Fabric Friday

This Friday's fabric choice is an ikat fabric that I'm thinking of using in the spare room of my new home. I decided to use a fresh blue and white colour scheme for this room as I already had the blue bedside tables and quite liked them. Sometimes it's nice to have some sort of colour reference to start with and the blue of the bedside tables matched perfectly with an ikat-inspired bedding set that I found in John Lewis. 

I recently inherited a bed for the spare room from a friend of mine and it came with a padded bed head. The only trouble is that the bedhead is covered in a red fabric which doesn't match my new colour scheme!

After much foraging through my fabric stash, I came across a beautiful blue and white ikat fabric that would be perfect for the job! Now I just have to be brave and give it a go. If anyone has any tips on the best way to do it, please let me know......

Sunday craftiness

Having my nieces to stay is always good fun and a great excuse to get crafty. This time we decided to make decoupage letters. I managed to find wooden letters for each of them at the local craft store, as well as some pretty patterned tissue paper especially for decoupage, although this is expensive!!! You can just as easily use regular tissue and we had a lovely selection of colours to choose from as well as some stick-on shapes. All you need is a cheap craft brush and some PVA glue and then you can get sticking. The best approach is to tear your tissue into small pieces and then spread glue on a small section of the letter with your brush, stick down your tissue, and then spread more glue over the top, to make it nice and flat and to give it a sheen once it dries. Work methodically around the letter in this way and then leave it to dry!

We spread all the items out on the kitchen table and had a nice selection to choose from, including glitter shapes, furry balls and patterned Japanese washi tape.

Delilah went for shades of blue and pink and added shiny shapes and polka dot hearts.

The tissue changes to a lovely shade of purple when the pink and blue overlap.

 Florence decided to cover hers in the pretty floral decoupage paper.

We had a lovely selection of bright tissue paper colours to choose from.

The finished result!

Fabric picture frame project

My nieces came to stay last night and this always means a good excuse to get out the crafty supplies and make something fun. This time we  decided to make fabric-covered picture frames.

They are very simple to make. All you need are two pieces of thick cardboard which are the same size. Ours were about 26cm x 32cm, cut from an old cardboard box. I drew a small rectangle in the middle of one of the pieces and cut it out, using a scalpel. This creates the hole for the frame. We then wrapped strips of fabric around the frame, stapling it at the back to secure it. On the other piece of cardboard, we stapled a white piece of paper in the centre of it, to create a clean white background. Once the frame was completely covered with fabric, we attached it to the other piece of cardboard using strong glue, and it was finished! 

Yesterday I stocked up on lots of fun crafty items at my fave shop, Tiger.

Flo chose a blue and white colour scheme and was very careful about where she placed her patterns.

 Lila's choice was a bit more eclectic and very colourful!

Lila decided to add some sparkly balls to her frame afterwards and drew a pretty picture to put in the frame. Flo is going to put a photo in hers.

Peg doll project

My nieces came to stay last night and I always like to think of something fun to do when they come round. This time we tried making peg dolls and I'm so impressed with their results. I love the choice of colours and fabrics each of them made. Flo's takes inspiration from the Japanese kokeshi dolls with their stylish black bobs, whilst Lila's takes inspiration from the neon trend that is so hot right now.

 

Flo's nod to the kokeshi doll aesthetic

Lila's use of trendy neons

These were the original instructions, but we altered them slightly to work with what we had.

Say cheese!

Mel Stringer is an illustrator and visual artist from Brisbane, Australia who has created these beautiful little paper camera projects. Once purchased, each camera is sent to you in an email as a pdf format which you can then print out at home and assemble yourself. The Polaroid camera even comes with a set of three hand drawn Polaroid 'pictures' for you to play with! Very cute.

You can see more of Mel's fab creations here.