Life has been busy!

I must admit I have had my hands full since last time I wrote. Mid July we got married, then I took part in my second fair, a couple of days later I had my birthday, then we flew off to the U.S. to visit relatives for a few weeks. When we got back my grandpa had his 80th birthday and our daughter started daycare. With all this happening almost at once I haven't made this blog a priority.

So, what´s new in my creative world? Well... For one, I've been shopping like crazy. I love browsing those huge crafts stores they have in the States. There's so much to choose from and I get many new ideas on creating simply by seeing all those beautiful crafting supplies. Love it!

A matching cowboy set consisting of a photo frame and a wooden box, made shortly before my first crafts fair. 

Time flies

Feels like it wasn't long ago I took part in my first crafts fair, although I realize now it's one month ago. Tomorrow it's time for my second one. I had so much I wanted to make for this one, but as with so much else when you have kids, there just wasn't enough time. I've made the lavendel soap I was talking about and a few pinwheels.

Oh, and remember my flying hearts? I felt they never came to their right at the last fair, when they were lying flat on the table, so I decided to actually put some thread in them and make them fly for real. I'm happy with the result and they are now up in a "tree".

Give-away!

So, my first crafts fair is over. It turned out to be a really nice sunny day. A lot of people stopped by admiring my handcrafted pieces. It was a lot of fun talking to everyone and of course it was even more fun to get to sell my things to appreciative customers. Knowing that people like the things I make truly means a lot to me. What sold really well was my eye pillows with lavendel, which you put over your eyes when you go to bed, to help relax and leave the light out.

To celebrate my first crafts fair I've decided to have a give-away, where the winner will receive a lavendel eye pillow, free of charge. If you'd like to take a chance at winning, just send me an e-mail (or write a comment here in the blog) with your name and e-mail adress. The contest ends on August 2nd and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter.

The bunny to the left is taking a rest with a lavendel eye pillow. 

If you weren't able to make it to the fair or want to have a second look, there will be another opportunity on Thursday the 2nd of August, 9am-2pm at the same location: Badhusparken, Kungsbacka (Sweden ;p ). In addition to what I sold this Thursday I will make some new cards, including cards suitable to give away at child baptism or name-giving ceremonies. I will also make a few soaps with lavendel. I made these as a christmas gift last year, and they were much appreciated. The smell of lavendel is just wonderful!

My first crafts fair

It's finally confirmed: I will be taking part in a local crafts fair next week! It's my first fair so of course I'm very excited about it! The fair will be taking place on thursday the 5th of July  between 10am and 2pm, in Badhusparken in Kungsbacka, outside of Gothenburg. So if you have some time off and arn't too far away, bring your friends and family and come on by! I will be selling an assortment of handmade crafts such as: cards, candles, matchboxes, photoframes, soap and wooden chests. If I can find the time I will also make some pin-wheels for the kids to enjoy. For more information on the crafts fair please visit the official website.

A sneak-peek on some of the photoframes I will be selling:

You can either use them as regular photo frames or use them to write a nice poem or sentiment in.

Give me your love. I'll give you my heart...

"Give me your love. I'll give you my heart..." those are some of the words from the chorus in an old Backstreet Boys song who I used to like a lot. The words that follow are: "Let's put them together, see what we can start. I wanna be with you..."

As some of you who know me personally might know, Theo and I are finally getting married this summer. We put our hearts together a long time ago and started a wonderful little family. The wedding is going to be very small with just close family. Anyway, since we settled a date my heart has been flying. In all shades of color that is...

These lovely flying hearts I made out of wool with a tecnique called needle felting. The hearts themself are easy to make but the wings are a bit tricky since they tend to come out different sizes. I'm thinking about putting a thread at the top so they can be hung but I still havn't decided on it. What do you think?

I've also made invitation cards to our wedding. We haven't sent them yet though so I am not able to show them here for another couple of days. What I will show you however is another wooden chest that I dressed with some nice papers. I absolutely love how it turned out!

A different point of view

A pleasure to measure

One thing I rarely do is take on a challenge regarding my cards. Most of the times I start of with a paper or stamp that I know I want to use, and create the rest of the card out of that. On some rare occasions however I get inspired by a challenge, either that I find on-line or, as I did this time, in a card making magazine. The challenge that inspired me this time was called A different point of view (published in The stamper`s sampler), and meant using the same stamp in many different ways. I created three cards, two where I used the stamp as dresses (part of the original stamp) and one where I turned the dresses upside down and used it as flowers.

 Out of these three cards the Cinderella card took the longest to create. I made this card as the third in the row and knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be a Cinderella card, showing the used everyday dress as well as the transformed fancy ball dress. I had no idea how to portray this though so it took a lot of experimentation before I finally settled on a design. As far as the challenge goes I feel I'm missing one or maybe two cards, to show the diversity of the two stamps. Hopefully I'll have time to create the missing pieces some time soon.

Oh well... What is a royal ball?

Color theme

A few weeks ago our daughters little cousin Aaron turned one. The color theme for his birthday party was red and turquoise and I knew he (or should I say his mom, rather?) would appreciate the use of these colors for the card and gift I was to make for him. As for the gift I wanted it to be something special, that could be of joy to both him and his parents. I also wanted the gift to be easy to mail. His dad is crazy about cars and I believe he is on his way there too. I found the perfect paper and knew exactly what kind of gift to create... :-)

Recycling

bird card decorated with a strip of recycled corrugated paper

Ok, so hands up everyone who have ever felt you have too much waste! I definitely have and even more so since our daughter was born. One thing we have tons of is baby food glass jars. This got me thinking. How can we make use of these instead of throwing them out? One way is to use them as candle jars. I filled mine with bee wax and decorated them with birch bark hearts.

On the same theme I also gave new life to two old wooden boxes, left by my granddad, by decorating them with patterned paper.

Spring is in the air

Inspired by the awakening coastal life and the spring butterflies in our garden , I made these creations during the weekend.

Time to share

I've been making cards for a few years now and different kinds of crafts for as long as I can remember. Along the road I've found a lot of inspiration from the works of others and now I feel it's my time to share.

To start of, here's a card I made last weekend.

Whether you are a crafter yourself or simply enjoy handmade crafts I hope you will have a good time browsing my blog!