlers and little kids too! You just might have to adjust the length a little! I'm generally not a huge fan of headbands for babies, especially when, like mine, they have no hair!! ha. But, I just couldn't resist. I love a little chevron boho style for babies, and something nice and bright like this is a bit of fun. So, I decided to give it a shot and use some leftover  wool and make it in a friendship bracelet macrame style I used to do as a kid, but as a headband, surely it would work the same!

DIY Pom Pom Garland

I know it is drawing a little too near to Christmas, but I have an easy Christmas (or even not so Christmas) D.I.Y to share. Seeing most of my Christmas decorations and Christmas tree is still in storage I wanted to do something, that didn't take too much time and effort, to make the house feel a little more festive. So, what better than a pom-pom garland DIY.

Have A Handmade Christmas

I love things that are handmade. I just think of the time and effort that has gone into making it so special. I know the many loving hours that it can take crocheting a blanket, designing jewellery or painting a picture. This weekend a friend and I ventured up to the big smoke (Perth), to visit a handmade market in Forrest Chase, Made On The Left. I like the name.. a lot! I love to try and support local, handmade artisans when I can. There are just so many talented people who are working really hard to make gorgeous hand crafted treasures, its really quite inspiring.

I picked up a couple of Christmas presents, and loved admiring the amazing work! Some that I will revisit when our house is finished, because I have nowhere to put too many lovely things yet, so I keep the in the back of my mind for later.

For now, I just oooh and ahh over these beautiful items, and (of course) share some of them with you!!

A Huge Granny Square Baby Blanket

I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this crocheting thing a little bit, this is my second baby blanket and I took on the granny square. Granted I haven't tackled anything harder than a blanket, but baby steps right! Plus blankets are pretty useful, and make for really nice gifts as well!

So, if you're interested, here are the details about what I used, and how it's done.

This is just one giant granny square, I was going to make smaller ones and then thought, hmmm I'm just going to keep going until it got big enough that I was satisfied. I did 27 rounds, alternating colours each round. The edge is just two rows of single crochets. I guess I could have just done a granny stripe blanket, then it would look the same but be a rectangle rather than a square.

The crochet hook I used was 9mm

The wool is Cleckheaton Country Aran 10ply colour #4006 and Cleckheaton Country Naturals 8ply colour #1805

I had 4 x 50 g balls of wool of each colour, and I used about 3 and a half of each colour (so approx 175g of each).

If you don't know how to crochet a granny square, I watched this series of You tube videos this is lesson 1 (I think there are five or six) http://youtu.be/79zZJjXRfSM, the videos are really thorough and nice and slow, I found them awesome. Of course I have to flip everything around because I'm left handed.

If you want to see my first crochet blanket, it's a Yellow and Grey Chevron baby blanket. Just click HERE

I think this is one of the easiest blankets you can crochet, and it was really quick!! So a great one for beginners like me!

x Karen

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DIY Heart Embroidery Wall Hanging

This hearts embroidery is something that I made a while ago, but it is really quite quick and simple to make, it looks great and is a nice homemade crafty embroidery piece to add to your home. So, I thought I would do a little DIY tutorial, which includes how to iron- on transfer embroidery patterns or images onto your fabric. It would go perfectly is a kids bedroom or as a part a collage of prints and pictures on your wall in any room.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

-Embroidery Hoop (I used a 9 inch hoop, but you can scale the pattern to any size you want)

- Un-dyed Calico or white cotton material

- Needle

- Embroidery floss (at least one colour, but you can use all different colours if your prefer)

- Tracing Paper

- Iron on transfer Pencil

- Iron

- A printer to print out the pattern

- Scissors 

optional: Some craft clue to glue down the material to the hoop

HOW YOU DO IT

1. Print off the template from HERE

2. Trace the hearts onto the tracing paper with an iron on transfer pencil (I bought mine from Spotlight) 

3. With the pencil marks facing downwards dry (not steam) iron the pattern onto the calico that is cut to the size to fit in the hoop with about 4-5 cm extra material around the hoop.

4. Put the iron on patterned calico in the hoop stretch so it is nice and tight and then tighten the hoop.

5. The stitch I used for the hearts is the simple back stitch. Which means you are just putting the needle back through the hole that your previous stitch created (see picture). 

6. Once they are all finished trim the material around the edge of the hoop, and glue it down. 

use the hoop to line it up correctly and then remove to iron!

Make sure the pencil is sharp, you don't want these lines too thick!

The back stick, makes it look nice and neat.

Then you are finished and it is ready to hang.
Oh so so easy! But it looks really nice!

Karen xx

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DIY Crochet Chevron Baby Blanket

So I mentioned in a couple of previous posts about how I was trying to teach myself to crochet. I really wanted to crochet a baby blanket. I love hand made crochet blankets, there is something so warm, fuzzy and homely about them, I guess you just can feel the effort than has gone into making it. I saw this blanket pattern whilst perusing Pinterest, and decided it's exactly what I wanted to try to for my first crochet project.  I am so excited that it actually turned out like I'd imagined it, I really love it so much, I think I might make another one. You know sometimes you have these grand plans for craft projects and then they are a massive fail!! It is so disappointing and discouraging... it happens to me, often. Originally I wanted to make it with a natural coloured wool and neon pink, but I couldn't find the exact colours I wanted, so I think that will be my next one!

With the help of some good left-handed instructional crochet You Tube videos and searching on google about how to read crochet patterns, I managed to figure out the chain stitch and single crochet stitch and make this blanket. It was time consuming, mostly because I was so slow at first, but it really wasn't that difficult to pick up. This blanket is pretty simple, and really repetitive, so even if you are a total novice like me, I think you could make this too. All you need is a crochet hook (I used a 5mm one) and the wool colours that you want to use.

HERE is the link to the pattern I used.

I'm linking with Jess for #IBOT because it is Tuesday after all.

Karen xx

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Nesting and Crafty Project Inspiration

I haven't posted since last Sunday. If you were wondering if I suddenly went into labour, I'm afraid I didn't. Although I'm not quite yet 37 weeks, I would have no problem having this baby sooner rather than later. I have been busy, and tired and just getting to those stages where everything, including sitting at a computer screen and typing is a MASSIVE effort!! I forgot how much this last stage takes out of you, and how I just want to sleep or rest basically all the time. On Thursday night and Friday this baby must have been lodged somewhere near my left hip making it almost impossible to walk, which is really not fun when you have an almost two year old to look after. The pain seems to have subsided, thankfully, meaning I have actually been enjoying the weekend.  As you might know, because we are currently temporary lodgers with my parents I haven't really able to do the whole 'nesting' thing properly, my nesting instinct is still in full swing, but it has been redirected into dreaming, and doing some crafty projects. I thought I would share some of the projects I have spotted that have inspired me, they look really fun and actually pretty easy. 
Up until I spotted these, I thought friendship bracelets were fairly lame. But these actually look pretty awesome and make me want to run out and buy neon thread and start weaving them like back in my primary school days, it also makes me wish I had a child old enough to appreciate the project!  You can find the really detailed tutorial HERE 

I really want to make one of these rugs. It is made from t.shirt material yarn, and you can find it in Australia from a company called Hoooked Zpagetti . It also doesn't seem too difficult, but they would be so gorgeous for a kids room (or kitchen, laundry, living room, basically anywhere!!)  You can find the tutorial for the pictured rug HERE

And seeing I have recently started to crochet, my first project is still in progress and it is a baby blanket. I am really keen to make more things, I thought these booties are really gorgeous, and seeing we are heading into winter. (HERE) The possibilities of crocheting stuff are really endless!

Have you been inspired by any craft projects lately? I would love to know which ones you have seen and loved or tried, or even invented!! 

Karen xx 

You is Smart, You is Kind, You is Important

I have a new embroidery piece in my Etsy store, my first new addition in a while. This piece was inspired by the book The Help written by Kathryn Stockett. I read it last year, and I loved it. It made me angry, it made me laugh, it made me cry, it was a beautiful story. This quote stood out to me immediately. One of the main characters is an African American maid called Aibileen Clark, who looks after a little white girl, Mae Mobley. Mae Mobley "ain't cute" according to Aibileen, and doesn't really fit in with her mothers ideas of the perfect daughter, even though she is but 3 years old. Aibileen doesn't care about this, she cares about teaching Mae Mobley that she is smart, she is kind and she is important. No matter what anyone else says. They really have a beautiful relationship, one that Mae Mobley's Mother should have with her daughter but doesn't seem to have that desire.

I love this quote because I think every child should have these words spoken to them, that they should be able to grow up believing these things about themselves. It isn't about what they look like, or what they can or can't do, it is about who they are as a person. It breaks my heart when I see children in terrible situations. There is a family that I often see that have major domestic disputes in the middle of the street, which we have called the police about before. They have a small child, who isn't even two years old yet. When I was stitching this, I thought of this little boy. It makes me wonder if he has ever heard these words, it makes me so sad to think he has to grow up with this kind of volatility around him on a daily basis. It doesn't do much for creating a secure and loving environment to help him to become a well balanced and secure adult.

So for me, this is a great reminder, to tell our children everyday. 

You are Smart, You are Kind, You are Important. 

Smash Journal: More Baby's Firsts Journal

I finally have gotten around to doing two more pages for Ezra's Baby's Firsts album. 

You can see the first two pages HERE. 

I'm using a K & Company Smash Journal, and just trying to make it simple with a lot of handwritten journalling, (not overdone with scrapbooky goodness) and I'm just trying to be authentic of how we feel about our little man. One day he can look back and know he is so so so loved!

Karen xx

{Don't forgot to enter my GIVEAWAY for a SnoozeShade Plus Sun & Blockout Shade for your pram or stroller. Click HERE for details} 

Smash Journal: Baby's Firsts Journal

Rather than being pretty and really over worked, I just want this journal to be real and authentic to who we are. Something that Ezra can look back on when he is older and get an idea of what it was like for us when he entered our lives, and how much we LOVE him!

I have been meaning to do this for so long, now that I have started I just really want to keep going!