Thrift Store Purse Quick Fix and Supporting The QLD Flood Victims

I picked up this cute bag at my local thrift store recently. Its quite functional and was still in great condition so I decided to embellish it with a few rosettes. I used some solid green cotton fabric to create three rosettes then glued them onto the bag using my hot glue gun. I decided to donate the bag to the silent auctions being hosted by Your Creative Journey! The donations from the auctions are going to help support the QLD flood victims. Being a Queenslander it was really hard to watch the floods in the news and see all the suffering especially when one of the major floods was in my home town of Brisbane. Brisbane and the other parts of QLD that were affected by the recent floods have a long road to recovery but if I know queenslanders I know they are tough, and they are survivors. Sherry Mendoza is the lovely lady behind Your Creative Journey and I recently (finally) met her at CHA. She is doing amazing things these days, in particular organizing the Prima roadshow down under. Anyhow this is one of the projects that I donated to the auction. Gotta love a good thrift store find and transforming it into something cute. Visit Sherry's blog to learn more about her and the auctions to support the QLD flood victims.

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Welcome To The World - Baby Gift Idea

This past weekend I was supposed to co host a baby shower for a friend at work. She still had 4 weeks to go with her pregnancy and we thought we had timed it well. But things don't always go to plan! The morning of the shower her water broke and she was on her way to the hospital. Mum and bub are doing great! I guess we will instead do a "welcome to the world" party for the mum and baby (girl) since we couldn't do the shower. I'm looking forward to giving her this gift that I created though. Since I created the gift before I knew that she was having a girl I tried to keep the style gender friendly. I simply used a iron on transfer by Prima Marketing and transferred it onto a plain white onesie. Simple! And to compliment the tree on the onesie I packaged it in a repurposed Trader Joes gift bag that I had created and had published in GreenCraft Volume 4.

A Handmade Girly Gift

We celebrated my nieces 2nd birthday yesterday and since I have been on a "handmade gift" roll recently I decided to alter this plain white t-shirt for my niece. Currently I'm crazy for gingham so I decided to do a few fabric flower yoyos in red gingham. I'm so mad for it that gingham will be the pattern of choice at my daughter 5th birthday party that is approaching... So I simply created three yoyos and machine sewed them onto the shirt, then with some thin strips of brown fabric I sewed the stems on. Finally I hand stitched a button onto the center of each flower. Just be careful using buttons if you are creating wearables for a small child (choking hazard) so if the child still a peanut then leave out the buttons. If you want to learn how to create the fabric yoyos then watch my demo in this free how-to video.

2011 Resoultion #1

With the new year here i have been thinking today about my resolutions for 2011. As i was hanging up my new 2011 Papaya Art calendar this morning I was thinking about the Papaya organizer i had in 2010 and how much I will miss it... In case you never got to see or own of these lovelies i have posted a picture below.

I think the cover of the organizer pretty much says it all, right? Simply follow your bliss. Dream, Vision, Create, Imagine. I also love the cover of the accordion folder inside the organizer. Life In Progress.

While looking back through the organizer and its inspiring pages I realized that the beautiful inner pages cant go to waste, they are just too pretty!

So one of my goals for 2011 will be to green craft these pages into something special. Crafting a greener world will be more of a priority.

So as I'm hanging up new 2011 calendar....
i cant help but get excited about the green crafting potential of my 2011 calendar!

If you are ever in need of a little green craft inspiration pick up a copy of GreenCraft magazine. Another favorite of mine for green inspiration is the Crafting a Green World website.

My Ten Minute Asymmetrical Necklace

I was so excited when i put together this necklace in less than ten minutes!! I'm not exactly a "jewelry artist" so this was the perfect jewelry project as a beginner. The Vintage Groove line by Making Memories makes is so easy! After I create a project the next step is to photograph it, which can sometimes be a real challenge... I decided to prop it on a dress form and grabbed the first shirt i saw in the stash of "clothes props" at work. I feel like it was the perfect choice! This picture actually ended up taking much less time than i thought so I was one happy camper. One of my biggest influences for style comes from my favorite store - Anthropologie. I'm starting to see how that reflects my photography sometimes! Everyone is (usually) their own worst critic and I'm usually pretty hard on myself but for once I couldn't be happier with the end result - project and photo!!