Woohooo for Secret Santa!!!

The European Street Team had a secret santa game which was organised by the brilliantly creative ArtMind. The gist of the game is that we are all matched with another european seller and have to make something for that person based on the information from their questionnaire that they completed. This year my secret santa came all the way from Barcelona in Spain ...

Fantastically she was able to send the package to me in our new home right here in Christchurch, New Zealand ... THANK YOU so much PALEOLOCHIC!!!!

The delightfully creative Moira a.k.a PALEOLOCHIC made me a superbly stylish set of Lavendar hangings and also sent me a seriously beautiful magnet for my fridge! Thank you so much :D I've hung the lavendar sachets throughout the house .. wonderfully fragrant!

It's been such an honor to have been part of this majestically warm and wonderful team. I miss 'the girls' and I certainly miss europe.

A special thanks to you Mitsy, everyone appreciates all of your hard work in putting the Secret santa together .. you are one in a million girl :D

Pricing holders

For the past few weeks and certainly like super crazy this weekend (I have afterall been child free these past few days) i've been gearing up like crazy for the Maastricht craft fair in Holland. The fair isn't until the 16th August but the kids and I are packing up the car next weekend (9th to be precise) and heading off on our little road trip (well, ok it's not so small it's a 2100km trip) .. My dear friend Mitsy a.k.a Artmind recently posted a tutorial on her blog (she's a tutorial MASTER) that was all about making memo clip holders and kind of orientated towards 'price tags' .. now, this was something I really wanted to try as I hadn't yet organised a thing for my pricing options for the fair.

I did end up modifying it a little bit based on the materials that I already had here at home. Instead of using the loo rolls I decided to make use of some colorful silicone cupcakes I had had sitting around (I can bake a cake and biscuits but i'm seriously crap at baking cupcakes) .. matching paint, some meat skewers and some mini clips .. and here is my effort:

I HIGHLY recommend that if you don't already follow Artmind's blog .. you should be .. it's always updated with super interesting posts, tutorials and amazing things.

http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com/

Thanks Mitsy .. you are the BEST girl!

Pawprints and new work

Once again i've let time pass without posting .. so, i'd LOVE to share with you a few special things!

A few weeks back I had a request through a potential customer to see if I could custom make something 'dog related' on bowls. Pawprints seemed to be a good direction to head in. I had a discussion with my friend Mitsy and look what she came up with:

Mitsy (a.k.a Artmind) was extremely helpful and made these amazing pawprint tiles for me to use in my mosaic works for this customer (as yet I haven't made a bowl but you can see a little bit further down for what I have made). I'm really excited by these pawprints, they are completely perfect and so terribly cute!

While I was awaiting the tiles to arrive I tinkered around with my own ceramic tiles and handcut paw prints for a small bowl. I think it came out pretty well actually .. (there are 3 of these placed evenly around the bowl). The customer really loves this and has also seen the pictures of Mitsy's tiles so she's VERY excited about all of this!

Having the kids away for the weekend has been absolute bliss .. as much as I miss them it's been great just having time for me and time for making some new mosaics .. here is a sample of some of my new work in my etsy shop

Perfectly purple dish

Little lemon eggcup

Holland trip and mini EST meeting

Recently I had the supreme good fortune to travel to Holland for 10 days to stay with my best buddy Vanessa (fellow kiwi lass living with a dutchman there) ... it was much needed time out!! I want to share with you my meetings of some very special ladies from the EST (europeanstreetteam on Etsy) .. 10 days wasn't long enough in the end and I missed the chance of meeting more, but maybe we'll have a EST convention after all this year, who knows!

First of all Vanessa and I travelled to the city of Schiedam (near Rotterdam) to meet up with Liz of AgapeBridal. Liz is a super gorgeous Singaporean lady (and she is just as lovely and sweet as she appears on the thread!) married to a dutchman. Liz's husband stayed up the night before to make chocolate muffins, especially for our visit .. how sweet is that?! Dear Liz made us the yummiest shepherds pie for lunch too!

I had recently (before going) purchased a few gorgeous items from Liz's etsy shop (AgapeBridal) and I asked her to wait and give them to me on this day!! We had the honour of seeing Liz's wedding album (which is in the form of an amazing hardcover book) ... extremely beautiful photo's with touching words throughout. I'm not at all ashamed to share with you that both Vanessa and I cried over one part of the album, it was breathtaking.

This is a photo of Liz and I .. you know, I actually felt short over in Holland but I was feeling kind of tall that day when I met Liz ;)

A few days later we travelled to the city of Eindhoven to meet up with Mitsy from Artmind and and Myrte from Mirthquake and MirthQuakeClothing. Goodness me, I don't think Eindhoven has heard such laughter from a group of girls for a long time! Seriously, we met, me sat, we talked and talked and laughed and talked and giggled and talked and laughed some more!! It was the best time i'd had in such a long time ... our jaws were hurting from all the laughter! They'd (the cafe/restaurant) NEVER have believed us if we told them it was our first time meeting each other. Myrte gave us all gorgeous buttons from her shop and Mitsy had baked very special biscuits for us all .. totally yummy! Two more truly awesome, sweet, lovely and gorgeous girls from the EST team!!

These are photo's from that day .. I must just point out that in the first one I am wearing my jewellery purchases from dear nanouke. Stylish and funky stuff eh what!!

I came back feeling refreshed and was immediately swept up in masses of hugs and kisses from the kids .. nice to know I was missed!!

Making a caterpillar keychain ...

Today Mr Mailman brought me a package .. a very cute package that I had bought from ArtMind ... naughty little Mitsy sent something for the kiddies along with the two gorgeous cards I had bought from her ...

First the cards ... this is one I will give to an Australian friend for the birth of her baby boy .. it's so cute and fluffy!

Baby boy greeting card




This one I'm keeping for myself ... I live in hope ;).. te he he he ...

Happily ever after greeting card



There were some surprises included in this package (this is the naughty part) .. take a peek at what Inês, Gabriel and Simone made this afternoon ... This is the part we they learnt how to make a caterpillar keychain

Firstly they had to thread everything together .. which they did extremely well at their 'work table' (you can tell, it's got permanent drawings all over it)...



Then they had to pose for mummy to take a photo of the finished caterpillars ...



Thank you so much Mitsy (aka ArtMind) .. the kids had a wonderful time making the keychains and I totally love the cards!!!