Other – Page 3 – Hopefully Creative

KreaDoe 2013

Weird title, you may think.. Well, it sort of is, we spell crea(tief/tive) with a c usually, and the Doe (Do) is somewhat ambitious, but all in all, KreaDoe is quite a fun fair where you can find all kinds of stalls that sell things for creative hobbies.

One of my friends and I decided to go there to see what it was all about, and possibly buy some stuff. We were both on a budget but managed to keep to it. KreaDoe is filled with all kinds of stalls. Scrapbooking (pass quickly), Beading (stare at everything), Candle making (eeeh.. no), Embroidery (fun! Too expensive), Knitting/Crochet (fun colours but no), Felting (weird, but maybe when I’ve got residual time?) and some unique things.

There were also some stalls where you could follow a workshop. My friend and I chose to do two free workshops, since free is better. We made an artistic bread basket and coloured a Christmas ornament. The bread basket was a bit weird, you got a round batted fabric thing, with 4 areas that you could tie such that they stood up. We got some ‘colours everything’ pens and got to draw. I chose to do 4 different things on the sides, but there were people doing peacocks and owls and all kinds of things. There were some examples so I just took some of them and drew them on my breadbasket.

Here they are, whales and owl, squirrel and ‘green monster’ (I like this one best).

This is the full thing and how it looks ‘set up’.

The second thing was to use some permanent markers to draw on a plastic christmas tree ball. I chose to do dotted lines, with a pair of scissors at the bottom. I had quite some fun, my friend drew an angel and stars. It was quite funny.

Super sexy ball this is. Note the little scissors in the last picture.

All in all we enjoyed the fair, even though we didn’t buy a lot. We did get some inspiration for things to craft at home. We are so going to make either a castleball or a nutcastle (this or this) and we might cover a day planner with a nice fabric.

We had a fun day out, and I think it’s worth repeating.

Changes

In order to start my coming life in a new way, I figured some changes were needed. Actually just one. I cut my hair.

This is how it was before. It was halfway down my back and I had had it with it. It got stuck between everything, it got very knotty very soon and I’ve had this long hair since forever. So a change was in order. I had actually been feeling like I wanted it off since January or somewhere around that time. The reason for waiting was that I wanted to have it long enough to serve another purpose.

This was what came off my head. I wanted to have it >25 cm so I could donate it to make wigs for children suffering from baldness. So the braid above want into a bag and will be sent to ‘Stichting Haarwensen’, to make a wig. Below is the end result.

I’m happy with it, it’s new, it’s short, I can wash it in 5 minutes and dry it in 2 hours, instead of 20 min – 8 hours respectively. It doesn’t tangle, it’s less hot and I’m really glad I made the choice to take it off. I can’t braid is as much anymore as I was able to in the past, and thereby it’s less ‘creative’, but I can live with that, no problem. Lets enjoy a ‘lighter’ summer!

Easter!

So it’s easter again, which means, of course, easter eggs! This involves painting (for the tradition, see here)!

Well, this year it’s all going to go a little differently from the last gazillion years. For one, my parents are still on holiday and I have to pick them up around 10:30, so it’s not going to be early Sunday morning. For two (is that a legal expression?), I had to babysit the whole of Saturday, from 12 to 22, so it left me very little time for painting. For three (I’m going to say it is), I found a ‘make your easter egg shiny and stuff’ paint set in the supermarket and of course wanted to use.

The plan was as follows, or actually, there was an a plan and a b plan. The a plan was wait until you get home again and paint some eggs. The b plan was hope that the babysit child wants to paint some eggs too, and do it there. Plan b was successful! When we went to my house to walk my dog, we also brought back some eggs and egg painting things. The process was weird. Boil eggs, drip strange shiny sticky paint on a glove and rub the (hot) egg in it. Then apply silver shiny stuff and hope it sticks, which it often doesn’t. However, we had fun throughout and that’s what counts. Since we are only with three tomorrow, I only boiled and ‘painted’ six eggs. I hope it will be enough. Here they are.

Eggs

Cat

You may also be surprised by the last picture. Meet Pluis, Pluis’ face doesn’t look like that, but he moved before my shutter had closed again. Pluis has been living in my house for a couple of months now, but a couple of nights ago it was the first time I determined that all those sewingbloggers-with-cats are right. Cats seem to prefer work area for laying on. This case it was an enormous pattern piece for a dress I’m working on. He also decided to try to lay on my crumply plastic bag with pattern pieces and pattern magazines in it. Stinking cat, but cute, oh so cute, I tend to forgive him almost anything. I’m a bad cat parent. Maybe you’ll see more of Pluis in the future. Who knows, I’ve got enough creativity left in me, I hope!

No such thing as Easter without eggs

Therefore, I insist on having an egg search in our front garden every year. I make my mother get up ‘early’ on Easter Sunday and hide some painted boiled eggs and small chocolate eggs in the front garden. However, in order to do this, one first needs… painted eggs! So that’s what we did just now, me and my mom painted some eggs.

I assume many will find this a childish habit, as I am almost 22 and still want to paint and search for eggs, but it’s tradition, and I really enjoy it. By the way, so do our neighbours from across the street. They generally come and watch us search and my mother hide the eggs (in opposite order of course).

Anyways here’s this year’s batch:

I shall describe what you see. On the first picture are all our eggs, we planned to do 10, but one broke during boiling. The ones on the right are my mum’s (the blue, green, red, orange and another blue squiggly ones). I generally paint with a plan, a bad plan usually but a plan. So the top one is a ladybug-egg, its black face is a little more visible in the right picture. The one beneath that is the night sky with the moon. It’s blue I know, but black also didn’t really work, and I wanted blue. The one next to that is called “Nature”, it has a red flower on the one side, grass on the bottom, a tree on the other side (see the right picture, where I turned it, just for your viewing pleasure) and the sun at the top. The bottom one was less planned, it’s basically an egg with semi-geometrical shapes on it, a star, an 8ish thing (I had no more ideas), a circle, a triangle and a bow tie. Well at least we had fun painting right.

My brother said he didn’t want to go search for eggs unless my mum was wearing a bunny suit, so I plan on making her a set of ears in a minute, that would be fine too, he said. Also to give the neighbours even more fun on their Easter Sunday morning.

Wish me luck, I hope to find all this year.. last year we lost 2 chocolate ones.

Spring Cleaning

So I haven’t been very active in the creative field. However the past Sunday was spent clearing up my sewing room. It was a complete mess to begin with so something really needed to be done. And it’s even Spring so I’m allowed to call this post Spring cleaning. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that I think!

I now have my fabrics neatly organised in boxes on their sides so they look little closets, I put all my notions in a cabinet and found out that I had way more than I though. I finally figured out that the box of buttons I thought I’d lost was just in the bottom of a bigger box in the corner. I even organised all my patterns in a big catalogue binder thing and now they are not all over the place and all the pieces are kept together. I found some (read; a lot) of projects that I did not remember I had in the works, like a jacket and a long dress, a frog dress that only needs to be hemmed and much more. I really should finish those projects someday.

I’m actually really proud of me because I’m not much of a neatfreak, I’m very bad at clearing up. I think I just like to have all my stuff surrounding me.

However the organising has helped me already because I needed some pins and could find them instantly and I figured I was going to make a friend a birthday present. I knew which fabric I wanted to use and I only had to search a little to find it! I’m making a sort of pouch with falling ‘fall’-leaves embroidered on in fall colours (red, orange, yellow, brown, some greens) and I’m really liking it. Too bad I accidentally spilled some lemonade on it and now it’s in the sink, where I’m hoping it will come out. So I’ll take some pictures once it is finished.

I hope this weekend will bring me closure for some projects. Enjoy yourselves!

Ongoing Projects

So, currently I’m working on a number of projects, mostly clothing. I am currently working on a:
– Red black plaid skirt,
– Greyish brown dress with piping along the waist,
– Black dress with a deep back,
– Bag knitted from strips of plastic bags,
– Grey and white dress inspired by a vintage one I saw a picture of on Etsy and
– White blouse from a vintage pattern (which I’m scared off since the instructions are.. weird),
– Champagne (for lack of better word) coloured full skirt, which needs hemming.

And the problem is, I have many more projects that I would like to do, such as:
– Covering a grey strapless shirt with a lacey fabric (although I haven’t the foggiest idea how),
– Making another pair of high-waisted pants (now hopefully slightly slimmer legs) and
– A skirt with a waist tie,
– Draw more,
– Do some embroidery (although on what and how is not sure yet),
– Make a skirt for my mother.

However, since I’ve stopped with school I have finished some projects, well I mostly started new ones so the old ones are still lying around. These are:
– Two pairs of high-waisted pants (of which I’ve ruined one the day after I finished it, by dropping super glue on it),
– Embellishing a strapless shirt by creating straps from fabric Yo-Yo’s (Tutorial here),
– Red and black plaid skirt with two zippers in the front,
– Lining my homemade black coat with a yellow padded fabric, so I can wear it through the winter,
– Sewing a stuffed bunny, which is really cute,
– Corset out of asian style fabric.

As you can see I’ve got loads more to do, but not so much incentive. I find it difficult to focus on one project, once I get stuck somewhere. The grey and white dress for instance has some spots of bother around the bust. The red skirt has a badly placed zipper that gives me a pointed bum which I need to fix and hem also. The greyish dress has a skirt that is not attached in nice way so that needs to be redone too. I always find it easier to start a new project than to finish one. Not the best way of working I know.

Anyway, I think I’ll see if I can mend the red skirt zipper, so I can wear it for a birthday coming weekend. Maybe if I do it by hand it can work out.. hmm..
Wish me luck, I’ll wish some to you too!

Category: Other