A sweatshirt for my niece

Another birthday in the family: yep! We have them each month from September through June so be ready to see more posts about that probably.

 

This one was actually back in October when my niece turned 15. 15!! I can't believe how big she is: seems like it was yesterday that I was holding her in my arms *sigh*

 

front view

A little boy's birthday

Yesterday we celebrated my nephew's birthday: he turned 5 earlier this week. Another occasion for the whole family to get together for an afternoon. I love these moments so much, seriously guys, my family is insane and we have such laughs all together.

 

Anywho, I was asked to make something for him that he'd like to have: a plate for his bedroom door. His sister had one from her nanny a few years ago and apparently he wanted one for his door too.

 

My nephew is a huge (and I mean HUGE) fan of Flash McQueen. Now, I can try to make a lot of things, but there are things I still can't do even with all the best will in the world: Flash McQueen is one of them :-(

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Crafting is...dangerous

Maybe I am being a bit overly dramatic here, but hear me out and you will understand where I am going.

 

My fellow crafters, you know the deal: you work on a project, then you think of a way to add something to it. Or you see something that inspires you online and then start looking at how it is done and how it would fit in your current hobby. There are so many reasons which can lead to finding something new that it is almost impossible to stick to only one sort of craft. Well...at least for me.

 

I did explain in my previous post that I had learnt the basics of embroidery over night in order to add a nice personal touch to my best friend's baby towel.

 

The obvious thing to do with the leftover fabric was to practise of course. And as I had some thread at home from other projects I had worked on, I already had everything.  Browsing through the Internet for something fun to practise on, I found a picture of a character I knew from my childhood, Mafalda. She was the main character from an Argentinian comic strip. Me though, I got to "know" her once it got adapted for TV (if you don't know her, you can check out the opening credits here).

 

It reminded quite a few memories and one in particular: my older sister. She loved Mafalda and still do. As her birthday was coming a few weeks later, I decided to make this my next project and her birthday present.

 

This project made me realise that cross stitching takes a long time. A very, very long time. I thought I would never finish it on time. But a few weeks later, I did (the night before the birthday party lol). I framed it, wrapped it and boom! She smiled when she opened it so it was worth it. And this probably marks the beginning of other embroidery projects...

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Now if you'll excuse me, I have to spend time on YouTube watching opening credits from all of my childhood programmes. Thank you Mafalda!!

Trying something new

UEver heard of Kirigami? If you're not into papercraft, probably not.

Last year at a craft show, I did see this art presented by a guy exposing his cards there. I found this quite cool but did not want to get into yet another hobby. I mean, there are only so many things a crafter can do, right? Nah! We always find new things to do!

Last week, it was one of my colleague's birthday and I was in charge of the card. As I'm still setting up my workshop (yep. Still not done!), I needed something quick, not messy but that would stil look nice though because I've do not give handmade things that look not finished.

So I though about the cards I had seen last year but I could not remember th name of the method used. Took me a while on Google but the name finally popped up. 

You still don't know what it means though, I know. Kirigami is the art of cutting a pattern on a piece of paper to make cards or decorations.

She likes cats and the colour blue so I found the pattern online, and already had some blue paper. 

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Don't know if I'll do it again because even though it's not messy, it does take some time...and I chose a basic pattern as it was my first time.

On the other hand, it does not require a lot of material which is nice.