A creative boost!

Cleaning out my work space was a boost for my creativity. I have several finished projects and some new started ones! I knitted a new cosy for my ipod, my younger brother thought it looked so good that he wanted me to make one in blue for him! I made a bunch of new greeting cards with different scraps of fabric and papers I have gotten these last couple of weeks in trades. I was so inspired by the mosaic pages I made a while back and continued working with that technique, I think I'll make some more of them.
I also had time to go shopping, my favourite clothesline noa noa had a sale and I bought a new skirt and two new tops. With the clothes there was these beautiful tags and I couldn't just throw them out. I made one new ATC (below) and a new at tag. Here's the rest of them!

"Out walking in wind"

Greeting cards!

Greeting cards!

And an ipod cosy!

Have a really good weekend, I start working on Monday:-)

In retrospect...

Last week I read a post over at Felicias blog Fluffy Flowers about her childhood doll. This got me thinking of my childhood toys! And today I finally got around to making a post about my Barbie's. I know, there's a lot to be said about barbie's and not all of it is good. But I loved playing with my barbie's and I did not grow up thinking my body should look like a barbie:-) '

As you probably can see on the pictures my barbie's did not look like the average barbie. At first I had a period when I wanted to become a hairdressers, hence why most of them have very short hair:-) But the longest period of my childhood I wanted to become a designer. I used to sit with the ellos catalogue and look at outfits that I liked and then I sewed them for my barbie's. Sometimes with the help of my mother but later all by myself (which you probably can see)
I think I loved making new clothes for them more than actually playing with them. This is also the same period when I learned to knit. The first sweater I ever knitted was for my barbie, it was in two shades of pink with a incorporated gold thread. I loved it and wished I could make one for myself!I looked and looked but I could not find it now!

So, what I did, then 14 years ago is not much different from what I do now?! I remember getting this overwhelming urge to make something and I'll rush down in the basement to sew something for the barbie's and after a couple of hours I had I good feling again and cold go on with the rest of the day. I'm still creative and I still have these urges to make something. This is probably something that I'll have all my life and that comforts me... Being creative is who I am, and by the looks of it, who I have always been.

This has been a long and kind of philosophical post, hope you could make something out of it:-)
Have a good day!

Ceramic Tuesday

Here's the final batch of my ceramic jewellery. These are going to be brooches and earrings and the butterflies are necklaces, as you all can see:-)

Have a great day/night, I'm off to finish knitting my sweater:-)

Making room for something new!

I have decided to join in ArtsyMamas Everyday notions challenge and in the latest notion she talked about emptying or making room for something new in our lives. This was a notions that spoke to me in many ways. We live in a very small apartment and a crafting stash is something that is constantly growing:-) In order for me to justify a new purchase I have to ether throw something out or give it away before I bring something new into the apartment. Making room and emptying out old stuff also enables you to create new and to find the inspiration for new things. So, I reorganized my little crafting area and made room on my desk! This gave me so many new possibilities and new energy for crafting!

Here are some before and after pictures:

I did the cleaning this morning and I have to confess that now the area looks crowded again:-) But a crafty mess is a good mess, right?

A little bit of everything...

I didn't get anything done yesterday! All I got to do was drive to different groceries stores and buy food for about six people! We are going up to my friends house in the woods again and there we'll celebrate Midsummer. We are leaving tonight and it takes some time to plan for a three days stay up there. So, I didn't get to spent time with the sewing machine or make some new birthday cards! But I can show you some of all the tags I've been making these last couple of days. I love making tags and I think I'll sell my teapot and teabag-tags in my etsy shop one day.
I have been mentioning this future etsy store for quite a while now, and today I have created an account on etsy. This is the first step towards my own online shop! So, this is a sneak peak on what is going into my shop!!!!:-)

Have a great weekend and to all of you that are celebrating Midsummer:
Glad midsommar på er allihop!

Latest thrifts!

This weekend we went to a really good thrift market and this is my latest finds! I love this fabric and plan to make a bag out of it. I also found a little little piece of beautiful fabric with pink flowers on a green background, don't know what to make of that yet. A whole bag of "puddle"- yarn (I call it that...its some kind of cotton yarn) and old Christmas cards from the 50s and paper bags for coffee beans, never used! I'm going to make goodie bag out of them one day when I open my etsy;-)
Well, today I spending time with the sewing machine and buying food for the big holiday over here: Midsummer! This is a holiday celebrated as much as Christmas here in Sweden. We don't give each other presents but we ate a lot and dance around a pole covered in flowers and leafs;-) Does this sound strange to you?

Well, its a lovely tradition to celebrate that the summer solstice, but do read the link I'm not that good at explaining your traditions in detail:-)

Have a great day!

New Chunky pages

These are the new June chunky pages, called colour mosaic pages. The measurement are still 4x41/2 inch and the squares are 1x1 inch. I used old and new scraps, here all my resent swaps came in handy since they offered a lot of new papers. This was so much fun, I made eight instead of five! Its a really good way of using al those scraps of paper you have laying around on your desk;-) Go to my flickr to see more of them.

I still have two pages that's not going into a swap, so if you would like to make a page, we could swap?

Ceramic Tuesday

There are some shy people out there...Three people entered their names in the give away and I'm giving them all three the parcel they wanted.I'll send you an email asking about your addresses.
But, today is Ceramic Tuesday and I thought I'll show some little things that I'm planing to sell when I open up my own etsy, on day in the future...

I made brooches, three different ones with flowers in clear colours.

You could wear them as embellishments on clothes or as shown here, on your bag.

These are a bit too big, in the other batch I still haven't finished I made them smaller. But with the same stylized flower motifs. I also made matching pendants for necklaces and earrings.

Congratulations all my winners!
;-)

My first give away!

OK, I've been talking about it for a long time now!
My first give away:

In my appreciation of all you out there I'm giving away two parcels containing my new addiction: tags. Both in the shape of tea bags and as normal looking tags:-) If you would like a parcel, please write you name and which parcel you would like in the comment section and I'll draw two winners on Tuesday. Each parcel also contains some of my favourite scraps of paper!
If the winners do end up making something out of the scraps I sure would like to see the creations! (But don't feel pressured;-)

Parcel #1: Four tags with flower motifs and some patterned paper scraps.

Parcel #2: Five tea tags with hand made paper scraps

Would you like to have this?
Just, write me a comment!
;-)

Summer recap with a hit of more...

The Swedish summer at its best!

Wild strawberries, a swim in the lake, light summer foods, wild flowers, game playing and the sun setting! These are a few of the things that I love...
The down side: mosquito's and gnat. My index finger is now so swollen from a mosquito bite, that I can hardly type this! The rest of my body is covered in little inching bites!

We had two lovely days in the woods, I didn't speak much Spanish but understood a lot more...annoying! We went for walks in the woods at night and took the car for a longer trip and saw wild pigs!! A mother with her little ones. Good thing we where in the car since those can be very dangerous! But it was exciting!

More trips like this and my summer will be perfect!

Tonight's the night, its going to happen....

Ceramic Tuesday

on a Thursday. Here are one of the birdbath I talked about last ceramic Tuesday. I gave them both to my mother and she displayed them so well in her garden that I'm kind of liking them now. I'm letting her keep one and giving one away to J:s mother.
The latest thing I made was this lantern made out of rings and then dipped into a thick colour called antique white. With a big candle in, it gives a beautiful light at night. I'm really pleased with this, I like how the colour turned out and the rustic look.

We are going away to J:s parents this weekend and instead of a flower I'm thinking of giving them both the lantern and the birdbath.

Going away!

I'm going away for a couple of days. Into the Swedish woods I go in the company of some old and new friend from Sweden and Spain. Maybe I'll even fresh up my Spanish!? Anyway, that means that there will be no Ceramic Tuesday but a Ceramic Thursday instead.
And, No I haven't forgot about the promised give- away, I'm just preparing for it. The first step is that I now have an e- mail address. So, if you feel like writing to me but not in the comment section you can write to me here: niftycrafting [at] gmail [dot] com

If you have nothing to do, go over here and do a quiz. I did the artist or ape- quiz and to 100% but then I have studied art history and especially these artists...

Be sure to stay tuned:-)

Copenhagen

The weekend has been full of activities! On Friday we had people over for a night with wii-playing! That was a lot of fun;-) On Saturday we went to Copenhagen, the weather was warm and we spent a lot of time sunbathing in a park called Kongens have (The kings garden) and afterwards looking at his castle. We ate at a Italian place and had us some good Danish beer and playing with the thought of moving to the city we love so much...Don't know if it was the beer or not, but now we are seriously looking at the possibilities of living and working in Copenhagen. Just for a while...
Yesterday the weather was so warm here that I had my first swim in the ocean! We brought our new red grill to the beach and had a little barbecue. The water was warm and the sun kept on shining, life couldn't be better!

More to come...

In my thoughts...

I did some more parcels for the flickr group containing lace, ribbons and yarn this afternoon.
I love making these little parcels, looking through my stash for nice things to give to people all over the world. I like the thought of giving something away that I myself would like to receive. On that not, I would like to give a big thanks to all who reads and writes comments to me.
I would like to do something to show my appreciation of you all and was thinking of some kind of give away...
Stay tuned for a follow up of that thought!

In the mean time, here's a flower to you all!

Have a nice weekend.
See you soon!

More mail goodies!

I don't always spend time in my mothers garden, even if it looks like it from the past couple of posts. It's always extra fun to be home then I get fun packages in the mail, like today! I received three different secret parcels, one from Moline, maria nenita and lily.lemon

Another good thing with all these swaps that I'm in: I get to see other peoples Moo-cards! I'm going to get me some of my own one day! You can make them out of your flickr photos with all your details on the back and then they work as a calling cards. This is from maria nenita, Moline and HeatherSB

This is a secret parcel- textile from maria nenita. She has two blogs one in Swedish and one in English.

This is the parcel I got from lily. lemon

And from Moline

Summer days...

My days are filled with summer actives: reading, doing nothing, painting a little and cuddling with this little guy:

Emil

No one is home except me and Emil. So we are discovering the garden together him and me. He follows me around and looks at the things that I take pictures of...

...and sometimes I do something productive like panting the basket I bought a while ago.

Two birthdays to celebrate!

Yesterday the 6th of June, it was both my mothers birthday and the Swedish national day.Hence the Swedish and Danish flags!
We mostly celebrated our mother. The weather was really hot and we where out all day. We made her a princess cake (A marzipan and crème - cake) and for dinner we did home made sushi (her favourite). Needless to say, we ate a lot!
I made her two collages with pictures of her as a child and finished them on the same day:-) Even if I started to work on them weeks ago, it's not really me to be finished in time:-)

All in all, we had a really good day and it didn't get any worse when J brought his new toy: a Wii. We all played, taking turns and today I even have sore muscles from playing Baseball!!

Have a good Thursday!

Ceramic Tuesday

It's not always that I like the things I come home with from my ceramics course. So was the case when I yesterday came home with two birdbaths that had gone wrong in the oven. I gave them both to my mother;-) with the excuse that she has a garden to put them in. And now I'm going to see what I think about them in a couple of days...
Instead I'm going to show you what my mothers is making! She is very talented! For the last couple of times she's been doing these heads or busts. She made one of my younger brother that turned out really good and life like. I must show a pic of that next time!

So, this is what I'm giving you today: a lot of pictures of my mothers art and with a feeling of summer!

Today also was my last day at Uni! Since I start working in July I now have a one month summer break!
Have a great day!

I'm free like a bird!

I had my last exam today and all that's left now is an oral exam on Tuesday after that I'm free for a whole month!! To celebrate this I'm going to be away from the computer fore a couple of days and won't be back until Ceramic Tuesday. In the mean time enjoy this blue collage and all the old posts!

Enjoy your weekend!