Craft Schmaft

We’ve been in this new house of ours for eight months now. One of the things that I love about this place is the huge garden. It’s filled with a random assortment of Australian native, tropical and country cottage trees and plants. I’m a tropical garden kind of girl, I spent years at our last place nurturing things like frangipanis. Despite the slightly schizo effect of the new greenspace, I decided to spend a year watching, getting a feel for all the seasons before going too crazy. .

Three things have come to my attention:

1.   The previous owner had a thing for purple – everything blooms in purple.
2.   The previous owners dog failed at fetch – there are half buried toys everywhere
3.   The garden is quite edible – lilli pilli, olives, apple tree and bay.

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In a moment of domestic-godess-ness (they don’t happen all that often so I feel the need to note it), I went out and picked the lilli pilli berries that adorn the gigantic hedge out the front. I cleaned, de-seeded and made jam with them. I felt quite virtuous but, to be honest, I hated the jam. They were far more beautiful as raw berries. Goddess fail. A slight reprieve in that Mr Schmaft likes it.

Next we harvested the olives. I’d like to get all godess-ish again but I’m not quite sure I’m up for all the pickling that needs to go on before we can eat them.

They may just get donated to our lovely italian friends who a really very good at that sort of thing. We’ll see. I have a feeling I should stick to crafting

There has been progress (despite Ingrid’s “what???are you STILL doing that” at Craft Room meet up on Thursday :))

I blame this lot, by the end of a day with these munckins all I’m capable of is collapsing on the couch. Between superheros, rescues, soccer, bike riding and beach time there isn’t even enough energy to pick up a needle… but I wouldn’t change any of that for the world.

The past couple of days have been all about hot air balloons. I’m turning Frankie’s balloon mobile into a pattern which should have been fairly straightforward … at least it would have been if I didn’t start tinkering around with the balloon shapes and sizes. Tall… short and round…. how to finish off the base… I think the chevron shape is the one to go with but definitely more work required!

Being on hold on the phone for 40 minutes induced doodling on one of the white prototypes. It felt kinda wrong drawing on that fabric, like I was defacing my own handiwork. Perhaps it was that I’d stolen the nearest kids coloured marker to do it and had my own “only on paper Franklin… do NOT draw on the walls” mother voice to contend with. Thinking about it (whilst slowly going insane with kenny G type music) I like the idea of hand drawn fabric. I may even just have to give that a go over on spoonflower.

There were moments when I didn’t know if I’d make it through 2011… what a crazy year. Too crazy. Looking back (insert compulsory New Year reflective moment) it was the year of the wrong turn. I was driving along the freeway of life when suddenly I saw a big shiny exit sign. A sign to the bright lights of madtown, a place I’d spent my roaring twenties. A place of good times, great people and gargantuan parties. “ooohhh….It’ll be great” I told myself ” Let’s go there!”.

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Umm… no.

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See madtown, for all it’s shiny, cool, creative, hip-ness,  simply isn’t kid friendly (no matter what the new sign says). And in the choice between reading pitch documents and reading bedtime stories… I choose bedtime stories. I’m also choosing fish fingers over very fancy dinners but let’s not talk about that.

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Hello 2012!

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This is the year of The Craft, people. This year I will be focusing on Craft Schmaft and I am so excited about getting stuck into it. I plan on releasing new softie patterns, heading to markets around Oz, doing lots of blogging and even branching out into other areas of crafty design.  I’m also going to be running The Craft Room for the northern beaches which I’m very pumped for. It’s going to be a year of family, friends and  lots of fun.

So thank you for sticking by me in 2011, I hope to be far more fun to be around in 2012.

xoxoxo

Goodbye craft fail, hello decoupage placemat! Just 3 more to go for the set but I’m happy to report that I have managed to get the map onto the old placemat and put two coats of sealing glue on top without wrinkling and bubbles. Well, thank god for that.

I have to say that with access to an adhesive machine at work I may cheat and stick the next three down without glue but for today, victory is sweet. Thanks to Tas of Litte Boozle for the tip on applying the glue to the paper first, genius!

I just couldn’t help it. I fell in love with Paula Prass’ new Botanika fabric. I even slept on it last night, woke up this morning and still had to have it. That and an Amy Butler pattern for The Charm Clutch. It’s not even my style but the thought of a bag with contrasting botannical illustration and that chevron, perhaps lined with black linen just does it for me.

I wasn’t sure how this would go, not having touched watercolours since uni. On Saturday I pulled out the heaviest card stock I had in my hoarded stash from uni days (yes you read that correctly, I have been hoarding said paper for over fifteen years).  A couple of rough brushes, one stolen from the kid’s crayola set, and I was set. The thing about painting is that there’s no undo button. After years of designing on computers this tends to freak me out, even though I know that the greatest beauty is often in mistakes… unintended. I tried to do these quickly without too much thought and parts of them are terrible but I think there are enough little gems to warrant scanning them in and seeing what I can layer together for a digital fabric print.

I like the swirling, curved lines but I have a feeling that the more square and geometic ones will work better on fabric.