Outfit Love: Cosy Winter

Hiya, just a quick share. My Gran has been sorting out her cupboards and sent me some of her hand knit jerseys. I'm so touched that she thought of me in this regard. Some of the items are way too big, but I'll figure something out. Like this particular one I wore as a wrap and fixed it with a statement belt. It was so warm and cosy, it felt like I was wearing a blanket!

-It's a little more blue than this image portrays it, but doesn't it just look sooooo huggable and squishy? There is a brown-orangey one too, that one is slightly bigger than this one so I'll just have to see how it fits-

-I know know by now this hairstyle is old news, I just thought, since I haven't tried it yet and felt like doing something new with my hair…I received quite a bit of complements! It goes really quick and is quite easy to do. Check out this link for instructions-

Hope you had a lovely Tuesday!

xxx

Happy Monday Makings #17

Alrighty! It's Monday and I'm dead tired! That's not such a good thing seeing as it's only the beginning of the week. We're enjoying our Winter rain although it's bluddy freezing, I love the rain! The smell, the sound, the feeling of nostalgia… The need to get cosy and stuff myself with chocolates, delicious smelling, tasting hot beverages. When Dave comes home after work and says: "I'm making pancakes!" (not to confuse you but in South Africa we refer to crepes as pancakes). Anyway, it's the best!

Today I wanted to share with you my very first T-shirt Owl Buddy prototype. I designed this lil' guy for friends of ours' baby boy. I wanted to make him something special for his room. As the theme of his room is that of the most adorable forest friends and the main friend being an aspiring wise owl… I decided to make him an owl plush toy. When Mr. Owl was done, I thought: "wow! that went seemingly painless…" so I made another one. I now have two more waiting to be finished off and I received such awesome feedback from the proud mom, that I have decided to put pen to paper and will soon have diy kits available for sale on my online shop "in the making". So please tell me what you think, would you buy a kit like this? Would you enjoy making your own Mr. Owl? I might design Lady Owl as well, I think the girls would like that.

-Mr. Owl is made with 100% reclaimed materials! Recycled T-shirts and thrifted buttons. His inner is made up of fabric and yarn scraps that I have collected over the past year ~whenever I finish a project, I would gather all the off cuts of fabric, thread, yarn and even the fluff that comes from shaving down thrifted sweaters. I chuck it all into my "scraps baggy" and when there is enough, I use it to stuff plush toys with-  

-I hope little Christiaan enjoys his new friend, I made him with a lot of love-

I'm so looking forward to your comments, thoughts and advise on this little "big" project of mine.

Hope you had an awesome Monday!

xxx

  

Outfit Love: My Very Own

Oh my! I don't wish to complain the whole time… It's just sooo difficult when there is sooooo much to complain about. For one, I couldn't publish my Outfit Love post yesterday nor today due to some rather  irritating technical problems regarding my Mac and the internet constantly quitting for no reason. Ever since we upgrade to Mountain Lion, I experienced some misbehaviour. I really hope we don't have one of those very rare Apple viruses. As soon as I can find the time to do a system clean-up, we'll upgrade to Mavericks, hopefully that will sort our problems out.

Back to a happier, prettier topic now… You have probably all seen my HMM post on Monday, well this outfit is all about that post. About three years ago, I started to really LOVE rose prints. I searched for rose prints everywhere (locally) but couldn't find anything! Then to make matters worse, the internet and my favourite magazines were covered in roses, rose prints…roses everywhere! Everywhere but here! Eventually, I found a really nice pair of rose print jeggings at our local PnP Clothing outlet but that was it… Two years ago I found a hand sewn vintage blouse at Hospice with the most beautiful rose print, then that was it! So on my trip to Pretoria last year I hit the jackpot when I walked into Metro  (one of my favourite fabric stores). They had so many rose printed fabrics, I didn't know how to choose. The worst part was that I could only take a few pieces, as I was flying back, don't you just hate that? So I decided to take half meters of fabric so I'd have more of a variety of prints…okay, I did sneak in some large pieces as well, I just couldn't resist! The first rose print item I made was The Rose Swift dress which featured in my Outfit Love post A Rose Garden. Without further a due, here is my ultimate favourite, my very own, very first, rose printed pencil skirt! 

-Oh happiness! This skirt was such an achievement for me! My next challenge will be to actually work from a pattern, I'v never done that before. So wish me luck! The amazing thing about this skirt is how the outfits just put themselves together. It goes with so many the clothes that I have, it's the perfect game-changer! To tell you the truth, I've been so lost in "myself", not knowing who I am anymore. And as I said in another post, I find myself liking too many styles it feels I got lost somewhere in a vast forrest. Though this might seem a bit shallow, this skirt has become a symbol, a first step to finding myself again. I'm so excited! If this skirt turned out so great, I can't imagine what the future will be like-

-the cute lacey design necklace was a gift from my mom.

-my favourite polka dotty top I bought at Mr. Price years ago

-vintage leather belt is from our Animal Welfare shop

…and the rest (as they say) is history!

Hope you guys had an amazing day…

xxx

Outfit Love: Autumn Colours

What amazing Autumn weather we are having! It's raining and the wind is trying to blow our house down… I just love it! It's still quite warm at times, so if you're living in the Western Cape be sure to have a cardi or scarf handy. Layering is more than a trend here, it's a necessity. My friend Natasha says that since they moved here from Gauteng, she's been keeping a spare outfit in the car just incase. The weather is so unpredictable here! Today, I got a good workout from putting my jacket on and then taking it off…putting it back on and then taking it off again. 

- I love this look! Everything just seemed to go together, almost as if they were purchased together-

• you might recognise my winter flower brooch from this post
• the corduroy blazer was a gift from my aunt Zelda - love it!
• Autumn Foilage dress from my HMM post here
• leather "biker" belt, thrifted
• turquoise tights from Woolworths
• mustard flats with cutesy bows from Cotton On

-here's a pic without the blazer, so you can see how cute the dress is! I can already see soooo many outfit possibilities forming around this dress, I can't wait to play with more colours and textures-

  

-these colours have inspired me to make more of these flower brooches, I still have a few bits left of this fabric…some new wintery accessories might be born from this outfit yet-

Hope you had an amazing Tuesday!

xxx

Outfit Love: Summer Wrap… and a Happy Birthday, Blog!

I cannot believe I almost missed it, again! There is just so much going on… some of you might have noticed that I haven't quite been myself this year. For some reason I just cannot get myself to wright posts and when I do they seem to come out rather depressing. I would rather refrain from blogging to keep this my "happy place", than force myself to blog when I'm under a dark cloud.

Today's outfit precedes the Happy Monday Makings post which was supposed to be yesterday, instead it will be posted the following Monday. I hope that's alright with you gals…

-This skirt was made from thrifted T-shirt fabric. I'm wearing my new favourite vintage-leather belt again. My handmade goldfish earrings and a beaded necklace I made years ago-

Except for my shoes and belt, my outfit is all handmade!

  

-Originally I tried out the Side Braid, but as I still have a lot of layers it didn't look too good. I decided to just make the braid into a bun and it work perfectly! What do you think?-

Hope you had an Amazing Tuesday!

xxx

Outfit Love: Minty &Fresh

Wow! Tuesday, huh? Everyday I'm more amazed at how fast time flies! Here we are, with Autumn literally around the corner when it seems Summer has just arrived. Even though it's still very hot here in our little town, I can see, smell and feel a change in the air. Shadows are becoming longer, the sun is setting earlier… I must say that I am secretly awaiting cooler weather. I have a lot of knitting to learn and will be teaching crochet classes real soon.

Today's outfit, as it turns out, might be one of my favourites! I'm wearing my Happy Monday Makings #10 and I simply love it! It's flowy, light and thought it is boxy it still has a sexy element to it. Now, I have to admit, I'm not so good at sexy. I always feel uncomfortable wearing revealing clothes, but now that I turned 30… I feel the need to dress more like a woman and less like a cutesy girl. So feel free to join me on this journey to find my more grown-up style and please do leave a comment with advice or just to say hi or whatever… ha! I'm rambling! Back to the outfit then.

-As you know, I made the Minty box top. 

-My genuine leather, vintage belt is from a local thrift store.

-The denim pencil skirt is from Mr. Price (long time ago).

-My lovely stiletto's are from Fashion Express

    -I just love how "the tuck" can make such a huge difference to an outfit! Smart-casual, classy yet relaxed… Oh, I forgot to mention, all my accessories are made by me! Yay! Finally a post with all-handmade accessories! Accept for my rings, of course-

Hope you had a lovely Tuesday!

xxx

Project a Day: #16 Another Owly for Leia

My goodness! I cannot believe where time has taken us! My little niece, Leia, has turned 3! Unfortunately, due to work, Dave and I couldn't celebrate her birthday with her. So I sent our present with my parents when they went to George for Leia's birthday.

 -this is my very first fabric yarn, loom knit. I used old T-shirts to make the yarn and felt off-cuts for the appliquéd bits. This owly is also a fibre scrap gobbler. I threw all my off-cuts into a bag over time and used it to stuff this owly. Talk about recycling-

-Thanks to my mom for posting the photo above, on my Facebook. Apparently, Leia was so excited when she saw this big owl. My mom says Leia just couldn't leave it alone. Nothing makes me happier than knowing that my handmade goodies make their recipients happy-  

xxx

Project a Day: #14 Mori Girl Necklet

It seems our winter has only just begun. It is freezing today! Today's project was inspired by all the lovely Japanese flower scarves I've been seeing on Pinterest. Go to my love crochet board to see some of the pretty ones I've pinned. For this "necklet" I used this crochet flower pattern and then I kinda just made it up as I went along. So I guess you can say I just created a pattern.

 -for this pattern, I used half a skein of Spice, Double Knitting. It's lovely for an Acrylic yarn, very soft on the hands while working it. Almost no yarn was wasted, the only off-cuts were from the finishing off(a few tiny pieces)-

 -At last this outfit is complete! I made this body con skirt last year but couldn't get an outfit together that "spoke to me". This year I found the forrest green tights at Fashion Express, the waterfall card at Meltz and now my Mori Girl Necklet has brought this outfit together perfectly-

xxx 

Project a Day: #13 I made an Owlknit

Ah, what lovely rainy weather we've been having. It's so good to be back on my blog again! I've missed out on so many of my fellow bloggers' posts, I can't wait to catch up. So, how perfect is this? That my 30 Projects challenge would pick up right where I left off...

So many has happened in the past two months, I'm sure we all could attest that. Our Paster's wife, Tinneke, had her baby shower in June and they're expecting a girl (Kristen). I've had this idea for a while now and finally had the opportunity to test it. A little, plush, knitted owl whom I call: Orea. She is an Owlknit. Orea is a real softy and she loves staying awake at night to watch over her soon to be born friend.

   -and just for the fun of it, I added this cute, pink, rubber ducky and pink ice-cream bubbles. Just to round it off, what would a gift from me be without an OddOneOut postcard-

-Orea was hand knitted with much love and carefully assembled. I do hope that little Kristen will enjoy having her around. Aw, isn't she a cutey?-

PS. Did you see my new knitting needles? Aren't they lovely? Since I've started knitting, I've realised that the size of your needles makes a huge difference, so I'm starting to collect some needles.

xxx   

30 Days of Dresses: Dress #27

It's been a long Tuesday... We've been having our winter rain, it's the most amazing feeling to wake up during the night with the sound of raindrops against the window pane. Ha! I just thought of my previous post, I did it at 2AM and Dave only got round to reading it now. He pointed out that I made some terrible spelling mistakes. I told him that it was on account of the early morning hour I wrote the post, my concentration wasn't quite what it should've been. I will go and fix those mistakes now, I promise!

So this lovely dressy was almost thrown out a couple of times. It just never seemed to go with anything I had. Just as I was going to get rid of it for good this time, I dug it out of a storage bin and tried it on one more time. This time I think we have a winner! It's awesome how (sometimes) an outfit creates itself.   

 -the dress is from Mr.Price about 7 years ago, I've probably worn it twice. Now I'll definately wear it more often. My all time favourite scarf, Dave bought for me whilst on honeymoon. It's form a spinning mill somewhere in the Midlands Meander, Natal. This awesome scarf is made from all natural sheeps wool, carded, hand-spun and knitted by ladies on a farm. It's a little scratchy, but I love it-

 

-just a detail shot of my "Mori Girl" dress and my lovely scarf-

-enjoy the rest of your day-

xxx

Happy Monday Makings #8

As the cooler weather is slowly creeping in, I thought it a great opportunity to use this cute hand warmer diy I pinned last winter. This diy calls for microwavable fabric so make sure that you use natural fibers such as pure wool, 100% cotton, 100% linen (not silk, as you can think it would just disintegrate). Luckily I found a sizable piece of pure woolen felt in one of the bags of scraps the Gillian gave me. It seems to have been packaging or lining for a Louis Vuitton product, the logo was printed onto it in gold. It was perfect for my little project!

   -remember, the thread you use needs to be natural as well, I used cotton thread to sew my pieces together and pure woolen yarn for the embroidered detail- 

xxx

Happy Monday Makings #7

How time flies! Monday already!? So here's what I made today... using scraps of various types of fabric collected over a period of time. I have started to sort all my thrifted and "hand-me-down" fabric into colour stories. This colour story is rich and luxurious, it carries a bit of a Medieval era mystery. Don't you think? I love how it turned out... I found a new fabric flower pattern here.

-love, rouge, velvet-

Happy Monday Makings #6

Happy Monday, Friends! It is such a lovely day here in Hermanus, it seems that winter came early this year. There's an chill in the breeze, the sun is dimmed yet hot and the shadows are so very long. This coming weekend I'm taking part in a local market, hosted in the Sandbaai Hall here in Hermanus. Their theme is Recycle, Reuse, Re- claim and so on... As most of my products are already made of fabrics sourced from local charity shops, I was asked to exhibit at this market. So now I'm working on some new ranges, experimenting with new floral patterns, for winter.

 -this pretty was inspired by the little navy piece above, I found it in a bag filled with scraps and offcuts, it had already been sewn. As I went through the rest of the bag I found this lovely Teal hem offcut and thought it the perfect opportunity to try out this folded rose pattern with leaves-

-and there you have it-

xxx

  

Outfit Love: Archive #4

Oh happy day! We now have an internet connection! Now I can get back to daily posting:) I haven't had the time to do a current Outfit Love post so here is another Archival Outfit. This was the very first time I wore this dress. I found it in one of my beloved local charity shops, I can't quite remember which one, as it was 3 years ago. I still have it and should really wear it more often. It seems to be a 1960's dress with pussy-bow detail and the belt is covered in the same fabric as the dress which is just adorable!

 -the silver heart locket from Silver Planet, was an anniversary gift from Dave for our third year of dating.

-the waterfall vest I got from Mr.Price, it has lovely lace detail on the back.

-my Vintage Dress was hand made by some vintage lady with killer sewing skills!

-my lovely beaded bow clip was given to me by my lovely Korean sister-in-law, Yuseon-

-at some stage I wore this clip every other day so I thought I'd give it a bit of a break when it started to become a bit fragile. 

xxx

Happy Monday Makings #3

Okay.... I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Can you believe we're standing at the end of 2012?! With only 15 days 'till Christmas, 19 days 'till we move to our new home and 21 days 'till 2013! Not to mention all the December birthdays in between... So on this Monday, the 10th of December, a cold and windy overcast day, I decided to share with you my new Pink Roses. These are painstakingly made by cutting hundreds of little pieces of fabric, melting each and every little piece and then assembling them into these lovelies. They are then sewn together by hand with beaded details to make them oh so pretty. Most of the fabric I use is sourced from local thrift- and charity stores, some of my fabric is donated by my lovely readers and now and then my fashion designer aunt would send me her off-cuts. I see potential in everything, so this heap of off-cuts just became a lovely garden of pink roses.

-amazing how this bunch of pink can brighten up one's day-

xxx

Happy Monday Makings #2

Happy Monday friends! What a crazy-crazy year this has been...and even crazier past week! Through all the madness and having my posts heaping up like, I don't know what... I just had to share this quick post with you guys. I made this with the scraps I had left over from making my first ever crochet jacket (I will post this as soon as I've worked in all the ends:)) I hate wasting anything! I make full use of everything I work with... and I almost never throw anything away. I've been told that I'm a hoarder, but then you can't be an artist and not collect things... Just imagine this pretty necklace would've been in the bin had I not been a collector of "trash".   

-this was so easy to make-
-it took a bit long, though, the french knitting part-

-the pictures are pretty self explanatory, don't you think?-

-love my French knitting doll, an old school friend gave her to me-

-Thank you Katinka, I'm taking good care of her-

  -hope you like it and that you had a nice Monday-

xxx

Happy Monday Makings, YAY!

It wasn't such a Happy Monday, as I had a terrible headache for most of it. What made  my day was the makings of this Monday:) I've been seeing a lot of statement necklaces around and have a little baggy of turquoise acrylic drop beads that I've had since forever and never quite knew what to make with them. They are such a pretty colour and I could not get it over my heart to get rid of them. So inspired by the latest jewellery trends, here is my Happy Monday Makings!

 

-this lovely piece didn't even take an hour to make, I can't wait to wear it-

xxx

 

Another prezzy for Leia...

Dear little Leia,

This lovely cushion was handmade just for you for your 2nd birthday. I used all the colours of the owl and bunting flags I made you, they should all look quite pretty together now. These handmade gifts are all little additions to your room, so that even though we can't see you that often you can know that we love you and think of you always.

Your aunt Chane' and uncle David<3 p="p">

-crochet pattern from Ravelry, by Penny at Create, found via Pinterest-

xoxo

Outfit Love: warm vintage browns

So...I had this bag full of off-cuts my Gran gave me a few years back and the other day I decided to go through it. Guess what I found? Rolled in a bundle and tied up was the hem of one of my Gran's vintage dresses which she probably shortened and couldn't get herself to throw the excess fabric away. So I decided to make myself a bodycon skirt.

• Thrifted Crochet Scarf - a lovely warm vintage brown scarf
• Fabric Brooch - an OddOneOut Vintage Range from R40 each
• Carved Shell Necklace - Found this beauty in Matchbox, it was only R10, I had to replace the chain, but now it's good as new.
• Knit Pullover - from Mr.Price, they have them in a variety of colours, but this one goes with almost everything<3
• Bodycon Skirt - Here it is, my one hour skirt. Yes, it was that quick and easy to make. I will doing a d.i.y. on a similar one soon.
• Leggings - also from Mr. P, love them!  

   -This gorgeous bag, my Gran made me when I was still studying, she saw me struggling with my heavy library books when I visited one day and the next time I saw here she gave this bag to me. Now isn't this necklace just something else?-

xxx

Hello Bunny &Bunny!

You remember the vintage bunny my friend from Matchbox lent me, right? Well, after struggling and drinking lots of coffee, I finally did it! I had to correct the pattern a few times and I must say, I wasn't so sure it was going to work. 

After cutting out all the pieces, the hard work started. I wanted my vintage replica bunny to have that same vintage feel, so I did all the sewing by hand. What a job! It took forever, but when I finally finished, I was quite amazed at the creature staring back at me.

- well hello there my old and new bunny friends! Aren't you two handsome fellas?-

My replica bunny was made especially for my friend Adrienn as a gift for her unborn. When they learned they were expecting a boy, I thought that bunny needed a bow tie rather than a flower. Doesn't he look smart? I hope he will be the cause of many joyous memories in his new home<3

xxx