Blogging Blues

Oh my Word! What a mission! I've had such difficulty connecting to the internet this past week... Just trying to get on to my sign-in page was a nightmare. I would click on a link and be able to go make coffee and drink it, just to come back to a blank screen that says it's done loading. As soon as something starts happening, the connection would drop me. So now I managed to get something done, at last! I'm still not quite comfortable in these "new shoes". I'm trying to customize my blog to get my own stamp on it, but is more difficult than I thought. I'm going to try to design something "home made" for my blog-spot, so please bare with me. You'll probably see a few changes until I'm settled and comfy with the appearance of my blog...

Making and wrapping gifts

The time has come for Tricia's(my sister-in-law) baby shower! The theme is "white&silver", as they don't yet know whether they're expecting a boy or girl. Just spent some time in the shops picking out some cute baby clothes now it's time to wrap it up...

I found an old cellphone box and sprayed it it white, then I scratched around in my "recycle" paper stash for some silver. Here is what I used to wrap her prezies.

Something was missing... a card! So, off to the computer to design a card using Photoshop's "OnOne" plug-in.

And that's it all wrapped up! The card slides in behind the "baby" cut out of the silver paper which is neatly tied up with silver satin ribbon. The smaller prezy is wrapped with silver re-used tissue paper, two hearts cut out of the last scraps of silver and white paper( the white heart being slightly bigger than the silver one). I glued the two hearts one on top of the other and sewed on a white button. The small prezy was then made up with white satin ribbon as a finishing touch.

Here's me and Tricia at her Baby shower, she's really got a glow to her.

Oh, I almost forgot, the next day is Tricia's birthday...another present is needed! I decided to make her a crochet brooch to go with the denim outfit she had recently purchased. As always everything I used to make this brooch is being re-used! I also made her a matching bead and button necklace but I cannot seem to find a photo of it anywhere.

Wrapping this gift was a little more fun! I used old newspaper adds and I wrapped each present in about five layers, then I wrapped them together in another three layers. I then wrote her a message on the package with a black marker and tied it up with a Jute string... :-)  

A March of many birthdays...

Hello again... March was quite a crazy month. Besides all of the crazy things that filled the month of March, there were Birthdays galore! So where do I start, in all there were nine birthday's and one baby shower. Naturally I handmade all the presents, but having had so much going on in March already, I had limited time and materials... Then one night at about midnight, I got some great ideas! For the funky yet sophisticated, I decided to crochet and make flower brooches( as I learned how to crochet flowers recently). I like to know a persons favourite colour and style, before I make them their gift. To me a gift is only worth giving if the person you're giving it to freaks out when they open their little package! And off course, it's always made with love! What I love most about giving gifts, is watching the reaction of the person receiving the gift!

Coming back to the crochet flowers, these have been made with scraps of wool(my Granny Oriel gives me her left over woolen scraps), Scraps of material(left over from my sewing projects), buttons from second hand shops and safety pins from our local R5,00-shop. The cards I put the brooches on, are old pamphlets I designed for an event I participated in.

Now, for the teenagers I made button badges from the same pamphlets as mentioned above. I painted some doodles in inc, cut them out and voila!

Oh, then I saw a piece of material that I had silkscreen printed as an experiment and thought it would make the perfect badge for the boys! I can't remember when last I had so much Fun! I was busy till about three in the morning... it paid off because they all went nuts about their prezies!