Good Morning, Sunshine!

The other day I saw this really cute print on etsy. It really spoke to me - not just because it was yellow, but because it said "Good morning, sunshine" - and sunshine used to be my nickname, years ago... It would be the perfect picture to wake up to or to be greeted with in the bathroom when I get up to do my early morning shift. And it got me going...

Sorry, boys, I have to release you and wipe you down!

There is actually a yellow zone in my house. It's the downstairs bathroom. It has a few splashes of yellow here and there but it needed some more. And when I came across some free printable yellows courtesy of dimple prints via Tatertots and Jello, I got the kick up my backside to finally do something about my yellow love.  I scoured our "frame cabinet" - a cupboard in our sitting room which is full of old frames with some unnamed ancestors in it. And I found two nice frames. But *eeeeek*, look at the state of them:

That's already better, isn't it? No idea who the ancient tottie is - the family had four daughters, so he's not one of "ours"... I had to dismantle the frames to wipe them down - and of course I cut myself in the process. That's one thing I hate about the old stuff in the house: I am always slightly suspicious of the dust of the centuries that covers everything in here. If I vanish from the blog, you'll know that my right middle finger has turned gangrenous *ggg*

It also turned out that the frame on the right was actually not grey but green. Oooops, doesn't quite go with my colour scheme, but well...

Anyhow, I stuck the sunny prints into the frames and *boom* instant lift!

Curious what the rest of the room looks like??? I'll give you a look tomorrow!

Best,

Keep calm - Craft-Werk is still around

I am increasingly busy with my college work, so not much time for crafting at the mo :-(. Proposals are waiting to be written up, studio work needs organising, ideas and concepts have to be developed. My creative energy is channelled into photography at the moment. But I couldn't resist a cute little link that I saw on Yasemine's blog Love live survive home today. 

You all know those "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" posters. Don't we all want to have one of those on our walls? Well, now you can print one of those out yourself - and even customize it with your own slogan - for free, of course. Just go to keepcalm-o-matic and they will do the rest for you. You can choose slogan, background colour, font and even the little image at the top. Punch it all in, click generate and you have it downloadable in jpg format. As a craftress, I had to generate this one:

 

Did I mention I am mad about photography?

 

 

Arrrrgh, disclaimer: Upon viewing my post I just realized that the above slogan looks like a call to arms, i.e. let's shoot someone on January 30th... noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!! For the photography-uninitiated: "shooting" is photographing and 1/30 is not a date but the shutter speed of 1/30th of a second... *phew* had to make that clear...

Anyway, once I had generated and saved them, I knew that I couldn't just leave them sitting on my hard-drive. They had to be displayed. Out came an old frame from the big stash. Problem: there were three spaces for images in the mount, so I had to come up with another slogan from the Ministry of Propaganda. Besides crafting and photography my other big interest is politics, so I made another slogan. As the generator only has a limited number of symbols, none of them fitted my own slogan. So I simply recreated the poster in MS Word, using Wingdings for the symbol. It took about 20 print outs to get the sizing and font vaguely alright - I have a whole heap of discarded posters on my desk now - maybe I should go out and start papering lampposts with my messages... But I did eventually get it right and now have my slogans on the wall above my desk. 

I love it - I keep glancing up there to enjoy the retro-feeling and the messages that are close to my heart.

So, go on and make some for yourself. Here is the final message from the Ministry of Propaganda:

Best,

   

Linking to:





It's so very Thrifty @ It's so very Cheri

Upcycled Packaging

Have you ever noticed how beautiful commercial packaging can be? We all love antique enamel signs and biscuit tins and we know how carefully they were designed decades ago. Most of the packaging nowadays seems to be utalitarian, cheap and cheerless. So imagine my delight, when I saw this beauty of an icing sugar packet in the shop. Well, I needed to buy some icing sugar, anyway, but I would have bought it regardless, just for the cute and nice design.

I have always had a soft spot for nicely designed containers and tins. Here is a selection of - empty but beautiful - tins that I just cannot throw out. They are attracting dust in my kitchen...

 

 

Anyway, back to the icing sugar box - I am not really a pinky-pink girly-girl, but the box was just so sweet, if you pardon the pun. It didn't take me long to figure out what to do with the lovely humming bird-design. It's kind of obvious, even:

 

I trimmed the front of the box and then cut out the "spoon". The opening created exactly the right size and shape for a sweet little portrait. Next I printed out a recent picture of my daughter and cut it the right size to fit behind the opening.

I also had to cover up the writing at the bottom of the design, so I simply printed out my daughters name and the year her photo was taken and glued it over the writing. It looked a bit bare like that, so I embellished the picture with a bit of ribbon that I had at hand. I actually used some nifty glue dots to stick it over the picture.

I had an old white frame the right size at hand. And presto! A sweet little portrait to hang up in my daughter's room. Ooops, I have just remembered that she doesn't like pink. Well, maybe she'll graciously overlook that...

Best,

Linking to