So it has been over 18 months since I posted. Had two little people keeping me too busy to really craft much, but I did decide to throw them, by Australian standards, a fair sized 1st bday bash.
Little man spent a couple of months in hospital, so to me it was even more important to celebrate a birthday we thought he might never make!

It took me ages to come up with a gender neutral theme. I decided on woodland theme and tried for weeks to draw my own invites, but failed miserably. I browsed the web and came up with a shadow idea, and then the background came from my love of mushrooms.

So the invites were born!!


Im wishing we had hired a photographer. The thing im saddest about is not really having many photos.
Anyways...
The desserts table! The most important thing!!

Some of the things on it were...

Turtle cupcakes!

Woodland berry jelly.. this was all natural.. so the littles one could enjoy too.

Rabbit food (carrotcake cupcakes)

Owl cupcakes

Flower meadow (timtam cake pops)

Mushroom cookies

acorns!

Deer poo! (mango covered chocolate)

My daughters cake.
Gluten free Dairy Free Orange and Almond cake with an almond butterless buttercream!

My sons cake
Lime Buttercream Madeira Cake
The mushrooms and carrots were made out of fondant, there are edible rocks and the figurines are Schleich. They will be getting them back when they are a little older

There was also little tiramisus in glasses, snakes on cupcakes and a chocolate fountain as my "Mud swamp"

To decorate we got 100 helium red and white polka dot. I had to import them from UK! We hired a local hall in the forest and had around 60 adults and 25 kids come.
I made the tissue balls from the Martha Stewart website.. man tissue paper is expensive in australia!
For table cloths I went to our local party hire and got their cheapest table cloths ($2) and got a roll of 20 metres of wrapping paper in red and white polka dot and cut it to lenght to dress them up.
Happy birthday sign came from vistaprint and it was FREEEEEEEEEEEEE with just $8 shipping.
There are also butterflies we made that we dont have pics of, and we copied the animals from the invites to black contact and cut them out. We stuck those on walls randomly.
Found some red lanters and drew polka dots on them with a white posca.
I made both their tshirts too!

They had a great day, considering they had both had bronchitis and tonsillitis that week it was a wonder they made it to their own bday!


Blowing out candles...

HOOORAY

We bought our house 5 years ago... the first day my DH put his foot through the floor... so up came the rotting rose and leaf carpet... out came the rotting floorboards and down went mdf board.

We lived like that for a year.. before we painted the salmon pink walls blue. Fast forward 3 years of us arguing over what floors we would put in.. i wanted floorboards.. he wanted carpet.. the we discovered the new technology of vinyl floorboards (now these are new here.. not sure about the rest of the world) basically they are very thick vinyl individual boards. they actually get laid like a real wood floor, but dont squeak, dont have draughts, and are soft and warmish underfoot. a perfect compromise!!! even tho they were MASSIVELY expensive... we absolutely love them.

Then came to repaint the walls... unfortunately the original blue we painted was an accident the paint maker made.. but i loved it... after i took in a piece of our wall and they still couldn't reproduce it and i had 7 demo tins of blue that were all wrong.. i cracked it and researched how to mix paint myself... then went and told them what to do   end result is as close to the original as one could possibly get.
 

I hemmed the curtains by hand.. they are thermalblock and make a huge difference to keeping the room temp constant.. i repainted all the knobs and rails black as they were all bronze coloured ... you really struggle to find black anything here

We tried to keep the room as close to as would have been back when the house was built in 1905 so we refused to put in built ins and bought a wardrobe instead and tried to keep all furniture in the old country style with cast iron.

The room itself being in an old miners cottage is tiny as a master bedroom.. its 3.6 x3.7 mt so we struggle a bit with storage hence why my scarves, bags and jewellery are out on display.

There is a beautiful rose ceiling that was a pain to paint !! And to my amusement we found an old bit of paint coming through under all the other layers... the room was originally a very close shade of blue under the 7 other layers!!

All in all i absolutely adore it. I think it still needs a bit of wall art.. but I will wait till I can find the perfect piece.











I'll see if i can find photos of the original room!!
I think i was taking pics of how the curtains were so then i could redo them in blue  but you can see the crappy colours, walls and the floor was just mdf after we had ripped the carpet and floorboards out

Here is my challenge entry.. I'm glad the dates were extended!!! I didn't want to go with the usual mythical creatures so tried to find something a little different.

Romalus is made of Skin tone Ozzle (an Australian polymer clay) then hand painted. He is my second ever polymer statue.. so I'm pretty proud!! Even tho he didn't come out as detailed as I imagined. His log is a toilet paper roll stuffed on a coaster and the whole thing covered in air dry clay to get the texture and detail.. The mushies are also Ozzle but coloured.







I managed to glue my fingers together when I was sticking on his fur... I also managed to superglue a big chunk of fur to my fingers... My DH told me i had nice gorilla hands 

Firstly let me say ... I had soooooooo much fun doing this.. I haven't touched my clay for over a year.. and its only about the fourth time i have made anything from clay. Its also the first time that it wasn't a gremlin or a fairy that I crafted.

Its made from OZZLE.. an Australian polymer clay,.. I didn't know how it compares to other polymer clays but its a lot cheaper here than sculpey etc and I love that its an Aussie product!!

It was for for the Monthly odd holidays, my swap partner had picked Rose Month so I came up with this..

Earrings,.. my partner likes old stuff.. so that's for the feel I tried to go with,.. she also likes jewel tones.. so I decided to go with red roses instead of any other kind. I read that if you firstly work oil into the clay before you bake then there will be subtle hints of it afterwards... i tried this and thought the baking process took out all the scent.


So then I decided to make a little matching box to go along with it and a scent sachet so then they can get smelly that way!! 



The box started life as a plain papermache box... couple of layers of paint later... a date with my nail sander and some gold burnishing that's what i ended up with.  I hand sewed the little sachet and filled it with rose petals and scented oil.



C&C welcome!!!

I'm slowly doing up our guest bedroom so it can be a nursery in the near future.. I am completely and utterly incapable of painting murals so I was leaning towards buying vinyl decals as a way to brighten up the room and then it would also be easier to change in a few years down the track.

I would like to know if anyone has experience with them ? I don't see a lot of rooms on craftster using them and am wondering if this is a personal preference or if its because they are no good.

My main questions are...
Do they really stay up in 40C+ heat?
Are they slightly see through ? I'm wanting quite bright yellow walls... is that going to make a difference to the end colour of a say mainly red one ? or are they going to show some yellow through?

I'm guessing this might also change depending on where they are purchased from.
But a general indication would be nice Thanks!!

Im not sure where to put this 

I just randomly bought this stuff at a craft fair the other day... It really doesnt have any instructions on the bottle bar cook at 120C for a few min.. i followed instructions and this was the end result...



There was fluxe all over the spoon... so not sure why the bottom half is clear as and the top half is all bubbled I want my horsey back damnit!!!

Anyone have any ideas? or has used it before with better/worse results ? having never seen it before i have no idea what to expect.. this might even be normal..

This little guy took FOR EVER to make..

I started off with a papermache ornament.. and a whole load of gumleaves... started sticking them on with mod podge and found that because it was curved they would pop back up.. so started sticking them down with pins but that left noticeable holes.. in the end i just ended up holding each leaf down till it took!!!

2 coats of sealer and a pretty bow later  and i love it!!

Interesting note to make.. you can see some white patches in some areas... they seem to be on the leaves that were not picked fresh the day i glued them in! (and of course these are on the front only!!  )

I have no idea how long these leaves will stay green... or what will happen to it structurally in the future.. but so far its 4 months old and looks as green and fresh as the day i finished it!!

Ive been asked to make a couple more for friends but i don't know if i could go through it all again!!

Ive been eyeing off resin since accidently borrowing a book from the library that had resin casts in it.

so i finally  found a kit on ebay as I was initially overwhelmed by all the different kinds of resin out there.

Here are my first two attemps..

One is of seashells that came with the kit.. Im so spewing that the glitter all settled to the top.. I was hoping the viscosity of the resin would suspend it.. would have been fab if it had (or if it had floated to the bottom)

The second is of coins I had from my travels or some of my fav places..these have been sitting around in a jar at home for years and so I have finally put them to use! Tho every time I look at it now I want to travel again.
I learnt this time to put the glitter in the layer below where i wanted it to be!!


A word of warning to all first time resin users.. the fumes really are worse than people tell you.

We crafted in a room with awesome ventilation with two fans blowing it all out the window,.. and the girl whose house we did it at still spent half the night vomiting!!

I am a bit dissapointed at how easily the resin scratches I spent ages sanding all the imperfections out from the casting to then have them scratch again from just general handling

Here we go!! I cant believe how long these took me.. but not too much blood shed so I spose thats not so bad!!

I had ordered a kit off the net but could not wait, so when I found some supplies in a store i bought them and started stabbing away without knowing what i was doing  

Here is my first one .. kitty... he lasted 20 min before my next door neighbour stole him.



Then gingerbread man..



Then monster of some kind who was meant to be a dragon..

So Ive been lurking around for a few weeks now astounded at all the talent on this forum has kept me hiding... Im not overly talented at anything and get bored (probably because of my lack of skill!!) pretty easily so am always changing the type of craft im obsessed with that week..

Well this week thanks to the ideas on here I tried bleaching a pattern on a shirt... this is my logo that i use on anything.. and my forum name on the sleeves..

And here is the end result (sorry for crappy pics!!)

 




All in all im pretty ok with how it came out.. there was only a tiny bit of seapege under the stencil on one arm of the design as i hadnt stuck the stencil on properly.. I actually mixed the bleach with flour and brushed it on so it didnt absorb too much into the fabric and leak under the stencil.. seemed to work well.. and then i just brushed it off before i washed!! And im not sure why the writing came out so faint.... I went over it at least 6 times!!

The only thing im embarassed about.... well I wrote my alias well when you are looking at it from the back (i had flipped the sleeves over so I could do it all from one side) pity that when i wear it im now Zeusbella 

Next on the list.... a dachshund that wraps all the way around a shirt.... not sure how i am going to manage that one yet!!

Thanks for looking at my first topic!!!!! and thanks for a very inspiring forum!!