The book of marbled papers comes in handy again

Silhouettes printed from internet images, cut, stuck to the rear of the patterned paper, cut again and stuck to card.

Step by step marble cake

My very own cake wreck

The spelling mistake was in fact deliberate. The Kindergarten (pre-school) teaching aide was leaving, so we  had a farewell cake. The cake reflected the fact that when the children met her, they found it almost impossible to pronounce her name - Miss Loth. The best variation was "Miss Fluff". I fear that if she keeps teaching 4 years old, she will never hear her name pronounced correctly! Luckily she is very good humoured about it.

All I needed was a little inspiration

Yes, been a while since I've been here. But inspired by How About Orange's origami dress card (right), and a book on marbling paper being discarded by the local library (and full of full colour plates of marbled effects), I whipped these up:


(I think I could learn something from How About Orange's photo styling.....)

A dolphin cake for Thomas

White chocolate tinted with black food colouring makes grey! Perfect for piping dolphin shapes.

Life goes on

A new year, a new school and new school clothing to label. No reason it can't be done creatively! Inspired by a Craft Gossip post featuring a project by RadMegan of In Words and Pictures, Austin's hat will stand out from the crowd.

Template cut from paper (printed from PC)

Chalk used to outline letters

Hand embroidered

Finished!

A Missoni Maxi!

Yes, got my hands on even more missoni fabric - this time from the fabulous Gorgeous Fabrics, who called it the "Super Fabulous Milan Novelty Knit - Multi." Maxis being the in thing right now, I calculated that a generously cut yard would go around me, and be long (wide) enough to fit from shoulder to floor. Fortunately Gorgeous Fabrics do cut generously, and this is the result.

80% of the dress was completed in one night - the divine Sarah, who actually went to fashion school, pinned the fabric onto me, we sewed, cut, sewed some more, bound the neckline, cut the binding off the neckline, re-cut and re-sewed the neckline, drank wine and shifted furniture, all in about 3 and a half hours. The binding on the arms was completed in another hour, another day. Sarah tried to get me to use a pattern, but when you are built like a stick and have a tank top you can copy, who needs a pattern? As I kept saying, "let's wing it!" And we did!



Cardmaking with Vintage Papercuts

See Vintage Papercuts for details of how to purchase.

A patriotic patch

Before

During

After

(And I'm not even Bristish). Inspired by Make it and Love it (via Craft Gossip), I mended a hole in Austin's jeans with some striped fabric:

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the play

We held a Gruffalo birthday party for Austin for his 4th birthday. We acted out the story ("The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson). The family played all the parts - Austin (4 that day) was the Mouse, Thomas, (7) was the Fox, the Owl and the Snake and Jonathon (old enough to know better) was the Gruffalo. Bronwyn narrated. Click here to see the video.

Some stills:

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the costumes

The Mouse - felt ears and a furry tail

Ears sewn onto an elastic headband

The Fox - an orange jumper, cat mask
painted in fox colours, and two pieces
of fur to make a bushy tail

The Owl - wings inspired by Prudent Baby
and round glasses

The Gruffalo - more fur than you ever want to see, cut into pieces and sewn onto a t-shirt.
Purple spikes, horns and tusks made of felt. Orange sunglasses from eBay

 

Baby Gruffalos - felt horns and fur ears

sewn onto elastic headbands for all guests

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the games

Well, there was really only one game (apart from "Mouse Mouse Gruffalo", a version of "Duck Duck Goose"), and that was "Stick the Wart on the Gruffalo's Nose"!  I printed a picture of the Gruffalo's head onto two A4 sheets of paper and stuck them together. Then I bought some green stickers and cut them into wart shapes (you could use dots, but I couldn't find any poisonous green ones in time). I wrote the guest's names on the stickers too, so we knew who stuck what, where!

Even the Gruffalo got into the game!

To download the poster from a Google Docs site (works best if you are a gmail user) (printable on 2 x A4 pages), click here (documents called "Stickthewart").

Or, right click on these thumbnails to open in a new window and print them:

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the party favours

The possibilities offered by the story of "The Gruffalo" for take home party bags were most entertaining - mouse droppings (chocolate covered sultanas), snakes (lolly snakes) and poisonous warts (again) (yoghurt covered sultanas dyed green with food colouring). No prizes for guessing which ones we had left over at the end....

Update May 2014 - After many requests for the lolly bag labels, I've uploaded the photos of the label sheets, below. They are designed to print on 3 x A4 sheets of paper, portrait orientation. Right click on them (if a Windows user) and select "open in new window". You can print from there.

Please contact me (click on my name in the "About me" space, top left) if you have any queries or difficulties with the downloads. And feel free to leave a comment saying "thanks". It makes me feel nice.

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the food

Readers familiar with "The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson will recall that there are a number of references to food in the book, making catering for a Gruffalo party pretty easy....

There's roasted fox
(potato wedges)

and there's scrambled snake
(made into sausage rolls)

there's owl icecream
(idea from My Cake School
via Craft Gossip)

There are also lots of other ideas in the book for turning into food - the Gruffalo's purple prickles (blue corn chips) and poisonous warts (green grapes). The birthday cake showed the story's hero, the mouse, sitting on a log in the deep, dark, wood....