Christmas Crafting

Now that Christmas is over I can share some of the homemade things I did for Christmas presents :-) I will say that even though I find crafting fun, crafting to a deadline when you have 2 little boys to look after is STRESSFUL... Thanks to both my parents and the in-laws for all the baby-sitting! I think I'm going to have to start Christmas crafting in say June next year so I don't leave it until the last minute!

First up - Christmas Cards:

Next was some glass blocks with vinyl stickers of Christ from Stick By Me:

Then some frames... The little house frames were pretty labour intensive... I made my own letters by using 3 layers of cardstock, a layer of paper and then Crystal effects on top. And I had 9 families to do :-)

Next some handbags for my nieces - I made 3 of these. The pattern is from here.

Another small tote bag for a friend. This is loosely based on this tutorial from Homemade by Jill and is made out of tea towels :-)

And last of all, this dress for my niece. The pattern is Simplicity 4711.

No wonder I was worn out by Christmas :-) I'm looking forward to moving onto more projects for me and my family now ;-)

Retromummy giveaway!

Check out this giveaway from retromummy! The fabrics are so beautiful... and 20 fat quarters is a LOT of fabric :-) Fingers crossed... :-)

Block Party

Almost a month ago now I attended a workshop with Adele where we made these blocks:

The pictures don't do justice to how good these look :-) They are about 7cm square and look great on my shelf. After finding out how easy they are to do (and after finding out that my husband has a drop saw and can cut the blocks for me!) I wandered off to Bunnings and bought some wood, and made some more smaller blocks for my Visiting Teaching sisters for Christmas. These smaller blocks are about 4 cm square (42mm to be exact...)

Then I made some blocks for my brother and his wife for their anniversary (just because I could!)

Thanks Adele for your quick and easy idea!

I won a giveaway!

Sew, Mama Sew! hosted a giveaway day last Monday where probably over a hundred blogs participated in offering giveaways. I went a little crazy and entered probably about 20 different giveaways on various blogs. And... I managed to win one! I won some fabric from The Crafty Nomad, who is a blogger from Western Australia :-) I can't wait until it arrives!