Distracted from the 'Photo Shoot'

I took Yashar down to Balmoral beach yesterday so that I could try to take some photos of our Turkish towels for Hamam-ist while he played...but of course I got distracted taking photos of him!   At the moment he likes to pull a funny face while I am taking photos of him so I was happy to catch a few shots of him with out the face pulling!

And I even managed to get a few shots of the towels!  I'm enjoying mixing all the different designs we have together at the moment. 

Have a great weekend!

The Sophie Tea Party Dress

Oh my goodness I am so excited about this!!  It definitely feels good when you work so hard to create something and then see it all come together so well  :)    Liane from Master & Miss contacted me a while ago about creating an illustration for a pattern after being inspired by watching her daughter play with tea cups.

I went pretty crazy with it and ended up doing quite a detailed design with lots of differently patterned teacups and pots.  Liane used it for this gorgeous Sophie dress made in pure organic cotton jersey - I love the dress she designed for it - so pretty and practical.    Sigh!  Big smiles around here at the moment  :)

Yashar in his new retro racing car tee

Here are a few shots of Yashar on his new scooter in his Master & Miss Retro Racing Car T Shirt!   Scooters seem to be the thing at pre school at the moment and Yashar was so so excited to get one! 

 And he was so excited to learn how to use it too...definitely one of the best things about being his mum - seeing that face when he looks up and says 'I can do it!!'   I am also loving that he is so proud to be wearing the tee with my illustration on it.  Big smiles around here at the moment  :)

Yashar showing some scooter boy attitude! 

Work for Master & Miss organic children's clothing

Wow!   I have been waiting for a long time to share this with you ...one of the projects that has been keeping me busy is the illustration work I have been doing for a wonderful new organic children's label called Master & Miss.  Master & Miss create 100% Australian made, organic clothes and blankets for 0 to 5 year olds and the bonus is the label has a wonderful owner, Liane Shannon, who is warm, friendly and fantastic to work with! 
 

I am so excited to have some of my designs printed on onsies and t-shirts (and some more things to come soon!)  I have been working on quite a range of illustrations for Liane that are then screen printed on organic cotton.   She also has a beautiful range of basics in great designs and lots of colours - I'm in love with all the skirts she has for girls!!  I can totally see these over some cute tights for Autumn or Spring.   I also know that Liane has lots of plans for her label, so be sure to check back there often to see what's new.

I have some photos of Yashar in his new tshirt with the retro racing car on it - I'll be sure to post them soon.

First Day at Pre-School

...sigh!   An exciting and nervous day...for me.  He loved it!

Recent Work: Tirtil Kids Bookshop - Istanbul

I am continuing to work with Tirtil Kids Book Shop in Istanbul and am loving it!  The work often needs to be done quickly and I try to make it eye catching and fun...  These are a few I have done recently - above is a detail from a birthday related one, ...and you can see some of the past illustrations here.

One of the exciting things that the book shop is doing at the moment is having different comedians and actors in to do readings each month..so fun I think!  This is the most recent one - the reading is on this Thursday:

And this was the one for last month:

Think and Draw Creative Sheet #5: Space Kitty

This is another 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 Think and Draw Creative Pages here.

Hope your kiddies have fun with it  :)

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

Think and Draw Creative Sheet #4: Birdie

This is another 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 4!) Think and Draw Creative Pages here.

 Thank you  :)

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

Making Mondays: Leaf Print Lions

On the weekend I prepared a little activity for Senol to do with Yashar so they could have a little more 'Baba and Yashar time'- I helped too ...and loved it!

It was from the Turkish version of the book 365 things to make and do  - which I assume is virtually the same as the English version.  Love this book! - So many great simple and easy to make ideas.

It uses leaf prints to make different animals - we did the lion - but there was also a very cute giraffe and hedgehog.  This is how we did it:

1.  First we collected a few different leaves.  Then Yashar and Senol painted the leaves and made prints on brown paper.

2. While they were doing that I drew the lions heads and bodies on brown paper and cut them out.

3.  While the leaf prints dried a little Yashar and Senol drew the grass background for them on a sheet of paper.

4.  Then Senol started cutting out the leaf prints while Yashar and I stuck down the lion bodies with a glue stick.

5.  Then Yashar and I stuck down the cut out leaf prints - big ones for the Baba lion and small ones for the cub.  (and by the way - we stuck everything down together...

6.  Last of all we stuck on the lion faces.

I LOVE how it turned out and Yashar was so proud!

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!

Some design work and a snow day!

**edit - I forgot to mention that the sale in the shop has been going well and there are just a small number of items left.  It will finish on Monday - so if you have been thinking about taking advantage of it don't miss out  :)  **

You might remember me posting about the children's clothes shop my sister in law opened a little while back.  It's all going along very nicely and last night I designed some business cards for her.  Which reminded me that I had never gotten around to sharing the logo I designed for her when she first opened! 

So here it is - the business card with the logo.  The name of the shop 'Kebelek' is a play on the word Kelebek  - which is Turkish for butterfly.  Kebelek is how some very cute little kids mispronounce the word.  I printed them on my favourite thick textured card and was happy with how they turned out - sweet and simple I think...I hope you think so too!

And can you believe we have had snow here for the last couple of days! Yashar was squealing with delight when we walked outside! This is Yashar, staring out while standing up on the window ledge, when we first got up in the morning to find a little snow blanket over the rooftops.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Making Mondays: A room in the clouds

This is another little DIY we did for Yashar's room a little while back - a billowing cloud like ceiling.

I have to say, getting this to happen should have been much easier than it actually was!  Poor Senol - I made him do most of the work on this!   (I think mostly it was hard because of the concrete walls in this apartment and because all of that fabric ends up being very very heavy!)

The way we eventually made it was to screw hooks into the ceiling with metal wire strung between them and then white material billowing over them.  I won't go through it here because, really there must be a better way!  What ever you do, it needs to be super strong - you don't want there to be any chance of it falling down on your little one.

It was inspired by the room below on design*sponge that I posted about a while back. You can find more images and info about the rocking room makeover Melissa did here.

PS The blogspot ban continues here in Turkey but it seems I can now access the part I need for publishing my posts so am happy about that!

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.

An indulgent trip down motherhood lane...and a little on change and identity

I realised - as I went to show a friend some photos of Yashar on the blog recently - that I am well overdue to put some more photos of Yashar on here!    This is him at our new local cafe (which is fantastic by the way - if you live in the area it is definitely worth checking out - great coffee and the owner is very much into providing delicious food with good quality ingredients - Molka in Yenikoy).

One of the questions I like to ask other mothers that I meet, is whether they think it gets easier to look after their child as they grow up.  The responses I get are very mixed!  I'm always surprised that so many people swear that it is either just as hard or that it's getting harder.  

In my own experience, I'm  finding it much easier to look after Yashar these days.  I think that this is for a mix of reasons, not all to do with Yashar!  When I first had Yashar it was a huge time of change for me - I moved from working full time as a lawyer in Melbourne to being at home full time and when he was only 3 or 4 months old, moving to Istanbul.  I was struggling with finding my direction and a new sense of my own identity.

As much as I loved being here and found it such an amazing and inspiring place to be, I did find it quite an adjustment.  I knew only a very small amount of Turkish, I wasn't used to the cultural differences, didn't know the area and didn't have any help with Yashar for the most part as my husband's family lived quite a distance away ...too far for dropping in for a few hours to give me a little break - as much as they would have liked to.  And then there was the sleepless nights, the crying... the usual exhaustion of caring for a baby I guess!

Now Yashar has grown in to this amazing little boy - smart and gentle, and by 3 year old boy standards, very well behaved!  Life has changed for the better.   He brings happiness and pure joy to my life everyday.  From simple things, like a totally unfiltered pure grin, and the squeal he gives seeing a cat on the street, or that he just decides to make me a 'present' by wrapping up one of his toys and presenting it to me.

Wow...I had just meant to write a couple of sentences!...Thank you for indulging me.  I'd love to hear what your think and about your experiences...does it get harder or easier?  What does your child or children do that brings pure happiness to your life?  When have you gone through times of big change in your life... what did you do to cope and how did it work out!?