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!

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 | 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

our wedding | letterpressed invitations

Because we were inviting friends and family members from opposite sides of the planet who spoke different languages we wanted to have a bilingual invitation. Our friend Claire designed exactly what we had hoped for: a graphic, strong and beautiful card, which was then letterpressed on bicolor paper. 

We couldn't have been happier with the final result!

Maria's name day

At work, our intern, who comes from Bulgaria, celebrated her name day today. I made her a little one of these, and she brought us delicious home-made chocolates. It was lovely!

It's been incredibly busy around here lately. Sorry for not giving this space the attention it deserves but in the past weeks I've found pretty much daily that I was either out of time or energy to sit down and put something together for my blog... Feels like days don't have enough hours in them! :-)

I think it might stay a little quiet here for the next few weeks, but don't worry, I'm still here!

P.S. I made the paper jewels using minieco's template (via sinnenrausch). Warning: they are extremely addictive to make; I couldn't stop myself cutting more and more of them!

Airvases

One of my mum's friend brought her three beautiful black and white air vases back from Japan... we opened them today; they are SO pretty!

DIY neon garland

The lovely Allie from Paper Notes is traveling through Europe and while she's gone, she has invited guest bloggers to keep her exciting blog running.
And guess who's turn it is today? Mine! :-)
Head over to her blog to see my super easy neon garland tutorial!

Pretty present

I'm going home soon, and even though it's not Christmas I'm bringing a few presents back. :-)

Red plum present

Another paint sample idea

I've been collecting paint samples from our local hardware store for years, mostly to make garlands, but also just to have pretty colours at hand whenever I feel creative. I have seen countless crafty projects and tutorials using them on blogs and websites (see a good collection of them here), but I had never seen this (see below) until cycling home from work yesterday afternoon.


Isn't it just wonderful? And you should have seen it when the girl was cycling - it looked so pretty and happy!

Paint sample triangles

I gave a go at this very easy and fun diy with paint samples. The final product is now on its way to a little girl who turns 5 today... how time flies, it's amazing!

Origami

After seeing this pretty lamp (via) I put myself to the test and tried to make one of my own. Once I had found instructions on how to fold the pieces it was just a matter of folding. And folding. And some more. And then putting all the pieces together with great satisfaction. :-)

This time last year...

This time last year I was sewing hundreds and hundreds of colourful circles to make garlands for our engagement party.

And yes, our windows were incredibly dirty. Even if we don't clean them super often, it's not usually that bad. :-) This was in the middle of the whole getting-our-old-leaky-windows-changed process which lasted several days but was very successful; since then we haven't had a drop of water coming in during stormy rainfalls.

Paper 'popcorn' garland

I made a popcorn-inspired garland. With white circles, scalloped rounds and little red 'cranberry' spots.

Sinterklaas goodies

Yesterday it was Sinterklaas here in the Netherlands.
Just like last year and the year before, I made little presents for my colleagues. This time I baked them biscuits and packed them in pretty jars.

I used empty jam jars and sprayed the outside of the lid with black paint.
And I made little pompoms following this tutorial: so easy and quick! And nice and wintery...

Little dancers

These little ladies who were dancing in the sunset the other day are now on their way to Switzerland, where they will go and live in a talented little dancer's bedroom.

I made them with the same wall-sticker material as these, these and these.

Pretty paper popsicles

After coming across this beautiful post a few weeks ago, I knew just what I wanted to send our friend Celina for her birthday. As she was turning 6 and because she's a very clever girl, I wanted to make the game a little more difficult than the basic 12-pair one. I therefore printed everything twice and 'pimped' half of the popsicles to increase diversity.
I made a little pocket to store it all (the jar idea was so cute but not as practical to post to Denmark), et voila!

It was a lot of fun to make, and very easy. I'd definitely recommend it for a cute and colourful present!