Community "Digital Estate Planning" WIP (Cont.)

(10 Apr 2013) Here's a quick shot of where I'm at - Troy is done, almost time to start on my absolute favourite - Britta! 

(19 Feb 2013) I've made some decent progress on this over the few months considering how much time I've spent away or otherwise occupied. I'm currently sitting at 48% completion! I aim to be halfway by the end of the week, which is a pretty achievable goal.

So we have one-and-a-half new characters since I last posted an update which is super exciting! 

Back to windows today, which is less exciting, but repetitive in a relaxing way. But first - it's getting a good iron today to get it back into a reasonable shape as the hoop is really taking its toll. 

Painted bead necklaces

Well it's been a while hey? It's been a busy few months of holidaying, adjusting to getting back to work, dealing with some illness and, of course, crafting.

I had a few ideas running around in my head about painted bead necklaces while I was on holidays (one inspired by this fantastic nail polish), so I ordered myself a batch and started experimenting.

I painted all my test beads with some cheap acrylic paint and covered with a spray on clear gloss. 

The blue and grey on the left was totally painted by hand, though I had the good sense to use masking tape on the half painted beads on the right. There are a lot of beaded necklaces around at the moment but most seem to just be strung on a chain or string so I decided to be a little different and make them into drop pendants. Of course eye and head pins are hard to come by at the length I needed so I had to make my own. I had a coil of jewellers wire but my poor little snips just didn't want to cut it! I improvised by making the eye pins out of some gardening wire stripped of the rubber coating.

The glitter was my own creation - a mixture of some superfine glitters - mostly blue with some green, silver, grey, gold and purple. I wanted it to have a bit of a celestial look and I'm really happy with the colour. So I now have two new pendants that I quite like but I'm still undecided on what I should hang them from. Any ideas?

Happy holidays!

Last year I had a totally handmade Xmas, and though I didn't commit as fully again this year I did try my hand at embroidery for the first time and made a pretty owl cushion for my sister. Luckily I picked up the stitches pretty quickly as I'd given myself a pretty tight schedule to get it finished. If you like the pattern, I bought it from this Etsy shop - there are heaps of other cute patterns there too.

I also got this awesome gift of sewing machine and a filled up sewing box. I'm so keen to start learning, but wont have time for a little while - I'm currently road tripping up the Queensland coast to spend New Years Eve in Port Douglas. I'm super excited to see the Great Barrier Reef for the first time!

Festival collage

I admit it - I probably spend thousands every year on music. Most of this goes towards gigs and festivals - one festival now costs in excess of $500 for the weekend - so it adds up pretty quickly. I've been hooked on live music for longer than I can remember - literally. My first concert was John Farnham when I was probably 3 years old and all I can remember about that night was that I was allowed to have a mint flavoured Drumstick icecream (still a favourite, 25 years later). I don't remember anything about the actual concert itself.

My first music festival was the 2000 Big Day Out, featuring my absolute-favourite-at-the-time band Blink 182. I've been collecting ticket stubs, wristbands and leftover drink tickets for over 12 years and have just had them sitting around in an envelope/small box/bigger box just waiting to be displayed in my ultimate dream  glass top coffee table, which I hope to be showing on this blog one day once I find the perfect table within my price range.

For now though, my festival tickets/wristbands/drink tickets are now framed and on display - yes, that 2000 Big Day Out ticket is in there! The rest of my tickets? Still in that box, waiting on a bigger frame/dream coffee table.

Triangle Necklaces

I love triangles! For my first attempt at some wooden jewellery I thought I'd play it safe and stick to the basics and triangles are about as basic as it gets when it comes to shapes. Circles are near impossible. Squares have to be too perfect. Triangles, however - take any three sided shape and it will still look awesome (according to me anyway).

I made two different styles, the first was a three triangle dual colour double sided piece. The two colours are reversed in layout on the back.

The next was a bigger solitary triangle and some more experimentation. The border of this is coated with flocking powder, so it has a textured suede like finish. It really added something extra, though in hindsight white was not the best colour to team with tiny clingy black fibres. Lesson learned!

Starting simple means you can really go crazy with colour/size/texture combinations, and I had so much fun making these that I will probably end up with one to match everything I own!

Fabric covered boxes

Yesterday was the start of summer storms - yay! Not only did the heat finally break a little, I had every excuse to stay indoors and be productive. I had intended to start with cleaning but... cleaning?? Blerg. Instead I went with cooking and creating.

I had already planned on making some delicious Corn & Black Bean Quesadillas for dinner, so I made up a massive batch of black beans. Well worth the time to buy dried beans and re-hydrate them yourself - the 500g tub I got is going to end up making around 2kg. I also made this super tasty Roast Zucchini Salsa which I recommend everyone make - so incredibly delicious.


Then I painted my nails in this incredible neon green - China Glaze 'I'm With the Lifeguard'. Not the best coverage - two coats and slightly patchy - but still a pretty amazing colour.




Lately I've been obsessing over people's organised homes on Pinterest. I look around at my bomb site and shudder... why can't everything have a place (and be put in it)? I have so much scrap fabric around the place, and empty tissue/shoe boxes seemed like a perfect fit for under my bathroom shelf - so I put the two together, added some ribbon, and voila!

The fabric is glued to the boxed with modge podge, and the ribbon was my first opportunity to use my glue gun - so much fun! While they aren't the most incredible looking things in the world, for their purpose I think they turned out great. Here they are in their new home:

There goes October

All quiet on the blog front lately huh? Seems I've been busy, though looking at what I've done  craft-wise in the last 6 weeks it really doesn't seem like much!

I think my problem is my growing nail polish addiction - wet nails are not really conducive to getting things done. This morning 6 new Essie polishes arrived at my door, I scored them for $7 a pop! Bargain!

I did complete one new project in October - revamp of an old unloved corkboard with a splash of paint and bonus features.

It is now our 'life organisation board', with a menu, mini whiteboard shopping list, calendar, and regular old corkboard space for bills and other reminders.

The headers were done with paint on foam stamps and the menu/calendar sheets are ink stamps (I think I developed a thing for stamping after making this bag), the calendar weeks are mounted on magnetic strips and can move at my will.

I'm planning on making up for my October laziness though - Lincraft were having 30% off storewide this weekend so I stocked up on some DMC floss and picked up some flocking powder and a glue gun. All of that only cost me $40! I just need to find a reason to try out that glue gun...

I haven't used flocking powder before, but I hear it's used for scrapbooking and creating a velvety texture on surfaces. My interest purely stems from this post on xojane - textured nails! If I hadn't just done a new design this morning I would be getting straight into it, but I'll just have to be patient.






Aaaand finally, an update on my Community cross stitch - Jeff Winger complete! Finishing another character has totally renewed my enthusiasm for this piece (not to mention a recent rewatch of Season 3) so I'm hoping to show you all Annie Edison soon. Until then, here's the current progress: