chalkboard table

We got a new dining table!

Just look at this magnificent beast!

Our old table was still in fine condition, just too small for our needs, so I reclaimed it to make a new space for Max's craft and drawing time (based on this idea, found on Pinterest. Oh, Pinterest! I was late to the party, but how I love you now).

The materials, aside from the table, were a metre of blackboard fabric from Spotlight, and a couple of rolls of gaffer tape (Girls' Best Friend, tm). Easy as!

The blackboard fabric was too narrow to cover the whole table, hence all the tape. I centred the fabric on the table and held it down with silver gaffer:

  

surrounded that with a line of black gaffer:

 

and finished it off with another line of silver:

and that was it! I put it together while watching Saturday morning RAGE (read: yelling at the "stars" to put more clothes on and learn to sing properly, because I am a massively old lady), this took maybe five songs. That's roughly fifteen or twenty minutes; not bad for a spankin' new space for all of Maxi's paper and crayons and chalk and playdough and pipecleaners and all the rest  -  

-  although knowing us,  it'll just become yet another surface for piles of laundry and books.

raincloud mobile

Happy Mothers' Day!

Although my babies will always be my babies, I don't really have any tiny wee babies in my life right now. However for some reason, I was struck with the urge to make a baby mobile.

I decided on a soft plush cloud as the main part, with raindrops hanging down, and then thought, why not raindrops in a rainbow of colours?

Why not, indeed.

I made a few stencils and cut out the shapes from poplin,

sewed each one most of the way around with (tiny tiny!) blanket stitch, stuffed them and sewed them closed  -  first the cloud

and then the raindrops.

How cute do they all look together?! Ahh.

I strung the raindrops from the cloud, 

 

wondered who I could possibly give it to as a new-baby gift, and then for some reason...

made two more.

Hmmm.

Anybody want a raincloud mobile?

zodiac nightlight

My nephew Huon's birthday was last week, and I used some of my gorgeous new Spoonflower fabric to make him a wall light in the pattern of the Aries constellation.

I trimmed the fabric to a 45cm square, and stapled it to a 16"x16" stretched canvas:

(incidentally, I love my staplegun. I'd always put off buying one because I thought they were super expensive, but this one was $16ish from Spotlight. Yay!)

When the fabric square was stapled taut, I turned it over and pierced the circles that signify the stars,

and through each piercing I pushed one of the LEDs of a string of battery-operated Christmas lights.

(I had a moment of panic when  -  obviously  -  I couldn't find Christmas lights for sale in Hobart in April, but eBay came through for me. Yay again!)

When all the lights were in I taped the spare ones with black gaffer (so they wouldn't shine through the canvas) and taped the battery compartment onto the back bottom corner. This is how it looks with the lights off:

and on:

Max and I wrapped it up and posted it in time for Huon's birthday,

where, I hear, it was excitedly received.

All up, the time it took was as long as half-watching an episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries with Whitby on the couch next to me  -  that's around 50 minutes.

I was so pleased with it that I'm thinking about making them for my etsy shop. What do you think?