Teacups and Teapots

Remember the tea cup illustration I did for Master & Miss dress?  Here is my very cute neice wearing it as top!   It was sooo nice to arrive at a family gathering recently and see her wearing it!!


By the way, thank you to some of the lovely sites that have featured some of Yashar and my crafty projects recently!

Among them was Las Manualidades in their post Cómo hacer tarjetas para el Día del padre of the sand cards Yashar and I made for Fathers Day - Yashar looks so little in that photo!!

And another sand related father's day card Yashar and I made a while back was featured on Parenting.com in their father's day crafts round up.  Thank you!

Making Mondays: Think and Draw Creative Page #2

I hope you all had a great weekend!

This is a free printable page for creative drawing and colouring. Feel free to print and use as many as you like! Click on the image to print.  You can find the whole collection (of 2!) Think and Draw Creative Pages here.

Copyright Verity Heysen Kizek 2011. Must not be altered, resold or used for another purpose..

Making Inspiration: Ohdeedoh, A New Creative blog and a Crafty Gathering

Well I have been very busy, including working on some new designs that will be printed on tea towels - so fun!  Yikes I'm ridiculously excited about it!  So I haven't been able to get up to my usual Making Monday goodness this week.  But  don't worry I still have plenty of making inspiration for you!

First up, Ohdeedoh shared my sunprints project I made with Yashar in a post 'Get Inspired by Sunprints' yesterday.  Thank you Ohdeedoh!  And if you haven't made sunprints before I definitely suggest checking out the post I did about them and giving it a go - we had so much fun with it - easy and creative for any age!

For more creative inspiration I suggest getting in early on the blog recently started by Alara Hindle (my lovely friend and owner of LOLA children's art studio)  Alara has such a wealth of fantastic ideas for creative things to do with children. She is posting activities once a week - there is already a great art deco one and some fun beach theme ideas.  Don't miss it!

And finally...here's another (all very summer party inspired) instalment of 'Crafty Gatherings'....where the best things to make, gather, stand around looking cool and sip on mojitos  ;)   links below and all photos via the respective websites.

Zoku Pops - this is the pineapple and coconut recipe - yum!
- (found via Design Mom)


Lemon and Fetta Dip -  from Sweet Paul (and the Sweet Paul online mag has just come out...can't wait until I have time to have a look!)

Glow Cones - glowing snow cones.  Fun for a summer's night kids party or rave  ;)  - from Giverslog

Pinata Inspired Party Lanterns - Brenna for Design*Sponge

Making Mondays: Fathers' Day Cards with Sand

It's about time I did another Making Monday around here don't you think?!  These are the father's day cards Yashar and I made for Senol this year.  A couple of father's days ago we made another card involving sand - which Yashar loved doing - and that Senol loved so much that it is still up on display here!  And not so long ago at LOLA we made some gorgeous pictures using coloured sand from a kit like this.  So I knew making another card using sand would make Yashar happy :)


For this one I got a couple of pieces of thick watercolour paper  and folded them in to little card shapes.  Then while Yashar was sleeping a I drew a simple outline for a boat and the word Baba (Dad) in faint pencil.

Then Yashar and I painted lots of craft glue inside the lines.  I then had a tray set up with a little bucket of sand on it that Yashar used to put the cards on and sprinkle the sand over.

Then Yashar decided he wanted a little flag on his boat and some water for it to float in - great idea Yashar!  Then we left them to dry- ready for the big day!

Making Mondays: Geometric Paper Garlands

After last week's Crafty Gathering post - especially the paper garlands from Weekday Carnival and the watercolour paper cups from Stephanie Polli, I got inspired to make some paper garlands with Yashar using a mix of coloured paper and paper we painted using watercolours.

This was a great activity to do with Yashar!  He loved it - the painting, the cutting and then the important job of handing me the next piece to sew  ;)

To make them we first painted strips of watercolour paper with watercolour paint.  While they were drying we cut lots of triangles.  Then we cut the just about dry watercolour ones.  We weren't too particular at all about the triangles being perfect.  Yashar was very proud that he learnt to cut a triangle!  

Then we lined them up on the table arranging them in a rough pattern.  Then I sewed as Yashar handed me the next triangle for sewing.   You can see in the photo below that we managed to work a little bit of neon pink in!  (they were cut from post-it notes)

 That's it!  Nice and quick - which is great for Yashar's age and he was so happy to see them displayed up on the wall (and so was I!).

The wall sticker was a prototype for the deer party set of wall stickers I created - it seemed to be pretty happy to be hanging out amongst the garlands!

Making Mondays: Sleepy Papier Mache Birds for Spring

You might remember a couple of weeks back that I mentioned plans of making papier mache birds.  Well, we did it!   These were so much fun for both Yashar and I.  Yashar especially loved the messiness and how tactile making these were. Apart from making the legs, drawing the eyes on, and supergluing the ribbon, Yashar made all of his little baby bird (the one with the red ribbon) himself.  I'm so proud of him  :)))   And I became a litlle mesmerised and relaxed making my 'mama' bird too! -It turned out to be a perfect activity for both 3 year olds and 30 year olds!

This is how we did it:

1. First I made up some glue using this recipe for flour and water glue from http://www.papiermache.co.uk/

I put a small amount of the glue in a bowl and the rest in a jar to use later.

2.  We made each bird shape by scrunching up 2 squares of foil  - 1 smaller for the head, 1 bigger for the body and then taping them together using masking tape.

3.  Next we ripped up old paper brochures and bags into small strips.

4.  We covered the paper, piece by piece, with glue and put in on to the bird shape - to cover each piece with glue we sometimes dipped the paper into the glue and sometimes painted glue on to each side of the paper with a paintbrush.

5. We covered the birds with a couple of layers of paper at a time, leaving them to dry fully, and then adding another two layers and so on.

6.  To make the legs I used the wire from a champagne cork - half for each set of two legs  - as in the photo.  I taped them on after the first two layers of papier mache had dried and then papier mached around them in the following layers.

7.  After doing about 8 layers we left them to dry well and then painted them using acrylic paints.  After the paint dried I drew some simple sleepy eyelids and lashes on and stuck a little piece of ribbon around each of their necks - joining it with a little superglue.

It seems like Spring is as sleepy as these birds around here...can't wait until the weather warms up!

I'll be back later in the week with a post about our crazy 'long weekend' roadtrip we just got back from.

Making Mondays: 3 Sail Boats in a Box

My sister bought this cute little set for Yashar for Christmas.  It's such a great idea!  And of course, me being me, I loved that involved something creative to do.   It comes with 3 little timber boats that you can paint if you like, little paper sails and a spool of 'rope'.  The box is cleverly designed to then become a little display stand for the boats (you can see it in the photo above).  It comes with the little stickers you can see Yashar stuck all over the sails and boats - he got pretty excited about them!  Now I really want to make some up myself!

I'm not sure where my sister bought this one - but a did a quick google search and found them on amazon here and in a 'Pirates' shop here.  Don't believe what it says on the front of the packaging - making just one of them took us far longer than five minutes!

Like everyone I guess, I have been thinking alot about the devastation in Japan and have been wondering what I can do to assist - so this week I am donating 20% of all proceeds from my shop to the Save the Children Japan Eathquake Tsunami Relief.  So if you have been thinking about buying something in the shop - now would be a great time - or donate directly here.  You can read more about the important work Save the Children is doing here.

Valentine's Day is almost here!

Just a quick post because I thought you might be doing some Valentine's Day making at the moment.   In case you want a little inspiration - these are the cute valentine's day 'love' boats we made for Yashar's friends last year.

And this is the Valentine's day card making we did for this year using the personalized printables I have in the shop.

Some more super sweet valentine's day ideas:

 here and here at poppytalk,

and here at made by joel.

Making Mondays: Hat Obsession

Ok, this is starting to get ridiculous!  I have finished the Pasha hat, I'm half way through the Jane hat, 90% done on a thorpe, finished a hat for Senol and have started another for me!  Yes, I am addicted.

This is the finished Pasha hat.  I like it a lot - nice and loose and comfy - but I'm not so in to how it bunches/waves at the back where the decreases are - so am thinking to undo that part and try to make the decreases a little smoother looking. 

This is me...I have this strange habit of pulling weird faces as soon as I feel the camera on me - which means I often look at the photos later and think - that doesn't look like me at all!  This is funny given the amount of photo taking I subject the rest of my family to...a lot!!!

Speaking of which - here's Senol in the hat I knitted for him - I really like how this one turned out - simple and roomy  - so I'm knitting another version of it for me at the moment (I knew I needed to do this as soon as I realised I was wearing his one around the house the whole time!).  I just made this one up as I went - so if anyone would like the pattern - let me know and I can post it soon....

Do you have a favourite knitted hat?

Some making this week

The Pasha is finished and I've moved on to The Jane!

The Pasha was very straight forward - despite the lace pattern.  All I had to do was make sure I didn't lose where I was up to and it was easy! I haven't managed to take any good photos of it yet - but will soon.  But the Jane is even easier!

The pattern is also by Jane Richmond.

And these are the notebooks I made over the weekend for my sister's bricks and mortar shop Emily & Leo in St Kilda, -Melbourne, Australia.  (psss - she's having a little online sale at the moment!)  I posted about the prototypes here.   I was so happy with how they all came together. 

I've been thinking of offering personalised notebooks for the shop...what do you think?

Making Mondays: The Pasha in Progress

Almost done with the Pasha hat I posted about on Friday! Hopefully I will finish it tonight...so more photos coming soon!

And these are some crochet squares that I was blocking last week for a custom order

...luckily I had a very helpful assistant!  (Don't worry -he's very careful with the pins)