Giveaway Over at Georgie Love

Check out this amazing giveaway over at Georgie Love! There are two prizes - first prize is just amazing, with two of Pip Lincolne's books - "Sew La Tea Do" and "Make Hey! While the Sun Shines", as well as a small selection of vintage fabrics and tea towels, a gorgeous vintage apron, some of Georgie Love's goodies, a $50 Georgie Love gift voucher, a sweet pair of vintage yellow heels and a cute vintage dress! WOWSERS!

Photo courtesy of Georgie Love blog

Plus, there is a second prize! It's a copy of "Sew La Tea Do" as well as a $30 Georgie Love gift voucher. To find out how to enter, click over here.

Hurray! If I won, I would spend the $50 voucher on some of the adorable brooches available, such as the All At Sea Lino Brooch, and the Chirpy Bird Red Brooch. What would you buy?

Quiet Book - Part IV update

Thanks to Kirsty and Kathryn for your feedback about my last post. Here is the page I posted about last time with the snap clips sewn on.

Eliza tried this page out for me when I was done. She needs a little help, but she loved it! And that, after all, is why I'm bothering with this. *satisfied smile*

To see more of the Quiet Book, click here.

Quiet Book - Part IV

Happy Monday everyone. I hope you are all having a good day. I found out today that some items I had purchased online for one of the pages of the Quiet Book have somehow been lost in the mail. Here's hoping they show up sometime soon!

I have been working on another page in the meantime. This one features a larger version of the Silver Birch Tree that I have previously posted about.

Credit goes to my Mum for suggesting I make little birds for the tree, attached with snap clips, so Eliza can pull them off and clip them back on.

After watching my hubby and daughter's daily ritual of throwing bird seed out the front windows of our house for the pigeons, I was inspired to add some french knots and straight stitch bird seeds under the tree, with extra clips, so the birds can be taken down from the tree and put on the ground to eat the seed.

Credit to my hubby for the bird outline he drew for me. Thanks babe!

The clips are yet to be attached, and I'm thinking about french knot eyes for the birds...what do you think?

(Every time I work on this, I get a certain song stuck in my head..."Feed the birds, tuppence a bag..." Ha ha! Now it's stuck in your head too!)

madeit Lovelies

TV Screen Test Necklace - by bRainbow on madeit

Pattern for Baby "Betsy" Hand knitted ribbon tie Mary Janes. NB-6 months - by PreciousThings on madeit

Watch movement ring - by SisterShip on madeit

Happy Cactus Pin Cushion - by lilchickenbigchicken on madeit

Just some lovely little items I stumbled across while browsing madeit this afternoon. They made me smile. I hope they make you smile too. :)

The Golden Hour

Ah, the golden hour. Both kids asleep AT THE SAME TIME!! I should probably be eating. Or sleeping. Or showering. Or doing housework. But instead I am buzzing with ideas for a new range of brooches and necklaces. I have been doing concept sketches and simply cannot wait to get started on the making...BUT...

I have several other projects on the go already!! I have not yet finished my daughter's Quiet Book, even though I am slowly chipping away at it, and I have begun a project for my sister, as well as several items of clothing that are in the 'cut and ready to sew' or even 'partially sewn' phase. These are all things that I genuinely intend to finish. And I have not lost momentum, I have just got inspiration for other projects as well. What to do?

I want to keep craft as a way to relax and have fun, and not let it take over my life (which it seems to be trying to do!) How do you juggle craft projects? And how do you juggle craft with other (arguably) more important things such as ingesting food and keeping the house clean? 

Vintage Style Aprons

Aprons. They're all the go at the moment, have you noticed? We often used aprons when I was growing up. Saturday mornings meant baking time, which meant apron time. Fun! I loved putting on my apron like Mummy, and whipping up a chocolate simplicity cake (leaving plenty of mixture in the bowl to lick out of course!). My two and a half year old also loves to don her new apron (thanks, Sneha!) and 'help' me bake (was I that much trouble, Mum?).

Well a couple years ago, I decided to make myself an apron. I found some gorgeous Michael Miller fabric with a vintage kitchen motif, from Oz Material Girls which I thought was perfect for my apron. I bought the pattern from Etsy as a pdf download from Tenth Muse Studios (sorry but it appears she is no longer selling). The end result is above, middle and right pics (it is a reversible apron).

Around that time, I also made a simple half-apron (above left) from a rectangle of vintage red gingham fabric that I was given by my grandmother, with some home-made bias binding for the trimmings from some white fabric she gave me. It's very simple. Maybe I will do a tutorial for that one sometime soon.

With the small amount of leftover Michael Miller fabric, I covered an art canvas and attached a bit of ribbon with some mini-pegs for a matching recipe-holder. This is now a fixture in my kitchen that I use regularly, especially when I am baking.

I recently found some vintage magazines at an op-shop, with some great sewing patterns and gift ideas. There were some cute aprons in one, as pictured below.

Perhaps I will give these a try next. I think the embroidery and applique looks sweet. But perhaps not so practical for wearing while baking or gardening, as you would have to hand-wash to protect the embroidery. kind of defeats the purpose of an apron... Do you like to use aprons, or don't see the point?

Put A Bird On It!

  

You may have seen this before, it's been floating around for a while now, but it's still funny second time around (and third and fourth!). It's from Season 1 of the TV show Portlandia, apparently.

This one is for you, Hannah and Sneha!

Giveaway Winner

Congratulations to HeatherLizMarie!
You have won the kanzashi brooch giveaway. 


Please email me at candykins.crafts@gmail.com with your postal address, so I can get this prize to you!

Candykins Craft Blog First Ever Giveaway

I have seen other blogs do this, and I think it is a fun way for readers to participate! And for one reader to end up with a little something to keep. So how it works is this - you  have a chance to win this cute  kanzashi brooch in lovely, bright primary colours (7cm in diameter). To enter the competition, all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post before Sunday 9pm (Eastern Standard Time here in Australia). Yep, that's it! Pretty easy!!

Open to Australian and international readers.

I will draw a name out of the entries and announce a winner on Monday.
Good luck! :)

Quiet Book - Part III

 Finally, an update on the quiet book. I have finally picked up where I left off, after a few weeks' break. I decided to do the pages in calico, and hand embroider the words just in my regular printing. It's definitely not perfect, but it is 'created with love' as the title page says.

I am rather happy with how the clothes turned out. In the end, I used tigertail threaded through tiny pegs with small couching stitches on either side of the pegs, attached at the ends through vintage buttons, and threaded back and forth through the calico page. It's a little crowded, the downside of making so many clothes! Seeing them all lined up on the A4 page like that gives you a better idea of the size of each item of clothing.

 Below left is the finished shoe-tying page, although I may need to re-thread the eyelets with something more stable than the novelty yarn that is currently acting as shoe laces. Below right is the almost-complete page that will be next to the shoe-tying page in the book. It is supposed to be the back of a head, if you can't tell (and you would most certainly be forgiven for not being able to guess!). It's a rather full head of hair, rather more full than Eliza's actual hair, but that was due to me having in my possession some half-finished craft projects passed down from my grandmother...I just gave this doll's hair (I think that is what it was going to be?) a trim. It is going to make the book rather fat.

To see the previous pages on the Quiet Book, you can go here.
Comments and suggestions are most welcome :)