A broochfest

There seems to be a little bit of a broochfest happening around crafty blogland, so here's my show and tell!

I try to co-ordinate a brooch to my outfit every day, even if I'm just schlepping about the house. Brooches just seem to make me happy.

• Top row - Beaded Heart and Flower Brooches by me
• 2nd Row - Aunty Mabels Handbag & Owl by Betty Jo - Wonderland and Chocolate by Sophie Isobel
• 3rd Row - Flower by Greenolive, Owl by Hokey, Vintage Diamante Cluster bought from second hand shop in Clunes, INXS badge from the 80's gifted to me from Steph.
• Bottom Row - Necklace / Badge Combo by Lauren Williams, 3 vintage floral & 1 Pippijoe fabric badge from Starashan.
• Cluster of badges on the right hand side made by me at Brown Owls last year.

Do you have a little bit of a brooch collecting obsession that you'd like to share?

Sunday Stash

Whoops! I only realised after checking out all the other Sunday Stashers, that I'd joined up and completely forgotten about it!

Anyhow.... this is where my vintage fabric / sheeting obsession began. It was a completely perfect unopened set of vintage dri-glo sheets that I'm guessing were from the 1960's. I found them on Ebay probably about 4 years ago. I kept them still sealed in the packet for about another year before I worked up the courage to open the packet and chop them up.... and I've never looked back.

Thanks for hosting Tamara!

Lighting up my night

Lastnight was another fun night at Brown Owls....and my last one for the year.... Boo Hoo!

We made these sweet tea light candle holders....

We very nearly had an entire table full of bloggers.... Liesl, Cindy, Lara, Steph, Hollie, Myself, and Kerry (who will remain blogless)! It was lovely to finally meet Liesl in person.

Gemma drew my name out of the magic prize barrel and I won one of Kirsty's fabulous swizzle stick rings....

....and this is Kerry modelling her fabulouso chain stitch embroidery!

Looking forward to next year.

Canniness....

Canniness Definition - can·ni·ness (kan′ē nis) - noun - the quality of being canny


It was tin can pencil cup night at Brown Owls lastnight.......


There were lots of prizes from the magic barrel....

....and I'm officially the slowest at embroidery. It took me three full hours to embroider my pencils. Cindy and I were neck and neck on the embroidery speed most of the night, but she won in the end!

.....and Steph managed to finish her pencils, add some text, and a running stitch top and bottom and glue it on and varnish it!
I've promised that I will definitely finish mine off today...more photos later.

Love Fridays....in the City - Part 2

Continuing on with 'The Excellent Adventures of CurlyPops, Drewzel and Hokey' from yesterday......


We met up nice and early at The Nicholas Building and caught the lift upstairs, to begin with a visit to Buttonmania. We ooohed and ahhhed and looked through boxes of buttons before finding a few that we loved, and making some purchases.


Next stop was Kimono House. There were so many beautiful fabrics to choose from. I chose a couple of lovely fat quarters.


I've given one of my fat quarters to Hollie, and she is going to use it to make me a gorgeous Hokey wallet!

We popped in to Lincraft at Melbourne Central to pick up some matching thread and then it was time for a coffee/tea pitstop and of course, a bit of cake.


We decided to head down to Degraves Subway next.

We checked out the current art installation....

.....and visited Sticky to pick up some zines.

Look, there's a Mixtapezine poster!

By this time, the very excellently unpredictable Melbourne weather had taken a bit of a turn for the worse. Our next stop was supposed to be The Rooftop Market at Curtin House, but alas, it was cancelled. We drowned our sorrows with a visit to the Metropolis Bookshop instead.

It had started to rain lightly by the time we reached Cottage Industry, and then we made a pitstop for lunch at a nice little cafe in Gertrude St.

By now it was pouring rain, and we headed over to Sydney Rd to visit Sherrin who was holding down the fort at Olive Grove

Sherrin was working on some of her gorgeous Christmas cards .......

The time had flown by, so it was back to the city to make our departures. Last stop on the tour, Max Brenner for a chocolate fix....need I say more!

Love Fridays.....in the city

Today was such a lovely day out with Steph and Hollie in the city.....

More details tomorrow, but this was the ending.... Chocolate Souffle at Max Brenner, and how can you not love that?

Thanks Gals!

Packing

Blue skies and sunshine..... check
Lino.... check
Lino Cutters.... still need to find
Canvasses.... check
Banana Muffins.... check
Paint.... check
Paper/Wallpaper..... still need to find
Scissors.... check
Varnish.... check
Box of op shop gold.... check
Smencil.... check
Petrol..... get some on the way
House sparkling for todays inspection..... well sort of check

Fun... check check
Laughter... check check
Lots of Crafty Girls... check check
Can't wait to get there!

Join Drewzels Pod

Steph is starting up a Morsbags Pod in Melbourne. The idea is basically to get together and sew recycled shopping bags and give them out to try to reduce the use of plastic bags.
You can click on the picture above and check out the details or head over to visit this post, or join up on Facebook.

Blogtoberfest Fave Friday

Steph aka Drewzel aka Shabby Chicken aka Stitchy Britches has decreed that today shall be Blogtoberfest Fave Friday, and so it is my duty to post my fave song of all time!



This is one of my all time favourite songs by my all time favourite band. I just love the film clip...fantastic Aussie 80's simplicity

and the perfect accompaniment to this one....



a bit of classic Midnight Oil... you'll just have to ignore the fact that Peter Garrett is wearing an extremely ugly shirt.

Play along Blogtoberfesters!

One for Drewzel...

A perfect funky Friday song for a crafty chickadee!

The Blogtoberfest Motherload!

I don't really know where to start with this post.....

I had such a fantastic day out with Cathy yesterday...great company, great food, great op-shopping and lots of laughs were just what I needed!

We visited 4 local op-shops and we're splitting the motherload between the two of us (we figured that then we wouldn't have to argue about who found what first.....and anyway, Cathy can run much faster than me...he he he)

The chicken print was a fabulous find for this great chick...it's right up her alley.

...and these farmyard pillowcases were way too cute to resist.....

I found myself some semi-vintage tupperware containers (there's a nice shot of the art swap letterholder from Shellbells on my kitchen wall)....

These photos only show the motherload that made its way onto my kitchen table. Lets just say that Cathy will be returning at some time very soon in the future to pick up the four boxes of goodies that are in my garage (they wouldn't fit in the shopping basket on this)....and we had to leave something else rather large at the op-shop as we couldn't even fit it in the back of my car with the back seats down. It's something to do with a secret birthday pressie so I can't say any more.

There is nothing better than spending the day op-shopping with crafty friends!

Mushies

I had a lovely stitchy night at Brown Owls lastnight and I actually managed to finish the project...yippee! We made these sweet little mushroom pincushions.


Kirsty did a fab job with her supersensational 'mushie how to slide presentation'.
Steph saved my CurlyPops owl from the last session that I missed and now I also have a sweet little Lara owl.

There were lots of delicious things to eat - chocolate cake made by Kirsty, apple cake made by Stephs mum, and cupcakes made by Cindy (which was lucky for me because I only had vegemite toast for tea before I left).


....and of course there were lots of lovely girls to stitch and chat with. I finally got to meet Hollie (luckily I was wearing my gorgeous Hokey Owl brooch) and had a walk down memory lane with Kerry from Quamby.......

Check out the forest of mushrooms here.... a collaboration of stitchy goodness.

The tree of happiness award...

I was bestowed the 'Tree of Happiness' award by Low GI Jen over at August Street last week and I haven't had a chance to sit down and think about it until now.....

I need to list 6 things that I'm happy about right now....thinking....thinking.....anyone have some good thinking music for me?

1. I have had an overlocker lesson and I'm not scared of it anymore.


2. I have lots of little crafty wip's and ufo's sitting in various places throughout the house (if you're wondering why that makes me happy, it's because lots of them are new crafts that I've only learned in the last few months....and learning a new craft makes me happy).


3. I'm drinking a hot milo (anything chocolatey makes me happy).


4. I have lots of little crafty adventures booked in this month (Mixtogether, Brown Owls, Thornbury Sewing Bonanza).


5. Vegemite Toast


6. My nephews

Sorry for taking so long Jen...I hope you'll forgive me!

Now I need to bestow this award on to 6 more deserving bloggers....so I choose Steph, Cathy, Michelle, Hollie, Belinda, and Serena....

On My Desk .........on a Wednesday

On my desk today is my new owl house ($5 from the Reject Shop)....thanks for the hot tip Steph!

I woke up thismorning to find that Mr CurlyPops had put one of my owls in the house.....he must have been testing it out while he was having brekky. I'm going to paint it before I put it on the wall in my craft / spare room.

The fabric and bias tape is the beginning of my Mixtogether gift, and there's the usual sewing paraphernalia as well.....

For more On My Desk loveliness, go and check out Kirsty's blog!

More knitting.....

Now that I'm on my way to knitting something other than scarves (after the two that I currently have on needles), I thought I'd invest in some reference books to add to my ever growing craft book nook.

Lo and behold, Sam from Whizz Me is having a craft book cull via her etsy shop so I was able to pick up these three lovely books. I haven't had a chance to sit down and read them just yet but I'm hoping to get to them this week some time.

I also want to buy the new Vickie Howell book that I saw over here on the Mixtape blog and over here on Stephs Shabby Chicken blog. I might just need a little afternoon shopping spree to the local bookshop!

Lino Love and Blogging and Giveaways

Head on over and check out the Betty Jo blog to see Liz's new creations that she has made using the lino that I sent her..........

.....then head on over to Drewzel and read a very thought provoking blogging post by Steph.

....and then enter the fabulous 100th post giveaway from Michelle at Leni and Rose

Ok, I'm going to stop telling you what to do now (I can be very bossy sometimes)!

Lovely Suprises

I had some time to read some blogs lastnight after my nephews were put to bed....and to my suprise, when I read Steph's blog, I found this! Thanks so much Steph....this crafty blogging world is such a lovely thing to be a part of, and you just made my day, week, month!

Steph has multiple blogs (Drewzel and Shabby Chicken and Stitchy Britches). Her Drewzel blog has crafty bits, funny bits, thoughtful bits, challenging bits, musical bits and inspiring bits. Shabby Chicken was created after the first Brown Owls meeting and has all of her Brown Owls goodness. Stitchy Britches is full of everything vintage and retro. You should definitely head on over and check them all out.....

On My Desk......on a Wednesday

Well, not much has changed on my desk since last week. I still have my Pippijoe fabric and my WIP crochet from Brown Owls....

Just a couple of new additions - instructions for creating buttonholes on my sewing machine and test buttonholes on calico. I made machine created buttonholes for the first time on Monday for the handbag that Steph is receiving as part of my 100th post giveaway. I will post photos of the bag once Steph has received it in the mail. There was a lot of swearing and unpicking and instruction reading and calico testing and tea drinking involved in the creation of those damn buttonholes!

Finally - bits and pieces cut ready for my Mirabel Softie!

Thanks to Kirsty for hosting, I can't wait to check everyone else's desks this week.

And the Sombrero says the winner is..........

I asked Mr CurlyPops to draw a winner from the sombrero. I told him to close his eyes, spin around 10 times and then put his hand in to choose. He only spun 3 times and then he was too dizzy but he picked a winner!

.....and the winner is DREWZEL!

Thankyou so much for all of the lovely comments that were left for my 100th post and thankyou to everyone who answered my nosey questions (I'm a bit of a snoop) and entered the giveaway.

So Drewzel, if you would like to email me your snail mail address, I will get to work on a lovely apron (edit - that should be handbag....sorry!) for you and go through the stash to add some other little suprises!

Have a lovely weekend everyone......