Sunday 30 August 2015

Here Fishy, Fishy!





Here's another toilet paper craft to join our cardboard paper menagerie: freshly caught fish! 


Based on these little fellows who are touring the internet, this version is simpler in that it needs less materials and there is less cutting and glueing involved.


I toyed with the idea of a tutorial for you but these little fish are so simple to make I decided that maybe instructions were more fitting. So I'll just explain how these were made -for the absolute beginners out there.


First draw your fish in pencil on the cardboard tube. 
I start with the line that seperates the body from the head. 
Then I draw two large eyes on opposite sides of the tube. 
I continue by drawing the scales on the body. (It's really up to you what kind of shape you want the scales to be and how they will be repeated over the body of the fish.I really don't think you can go wrong here. Even coloured doodles by a younger child would look great  as scales.)


Then it's time to decide on the colours for the fish and where each will go. (You can see a previous fish in red-orange hues here.)
You can paint them or draw them in a number of ways. You could easily use pencils, markers or paint. 
These are coloured in with coloured markers and then outlined with a black marker.



For the tail, all you need is something that is long and flow-ey. I used colour co-ordinated ribbon on these but I've also used newspaper strips and ribbons cut out of a plastic bag on other occassions.
Use what you have that you feel fits your fish and glue the strips under the cardboard tube so that the glued ends are not visible on the outside.


Your fish is now ready to be strung! 
Make two holes on the head of the fish. I estimate the centre between the eyes, poke a hole with a sharp pencil and then poke another hole exactly opposite the first one.
Find some string -or ribbon- and thread it through the holes, tie it up and your fish is strung!
Congratulations! You've done it!



I turned them into a summer mobile and hung them somewhere the breeze can make the tails flutter and float...

For other kids craft made out of tp tubes (ie toilet paper rolls) you can see a menagerie of animals here and some cheeky toy frogs here.

Linked to:

Friday 28 August 2015

Swiftly-Approaching-Fall Tote Bag

 One of my big loves is making bags, even though it seems that I hardly make any any more...

I hardly ever seem to have the time that is needed to plan and then execute a bag.....
So I was thrilled to get to finish this one, just in time for the fastly approaching fall!


 It's actually darker than the pictures suggest, making all the different colours blend in much more nicely than they do in the pictures.


And I'm thrilled that it's finished just in time to enter the Super Online -Community- Sewing Match over at Sew,Mama,Sew!

Linked to:
Annemarie's Haakblog

Sunday 23 August 2015

In The Mail - The Sweetest Thing



The other day I got the sweetest package in the mail from my lovely blogger friend Zina.


 These are the winsome favours she carefully created and selected for her little boy's baptism.


 The 2 handmade leather bracelets with matching brooch have handmade evil eye beads and charming mother of pearl crosses and the candy next to them has chocolate centres..... 



Well, it HAD chocolate centres before it disappeared by a sneaky little hand (captured above) surrepticiously removing -and consuming- them one by one....



 And all of this came in a pretty box - aptly green and blue and boyish all over.
Thank you, Zina! 
May the little one have a charmed life and always be a joy to you!




Saturday 22 August 2015

Summer Reading - The Valley Of Amazement


 I'm a huge Amy Tan fan so I'm surprised this one got away from me for as long as it has (it was published in November 2013).


I've only just started it but it is in true Tan style, a highly addictive story, masterfully told.


 Any Amy Tan fans out there?
Have you read this one?


Linked to:

Sunday 16 August 2015

Top 10 Vintage Summertime Picks












 Ten of my favourite vintage summer fashion picks from my Summertime pinterest board.
Beautiful women in amazing fashion from the 1930s through to the 1970s -in random order.

Click on any photo to go to the pinterest link.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

For The Love Of Vintage Sewing Books



Over the past couple of years I've been on the lookout for vintage sewing books -and I've been fortunate enough to get my hands on some wonderful ones.


The thing I love about them is not just the sewing knowledge they hold and promise to impart but the wonderful vintage world of language and image.


The books I have span from the 1920s to the 1980s and while a lot of what they say may be fundamentally the same, the way in which they say it is very indicative of their particular time.



 The images and illustrations of each are also very distinctly of their time and -to me- endlessly fascinating.


I love to browse vintage sewing books and their contents online when someone kindly shares pictures and opinions on their own copies of these vintage gems. So I decided to add some posts of my own with the hope that others may find it as interesting -and as educational - as I do to look through these slices of sewing and fashion history. 


I've started photographing them and hopefully I'll be posting some reviews regularly on this blog.




NOTE:
If anyone has any old sewing books that they do not need or want any longer and are interested in exchanging them, swapping them or otherwise getting rid of them, I'd love to hear from you.
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