A quick little pennant garland for our deer

Presents for baby Thomas

Mart's brother and his wife had a beautiful little boy recently and I made them a couple of personalised presents. We sent everything to Australia in the mail as we won't be able to meet the latest addition to the family for a couple of months. In the meanwhile they'll have these to remember us by! :-)

I printed the jumpsuit and mint cloth with templates I cut out of freezer paper and the Sydney changing mat is a crumpled city map I quilted together with thick grey tracksuit fabric. The white jumpsuit is a nod to the fact that Mart's brother has a craft beer wholesale company. 

Himmeli wreath

My friend Claire had her birthday a few weeks ago and I sent her a golden himmeli wreath I made following this tutorial by Vintage Revival.


I had tried making an exact same wreath about a year ago just by looking at a picture I had found online. It had taken me the biggest part of a day and while I had eventually managed to recreate the whole thing out of plastic straws and string, there was no way I was going to ever make another one; it was just too. darn. time. consuming. And brain numbing.
But then my mum pointed out there were tutorials out there (I have no idea why that thought didn't even cross my mind in the first place) and after just seconds of looking at Mandi's perfect description I understood there was a much simpler way to do it. 
Cue wire and modules.

This wreath is seriously so easy to make, it's amazing. The only slightly hard part was finding cocktails straws here in Europe. The rest was a piece of cake.

Aaand... it's pretty addictive! I might have made several for Christmas presents this year. 

A modern house for a small family of Sylvanian rabbits

It's been months and months since my last post... apologies!

I thought I should share these adorable little rabbits though, and the shoebox house I made them as a birthday present for a very special little girl who had her birthday on Sunday.
I guess this isn't quite the style of houses Sylvanian families usually live in but since I had mostly modern interior magazines lying around (and since I much prefer this esthetic) this lucky bunch ended up in a pretty modern pad! 

 
I sticky-taped a piece of cardboard in the middle of the shoebox to add a level to the house, glued 'wallpaper' and flooring, cut furniture out of magazines, glued them to the walls and... voila! :-)


Oh, I also made a tiny little garland out of hole-paper-punch left overs; I couldn't resist! 


And since the birthday girl turned 4 I wrapped the whole thing into... four packages!

Bright (and light) little treats

A lot of the presents I make are then sent abroad to my family or friends who live far away. So... while I don't always quite follow this rule, I usually try and come up with treats that will survive the trip and which are on the light side so that I don't have to give up an arm and a leg on postage. :-) 

This little present for a friend in Denmark definitely fitted the rule: definitely light and not one bit fragile. I decorated the tags of a few teabags of my favourite tea with bright colours and pretty patterns, wrapped them in a nice box and *hop* in the mail!

Graphic pillows

On our wedding day we were presented with a big and beautiful folder filled with amazing creations from all our guests; each and everyone of them had put together something on the theme of cows and kangaroos (I'm Swiss, hence the cows and... Mart's Australian so... there you go! :-)) 

There were collages, photos, cards, poems... someone even bought us a cow in a charity and put the certificate in the folder. So many beautiful, fun and thoughtful pieces from everyone.

My mum and my brother actually designed a special fabric for us, which they sent us a few meters of when we got back to the Netherlands. I love it and decided to make pillows with a tiny little touch of neon orange 'cause... I just couldn't resist!

Happy birthday Caitlin!

One of our friends in Denmark turned 6 recently... I made her a personalised mug. :-)

our wedding | super simple white and pastel garlands

 
I couldn't have imagined my wedding without some garlands somewhere. They're such a simple and pretty way of making a place feel festive!

Mart and I, together with my brother and his girlfriend, punched thousands and thousands of circles out of white and pastel coloured paper and sewed them together with a sewing machine. The day before the wedding, my brother hung it all in the gallery where our wedding took place, together with several strands of fairy lights. 

It looked just like I hoped it would!

Photo credits | 5: Mathieu Collioud, 6: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | colourful wooden cutlery

 

During a few (very) warm days last summer we painted some 400 wooden spoons, forks and knifes with pretty pastel colours in anticipation for our wedding. 

We also made little pouches that we printed with our names to hold the cutlery and napkins (using the same stamp as here). It worked great with the personalised fish & chip bags!  

Photo credits |  8 & 9: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | homemade cake

It is the tradition in my family for my grand-mother to make the wedding cakes; she's made the ones for all her children and grand-children's weddings so far. I was so happy she could make ours too, even though our wedding was on the other side of the planet!
The cake was a traditional British fruit cake, and it was delicious.
 

For the decoration I was very much inspired by this picture (via). I made the little hearts out of fondant which I folded in half and let dry on an angle... and my mum and my aunty were extremely patient in placing them all on the finished cake. At that point I was so busy running around the place semi frantically, trying to think of everything we needed to finalise before the wedding, that I would certainly have made a complete mess. :-)

 
It is also the tradition to keep the top part of the cake and eat it at the birth of your first child... I'll keep you posted! hehehe...


Photo credits | 1 & 2: Mathieu Collioud | 3,4 & 5: Claire Dalgliesh

our wedding | personalised fish & chip bags

Once our wedding invitations had been printed, I cut the printing plate and made parts of it into two stamps we could use for our special day. 

One of the ways we used them was to personalise the bags which wrapped the fish & chips we served at dinner. 
I used waterproof ink and simply stamped each bag with our names and the date.

The food was a hit, and the bags were a fun little addition to the evening!
 

 Photo credits | 5 & 6: Claire Dalgliesh

Happy birthday Maman!

I have the bestest mum in the whole world, and for her birthday this year I made her a set of 'animal jars', which I filled with pretty candy.


I was first going to go for black and white candy only, but then couldn't resist adding a little touch of colour.