A 1910 costume for Thomas

Cap from Sarah, white shirt from Vinnies, pants from Josephine, vest from a bag of old clothes (again from Sarah's), socks from Dad. Shoes model's own!





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

My costume was similarly cobbled together - hat, blouse and boots my own, dress from my Mum (made in 1979!), jacket from Vinnies too.

Another cake for Isabella

This time for her birthday party.

 

Isabella's birthday present

Isabella's Mum Jean mentioned that Isabella would love a papercut of a bird in a cage, as seen here. So I made her one.

Cake for Isabella

Jean is fast turning into my best customer! Ballerinas piped in coloured white chocolate onto baking paper with stencil behind (used these images, resized in PhotoShop). Cake iced in buttercream, with ballerinas simply placed on.

An upmarket chalkboard

Take one frame from a secondhand store:

Add a board from a hardware store, blackboard paint, and a little bit of work, and this is what you get:

A doona cover for Austin

The doona cover was "made" by me, in as much as it was a queen sized doona cover and is now a single doona cover!

Cake for Jean's mother-in-law

 

Thanks for the commission, Jean!

A little something on the side

It's not that I haven't been busy, I've just been elsewhere - at Vintage Papercuts. Please come and visit, or see you at our market stall on Saturday 26 March 2011 at Greenwich Public School, 32 Kingslangley Road Greenwich.

A 21st birthday tower

We were invited to the 21st birthday party of Emily, our neighbour's daughter. I offered to make a cake for the party, and this is what I made:

The component parts:

• 60+ cupcakes
• 70+ chocolate butterflies
• 2 cups of buttercream
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Cakes fit for a princess

Do you have a little princess in your life?  Here's a simple cake decoration, made with coloured white chocolate, that will (literally) crown your next lot of cupcakes!

Here's the how to:

1. Put jam tart pan (like the one in the picture - the sort with round depressions in it that you would make jam tarts in) in freezer.

2. Melt and colour white chocolate. (For Australian residents, it seems Spotlight now have colours for white chocolate, amongst their party / cake supplies [at least at Birkenhead Point, Sydney]. This colour was achieved using the red.)

3. Put white chocolate in snap lock bag, squeeze out air and seal.

4. Snip corner off bag for piping. If you are concerned about using snap lock bags for piping, the Mega Crafty blog shows you how to reinforce your zip lock bag for piping.

5. Retrieve tart tray from freezer. Pipe a line of chocolate across the deepest part of the pan, side to side.

6. Choose a mid point, and pipe loops above it, starting and finishing on the first line. Continue to pipe loops starting and finishing at roughly the same point. Five or six loops should do it.

7. Pop tray into freezer.

8. In 5 minutes chocolate tiaras should be set, and can be slid from the tray.

 

9. Make cupcakes, slather on the butter icing, and crown with a tiara. Ta-da!

Thank you to my friend Sarah, who not only (cleverly) had a daughter with a party this weekend, but made the cupcakes and took photos of them.



I made the front page of Babyology!

So, not much "making" as such going on, but a whole lot of self promotion!  My earlier post about Austin's 3rd birthday was turned into an article for Babyology:

I made the top 3!

On 6 January 2011 Craft Gossip listed the top 10 most viewed posts on Craft Gossip:

And there at number 3 was Craft Gossip's link (see below) to my pettiskirt tutorial! Yay!

Thank you Craft Cossip and all the readers of Craft Gossip for making me top 3 in 2010!

A cake for Lisa

It was Lisa's birthday while I was visiting Perth so I whipped this little number up for her:

And here's what I learnt. Don't make the chocolate butterflies too flimsy, or they are hard to work with. And if you put a ganache covered cake in the fridge it will sweat when it comes out of the fridge. But then when it's summer in Perth you don't have much choice. And it was delicious!

Take one "free size" kaftan...

I loved the fabric, and it was half price, so I thought I'd see what I could do with it...


How it looked
on the website





How it looked on the floor



Next step - sew
offcuts together





A little work with the scissors and 

sewing machine, and "Voila!"





 





A pettiskirt for Jess

Jess' Mum asked me to make a pettiskirt for her for Christmas. She asked me months ago - so when did I start? Last Friday, of course!  But it turned out well - in fact I think it's the best one yet!  The bottom layer is about 12m long. The frill used at least 35m of chiffon ribbon.(Looks familiar? Sue said she wanted one just like the one I'd make for the Greenwich School Fundraiser). Thank you Sue for being my first paying customer.
 

Costumes for a (small) class production of Little Red Riding Hood

When my 6 yr old son came home from school and said he and his friends wanted to perform "Little Red Riding Hood" for the class, I sprang into action.

We needed an axe for the Woodsman (cardboard, tape, tin foil, on a stick), a mask for the (Big?) Bad Wolf (downloaded, laminated, cut and strung with elastic) a no sew hood for Red Riding Hood (from A Simple Nest - thank you!) and a granny's bonnet (old pillowcase, cut into a circle, create a casing for elastic, thread elastic through), and a basket to carry it in. Done!

Halloweening

Halloween in Australia is basically a festival pushed by retailers to sell more stuff. The only way to retaliate is to not buy, but make stuff. And when your son wants to be one of these (a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who), you don't have a choice.

And this is how it turned out:

Whilst nowhere near as complicated as this Weeping Angel costume, it turned out pretty well. The mask is a download from the Doctor Who website, although I altered the colour to match the fabric and laminated it for durability. The wings are from the $2 shop, sprayed grey with a water soluable spray paint. Sheer luck meant they turned out the same colour as the costume.

The body of the costume was made with some fabric scrounged from The Fabric Cave, a remnant warehouse, for $6. It was some sort of polyester. I sewed it into a large tube, leaving the top and bottom open, and spaces for sleeves. I then gathered the shoulders, and made a casing for a ribbon around the neck. So the neck is big enough to step into, then tightens with the ribbon. An elastic band around the waist pulls it in for the draping effect. It was easier to do sleeves than to think about how to colour arms!

Slots were cut in the back to allow the wings to poke out. I also made a casing around the hem and inserted a wire coathanger for weight and shape.

And we painted Thomas' ears grey, and sprayed his hair grey too. Next time we'll paint the hands as well!

Gratifyingly, some people on the Trick or Treat trail recognised what he was dressed as!

More Missoni

Regular readers will now realise I am mad for Missoni. What you see on this site is only a small porportion of the yardage I have of it. I even have a skirt I made a year ago that I have no photos of.  Like the owner of Tessuti, where I buy most of my fabric, I swore "no more". But then the owner/buyer for Tessuti saw this, and like me, she couldn't resist.

I purchased the fabric about 2 weeks ago. That's about the fastest "shop to sewn" garment I've ever made.

Why a jacket/cardigan and a skirt? Because for 1.3m of fabric, you can get both, given the width of the fabric. You could make a dress instead, but I think two pieces is more versatile.

I made a movie!

Thomas came home from school in the final week of term 3 with two bean seeds, which we dutifully planted in cotton wool in a cup. They grew, and one day I noticed that the leaves had turned to face the window. We decided to do an experiment, captured with time lapse photography, to show his year 1 class as news.

Here's the movie on YouTube, made with Windows Movie Maker and some online tools for converting music to the right format.

It's to illustrate how plants turn to the light. The last two frames are the same as the first and (3rd) last frames in the movie (pictured here) to illustrate how much the plant moved - in about 30 mins.

Austin's 3rd birthday

As featured on Babyology!

Have you ever seen those pictures of impossibly glamorous party tables with colour co-ordinated cupcakes and napkins and party favours? Well, I gave it a go. The theme was red, white and (two colours) blue bunting. Thank you to Creature Comforts Blog for the printable cake bunting and cupcake toppers (which also went on the party hats and party favour noodle boxes), to Sally of Tiddalids  for the beautiful fabric bunting (look closely  - or click on the picture to make it bigger - to see it in the tree behind the table), and to Kate Landers Events for the printable "happy birthday" bunting strung between the cake stands.

Tablecloth from Ikea, balloons from Balloons and Blooms, Crows Nest, noodle boxes and party hats from Spotlight, cupcake wrappers from Iced Affair and Kitchen Capers and paper plates from Woolworths (home brand!).