I'm a nerd!

I came home really late last night only to find two bags (!!) full with fabric, lace and velvet ribbons! My dear friend Caroline had been here to drop of some of her mothers fabric that I guess she doesn't use any more! You should have seen me!:-) I think J thought it was really fun!
I sat on the living room floor at 11.30 pm with fabric all over the floor and a big smile on my face:-) It's sometimes really easy to make me happy...I'm a nerd! Fabric nerd

Just look at this, beautiful of trims of old lace, velvet ribbons and little flowery things!

These things in the foreground I call flowers, I really like them! They would look lovely on an ATC or as decorations on a cool bag!

Here's the fabrics! Little bits of fabric in almost every colour! This weeks theme for the Lucky parcels are fabric! Maybe I can part with some of these things?!

Thank you Caroline!
och Carolines mamma!

Steel wire crown tutorial

Finally, I've put a tutorial together on how to make the steel wire crowns. I have tried to include as many pictures as possible to make the tutorial clear. Please send me a comment if there are anything yo don't understand with the tutorial!
Good luck!
A little warning, if you are going to use these as candle light holders do not put beads in the top, they will melt!

1. This is what you need to make your crown: A cutting pliers and if you have some other tongs(round), steel wire (approx. 0,5mm thick) and beads of your choice. Big crown= big beads
Small crown= small beads
2. First you make a circle with the steel wire. This is going to be the basis of the crown, make sure it fits around or on top of the thing you are going to use it for.
3. After that you cut our six equally long bits of wire. For the small sized crown I made these where 14 cm(5,5 inches) long and the circle was 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter.
4. Now you have to attach the first piece using 1cm (0,5 inch) of the wire.
5. Continue doing this with all six of the pieces with intervals of even distance.
6. This is what is should look like when you've gotten this far. Hopefully all pieces are equally long, if not the crown will look a little wonky:-)
7. Now you have to gather all the strings together in the middle and attach them with a piece of steel wire.
8. Just like this.
9. Try to bend them all out so that the shape of the crown will be easy to do.
10. After I bent them all a little I just pressed down and this shape came out. This is basicly the crown shape, if you want you can adjust and shape it from here. Depending on how you what your crown to look, little rounder shape or more geometric, this is where you fix it.
11. Now to the top of the crown. I have made my crowns with this rounded top. You could also put a bead on the ends and bend them in. Your imagination is the limit!
12. This is what it looked like when I started...
13. ...and this is the finished result.
14. Now you have the foundation of the crown. from here you decide how you what to decorate it or if you want to decorate it. Make sure you have enough beads when you start to cover the whole crown (One of my first mistakes) Also, don't put beads in the top if you are going to use this as candle holder, they will melt!
15. Attaching beads is best done with a short piece of wire at a time. Taking one long and thinking it will last for one crown will for sure make you entangled in it and probably just make you angry, which will lead to you never finishing this beautiful piece;-)
16. Here's the first bead attached on the crown!
17. and the second!
18. This is the finished result! But do learn from my mistake: If you are making a small crown as I was, don't place the beads like this in the top. As mentioned before: they will melt! If you are making a bigger one; no problem!

Have fun making crowns!

Ceramic Tuesday

The weather is so warm today it's like summer! So, I took a break from exam studying and cared for my plants a little. I have been growing sunflowers all spring and lately they have been in need of bigger flowerpots. What better than to make them myself?!
So, that is what ceramic Tuesdays is about, more pots. Yesterday I came home with two new pots, as you can see in the first picture. One bigger in a traditional flowerpot- shape and the other in a more jug- like shape. From the beginning I was going to make a jug but the clay was to wet the shape kept collapsing all the time. I didn't like the finished result and thought I could just put it away somewhere where I wouldn't ever see it again. And now its on the balcony where I'll see it everyday:-)

Here they are in two different colours of blue

I made them all!:-) Don't look at the plants, I know they look sad but I just gave them new soil, flowerpots and a better place in the shadow. So they will look happier in a couple of days!

These flowers look a lot happier. Here is also where I keep the candle light holders I made a while back. In the mini greenhouse I growing lavender, what a fantastic smell they will give! You could say that I made those too?:-)

I'm currently re-decorating our little balcony so it will be a nice place to have dinner in summer nights and just be a nice place to sit. Maybe it will be finished this weekend?

Mail goodies!

More mail goodies, a lucky parcel received from Sequin girl/Sam full with fun stuff and a chunky page from Marcia (The one with the very cute sheep). She also has a blog that I recently discovered!

The two other chunky pages I received some time ago and that are made by craftersbagsandmosaics (Ocean City) and the top one is made by turnsole.
They are each special in their own way, I like to see how we all have interpret the theme "travel".

Make- overs

A couple of weeks ago I went thrift shopping and had these thing with me home. This weekend I've spent a lot of time with my mothers sewing machine and I made the table cloths into two/three new bags!(One bag is reversible) In the coming weeks I'll show you what I'm making with the rest of the stuff (almost finished with the basket).

Three table cloths, one basket and two old books that I'm giving a make- over!

This is my new bag fore Uni. It's big which means that there is room for all my stuff and it looks summery!:-)

Here's the reversible bag in the green fabric. This one have already been out on town, on Saturday night I took this with me when meeting up with a friend fore a grass of wine.

And this is how it looks on the other side, that's the last of the black and white fabric from Ikea that I liked so much. (My mother being the model here:-)

Off to study for my last exam this semester!

More fun in the mail

In busy times it's always fun to get lovely things in the mail! Here are some more treasures:

New and fun teas from Portugal. My whole apartment smells lovely after opening this package!
This is a mixed- lucky parcel from Maarit/hemmamam from Finland. This is just the best group I have ever been in! I get so much new and fun supplies and this was a really big parcel!:-)

I'd better get back to studying!

Ceramic Tuesday

Lots of things to do today. Have a lot on my shoulders to carry at the moment...This is a metaphoric images of me:-) and my latest piece in ceramic. I love making these women!

A quick and kind of strange post today. Be back tomorrow with something longer! Now I have to get back to sick little cat! Have a great day!

I love swapping!

This afternoon when I sat by the computer trying to write something for Uni something much more fun came in the mail! I got three lovely packages, one ATC from HeatherSB, six different teabags and lost of nice paper!

This is from Heather who also has a blog with all her creations. I just love the colours she use!

The teabags are from one of my partners in Tea swap #9. This is all teas that I haven't tried before, so this is what I'm drinking the next couple of days! This was a nice and easy swap, we have three partners so I know there will be more in the mail the next couple of days.

I can't tell you how much I enjoy swapping! This is from a one of my swap partners (we have two), she sent me so many nice pieces of paper I don't even know what to do with it! ;-)

Soon I'll be off to my ceramics course, there's no end to all the goodness today!
May you all have a equally good day!

Monday...

The weekend is over...I went shopping in the lovely town of Malmo on Saturday, meet some friend and had some coffee and a cold bear. On Sunday me and J went to the cinema and saw Zodiac. But we where both quite disappointed, it was 2 h 40 min and felt longer! But on the other hand, we had high expectations since it's the same director to Seven and Fight club...
In between that, I made some more fabric hearts to hang in my home, have I shown pics of that? I also made two secret parcels for the new theme of the week- mixed. I made a parcel with mixed flower fabrics and some gold:-) Only one is gone so far, interested anyone?

You could hang them on a doorknob, a drawer or as a mobile over a crib?


I'll be back!

The new chunky pages are ready to go in the mail

For my other group on flickr, "around the world"- chunky page swap. This time we had travel as the theme and it got me thinking about the travels I did as a child. My mother is from Denmark so we spent many summers there visiting family and friend. We often rented a house in the country side of by the sea and just did nothing for a week. I remember my parents being much more relaxed and happy which made us children more happy and relaxed. As an adult I still love travelling but now I travel as far away as possible, forgetting about my summers in Denmark.

I included sand in the parcel, that I brought home with me last time I was in Langeland. Hopefully this will not cause to much inconvenience to the receiver! ;-) The parcel also comes with a note, the picture is cut out of a magazine article about Langeland.

Have a really nice weekend!

Swapping- giving and receiving

More goodies in the mail! Today the secret parcel arrived from Denmark and from Dorte/Life in a flash. It contained many nice looking ribbons and a white heart that I liked a lot. At the moment my life feels like a life in a flash or that everything is going too fast for me...In June I'll be free and then I'm going to do soo many beautiful things with all the things I've been getting in the mail lately.

I'm also in a tea swap over at swap-bot. This time I have tree partners that each get six teabags. It's always fun to do a easy swap, but I think this will be my last swap in a while. I have to have a little swap break to do some studying:-)

Foods I made...

This is what I made for dinner! A cold avocado soup served with parmesan cheese and spicy chorizo sausages. It was easy to make and looked good in the picture on the recipe, J liked it a lot, me not so much. I thought I liked cold soups but apparently not, that's really to bad since I made enough for six...

A picture of our kitchen and the light holder crowns!

If you would like the recipe, here it is:
6 avocados
1 lemon
1 onion
8 dl broth or one stock cube in 8 dl of water
4 dl cremefraiche
salt & pepper
1/2 chorizo sausage
parmesan
fresh basil

Chop the avocados and onion and put it in the blender with the broth and the juice from the lemon and blend it all together. Afterwards you put the cremefraiche in and let it all blend into a smooth paste, season it with salt and pepper. Chop and fry the sausage and serve it with the soup. Don't forget the parmesan!
If you are unfamiliar with some of the things here, you can go to this site and get some clarity!

Good luck!

More crowns!

Today is a national holiday and both me and J are free from school and work! This meant cleaning the apartment ;-( and making lunch from scratch:-). Is this signs on us getting older and more mature? Let's not hope so!
On a request from a dear friend I'm going to show you what you can use the crowns that I'm working on for.

This little mini crown I used as a cute embellishment on a gift, you could also decorate it with beads in a matching colour.

Theses two are going to be gifts for my mother. I made these crowns in another model that's easier to make.

I first made the circle and from it I attached six equally long "pegs" and then I just joined the pegs in the top. After the frame is made I decorated it with pearls in different colours.
If someone would be interested, I could put a tutorial together?

Have a good day!