Making Mondays (ahhh Thursdays): Quick Christmas Crafts for Toddlers

**edit - oooh I forgot to mention that tomorrow (the 10th) is the last day to order from the shop to ensure your package arrives before Christmas - (December 16 for within Europe and December 20 for within Turkey.)**

Well, I'm sure I started writing this on Monday...anyway, it's about time I had some more things to make with toddlers on here!  These are some very quick and fun Christmas decorations that Yashar and I made on the spur of the moment over the weekend.

On our way out on Saturday we saw these interesting shaped pinecones had blown down in all the windy weather we've been having.  We brought them in and they dried out a little.  Then, with some inspiration from the pinecones we made last year and the pinecones over at Maya*Made.  We painted ours with a little white paint and sprinkled lots of glitter on them.    Yashar and I LOVE glitter!  So pretty and fun  :)

Then on Sunday we made some little heart shaped decorations.  This straw came with the eggs we bought from the market this week...and my husband knows me well...asking if I wanted to use it for an art project before he threw it out!  This is how we made them:

1.  I cut out two larger shaped hearts and two smaller hearts out of some white card.

2.  Yashar was then in charge of putting glue, using a glue stick, all over the two bigger hearts.

3.  Then we set them on a piece of paper and Yashar piled up some straw on each of them (he was very excited about that!)  Then we pressed the little heaps of straw down a little to make sure enough of it had stuck down.

4.  Next, Yashar put glue all over the smaller hearts and we put them on a piece of paper.  Then he shook plenty of glitter on them.

5.  We shook all the hearts a little to get any loose pieces off then I stuck the smaller heart to the middle of the larger heart using double sided tape.

6.  Then I punched a hole in the top of each, put a little ribbon on them.  Finito!

Chest of Drawers: Before and After

I bought this set of drawers at a local second hand place because I liked the size of the drawers - long and thin - to store lots of papers and prints in my studio.  But apart from the size of drawers they were pretty nasty!  Lots of missing handles and those that were there were not pretty, and lots of tape stuck over the front.

So I gave then a good clean, removing the sticky tape and all the remaining knobs.    I took all the drawers out and stood them upright on newspaper and painted them with a white enamel paint.  Having them upright meant I could paint them with good thick coats while still getting a nice smooth finish (no drip lines).   I gave them two coats (with a couple of days to dry in between).     I managed to get these pretty handles on sale at Zara Home - yay!    I went to put one of them on after letting the paint dry for a day but realised the paint wasn't totally dry...ooops!  So I left it a couple more days before putting the rest on.  I left the outside as it was and I really like how it framed the white drawers.

I was so happy with how it turned out...and with how many of my things fit in them....

The Bazaar went really well  :)   And it was great to meet so many lovely people that were really encouraging about my work!  Thank you!    But...I can't believe I forgot my camera ...so no photos.  I was disappointed about that because I was so happy with how it all came together.  Oh well!  And I am way behind on my emails!  So sorry to everyone I haven't got back to yet - I will as soon as I possibly can.

Ooh!  And my new cards were featured on Print & Pattern today!  Yay!  Thank you so much Print & Pattern!

IWI Christmas Bazaar Tomorrow!

I will be having a table at the Christmas Bazaar tomorrow at the Hilton Hotel Convention Centre in Istanbul!  We had a great time there last year.  You can see a few photos in my post about it last year here.

It is open from 12 to 4 and the organisers net proceeds go to IWI charities.  They also have a raffle there with the most amazing prizes!!  I will definitely be getting some tickets.

Sorry for the late notice, but if you have a chance I'd love to see you, so come and say hello :)

And I'm hoping after that things will get back to normal around here...phew!

New Prints and Crafty Gatherings

I have added a couple of new prints to the shop!   (and don't forget...today is the last day for the blog reader discount - details here)

And Christmas is well on its way!  We have already made a few little things in Yashar art class to decoate the house with - so cute!  So I thought it would be a good time to share some gorgeous to make for this time of year that I have come across in my searching  :)

Vintage Inspired Arrow Decor  - Danielle Thompson

I thought these would make such a cute gift! Perfect for a boys room!...um ok, if they were in Yashar's room they would definitely have to be kept out of reach! 

Lovely Forest Quilt - the Purl Bee - pattern from Sharilyn Wright

Scandinavian Style Felt Bird Ornaments - Kits from PurlSoho

Cranberry Citrus Walnut Bread - Poppytalk (recipe adpated from ReadyMade) -  This looks delicious!!

Memories of ...

Late last week Senol's grandmother passed away.  So everyone is a bit emotional and exhausted around here.    Last weekend, Senol, along with many other family members took her back to Sinop for her funeral.  In a small village near Sinop is where she spent most of her life - Senol's family village.  Basically a few houses in the middle of beautiful forest.   She didn't know how old she was, but knew that she was alive when Turkey became a republic, which was 1923.     Since Senol's Uncle (her son) died 3 months ago, she was never the same.  She passed away surrounded by loving family.

She liked to look out of the window, watching the world go by - and especially liked visits to our place, where she could watch the ships sailing past.  We didn't talk that much, Grandma and I - with my accented Turkish, her hard of hearing and speaking Turkish peppered with Georgian it was an uphill battle!  But I remember her when we first met, squeezing my hand so tightly and giving me a look that I knew was kind hearted and meant 'you are welcome here.'  Once she told me about one of her children - they all went out together to a wedding together and when they got home her child died and they didn't know why.  More often she would tell me about when she was young, how she loved to ride horses and pick the chestnuts from the trees.    We'll miss her a lot, but we know that she is at peace now.

Beautiful Blanket, Blog Readers Special Deal and a Bloesem mention!

Lot's of Bs in that title!  Totally unplanned...and totally unpoetic!  Oh well...  thank you all so much for your lovely messages about my new cards and tags and for Yashar's birthday.  That was awesome of you!   And I also hope that everyone celebrating Kurban Bayrami has had a wonderful week with family and friends.  Iyi Bayramlar!

  
This blog means a lot to me and I appreciate that so many of you stop by to read.  You guys are the best  :) So... a little thank you - I'm having a special secret discount for blog readers only. It will only run for the next 5 days (finishes midnight Wednesday November 24), so now is the time to get your Christmas shopping organised early!  If you purchase any item from the Light Garden online shop, you can use the code 'blogreader' in the 'shop coupon code' section to get 10% off from your purchase (excluding shipping) and you will also get some extra little goodies in your package.  Click here if you need help on how to use the code.    Yay!  Christmas time is on the way...my favourite time of year! 

And this is another amazing blanket made by my mother in law Sevim.  I love the colour combinations in this one!  I'm off to put it in the shop soon ...so it should be available there shortly.

And I was so excited when I found out about this!  My deer card was featured on the beautiful blog Bloesem in a post about '36 Papergoods ideas to give' !  Yeee!  You can see a peek of it there on the top left... 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Making Mondays (hmm ok Tuesdays): Vibrant Floor Cushion

ok, so it's not Monday, but close enough!   Today is kurban bayrami – I wrote a little about it here. This year it falls on a Tuesday, which means my husband gets the whole week off work –which of course we are very happy about.  So I’m just dropping in with a little thing I made on the morning of Yashar’s party – the party had a bit of a jungle theme going on so in one room we put up mosquito netting, had lots of jungle leaves around the place and lots of rugs and cushions on the floor. So I thought this would be a cute addition.

The cushion is fairly large (about 59 x 59 cm - 23.2 x 23.2 inches) The material is Annamoa from Ikea – I love this fabric – so vibrant and interesting. The insert is from Ikea as well. The cushion cover is a simple envelope style – you can see the back of it in the photograph above and took about 20 minutes total to make…that’s my kind of project :)

You can probably figure out how to make this type of cushion cover, being the clever types that you are! But if you don’t want to bother thinking about it, you can find the instructions for how to make a envelope cushion cover here.

PS  The cute dog is from Mudo (I couldn't see it on the website but they had plenty instore)- after Yashar had carried it around the store patting it and cuddling it and saying we needed to feed it, I couldn't resist getting it for him when he asked!

3 years old...the birthday cake

How are you all?  I have been neglectful of you I'm afraid.   Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and emails!  And sorry to those of you that I owe emails...I will try to get to them very soon!  I have been busy with my new cards and other things, but especially with Yashar's birthday!  Yes, he was 3 on Monday!   Can you believe it?  I can't.



For those of you that have been around here for a while...do you remember this photograph??  This was when he was just 6 months old.  Wow, life is different now!  

We had such a fun party for him on Saturday  - with a bit of a jungle theme going on.  I was rushing around and didn't take enough photos at all :(     I will look at what I did take soon and show you all the little details, making etc!  But first one of the bigger details - the cake!   I'm definitely no professional cake maker...this had the 'homemade' look to it for sure hehehe.  But anyway - it was a hit...because Yashar was so excited about it and loved it...and of course, that makes me very happy.

When I was little, every year I was allowed to pick a cake for my Mum to make for my birthday from the Women's Weekly Childrens Birthday Cake Book.   It is such a fun tradition...   This book is pretty classic 80s I think!  So, with some scanning and emailing of all the jungle related cakes in the book, Yashar was also able to make his choice.  He chose the lion! 

The instructions from the book were just to use packet cake, but I wasn't having any of that ;)     So I did a quick internet search and used this 'One Bowl Chocolate Cake' recipe from Martha Stewart.     It was fairly easy and turned out nice and moist.  I just substituted plain yoghurt for the buttermilk.

The finished cake!  And you can see a peek of the snakes in jelly...eeeewww!

Then there was the icing, oh the icing...which was delicious...but took a looong time.  I used this recipe for Buttercream Frosting also from marthastewart.com.  I followed some of the commenters' suggestions and didn't use as much butter as the recipe suggested.   For quite a while, while I was in my pjs making it an hour before the guests arrived, I thought it wasn't going to work...but I just kept on mixing and finally it thickened up and I had time to quickly put the funny lion face together  :)   Next time I want to try the Magnolia Bakery Buttercream... Mmmmm... sounds delicious and much much easier to make!

Process: Working with a Professional Printer

I thought it might be helpful to post about what the process involved in making the new cards I posted about on Monday  -particularly the experience I had using a professional printer.  I really had no idea about what it would involve beforehand (or that it would be so time consuming!) - I didn't know where to start or what the Printer expected me to prepare for them.  It's actually fairly straight forward once you know :)  So for those interested - here it is! .....Warning! Long post ahead  :)

Creating
The drawing and designing is the most time consuming and fun part of the process for me.  This time I knew I wanted to make things a little more colourful and fun. This is my process in brief.  For the cards and tags I first sketched some ideas and then went in search of reference photos.  I usually do this on flickr where there is lots of great photos of animals etc.  I find this especially helps with drawing the stance or pose of an animal.  Then I sketch a lot more and then inked my final drawing.  Then I redraw and ink the final drawing again.  I've found this last step helps to improve the drawing a lot! 

Then I scanned the drawings and, for these cards, used Illustrator to colour them (often I use Photoshop or a combination of both).

Working with a Professional Printer
In Turkey Printers are called Matbaa - which I love the sound of :)  I don't know if this is how all printers work - it has been a total learning process for me - but this is how it all went down with the Matbaa here. 

The printers I have worked with use a 50 x 70 cm sheet.  So before I got in to any major drawing and designing I did a rough layout to work out how many cards, tags etc would fit on that sheet.  This helps me to keep costs down while getting quite a few different designs done at the same time.  This time I was also fitting packaging, business cards and bookmarks on the sheet.

When I prepared each design (as separate documents) I made sure that they were in CMYK mode.  I also made sure that there was a 'bleed' area around each design.   So, for example, I knew I wanted to make a card that was 115 mm.  I put crop marks in to show where the card was to be cut, and then I put an extra area of 3mm around each edge.  The colours and design continued out into this extra area.   This is important because when your work is being cut, the cut may be slightly off - even it were only 1mm for example, if you had no bleed area then you would be left with an blank/white space - not pretty!   I also used guide lines to show the Printer where to fold the cards.

Then we met with the Printer.  I have used two different Printers and there was a difference with how they dealt with us and in the end result.  I think  its important to find one that you can work well with.  The most recent Printer was fantastic and the quality of their work was excellent.  They took the time to discuss the work and it I felt like they really just 'got it'.  I could tell that they really took pride in their work -and it meant that in the end I loved the result - unlike last time where I had to get them to print quite a few items again because of faults in their work.

During the meeting we looked at the designs and discussed how I had indicated fold lines etc.  We chose the paper - a really beautiful thick textured paper that was environmentally friendly - with high recycled and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) content - yay! 

Then I emailed them my designs and the font files I used as they were not standard fonts.  The Printer prepared all the designs and did test prints to give us an indication of the colours.  We then went in again to check do a final check of the designs and that we were happy with the colours (although we knew they may vary a little once they are printed on the paper we chose).  This is also when we were given a final price for the printing.  Things that affect the price included the number of prints, whether die cut knives are required (I needed them for my tags) and the paper (mine was more expensive but I really wanted to have beautiful and more environmentally friendly paper).

We picked them up a few days later and they came up perfectly!  Actually even better than I had imagined...I was so happy!  And glad that we took all the time before hand to get them just right....now on to a lot more work putting the ribbons on, packing them up prettily etc etc!

Phew!  A long post!  Hope it's helpful :)

Yeeeee! The new cards and tags are here!

Wow - last week didn't go as planned...so finally here are the new cards and tags!  The sun finally poked its head through the clouds long enough for me to get some photos of these - yay!  I had a bit of a hard time photographing these actually (self inflicted) as I was so happy with the actual items that I didn't want to let them down with the photos.  I ended up keeping it simple and fairly uniform.

They are printed on a beautiful paper that is 40% recycled, 55% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.  It is nice and thick and has a texture like watercolour paper - I love it!!

They are all listed in the shop now - you can find them here...  I have high hopes for these :)  Everyone that has seen them here has loved them and they have been 'flying out the door'.  I just hope that translates online too.  Fingers crossed!  And I would definitely appreciate your help with getting the word out - if you know anyone that might like them or if you would like to post about them on your blog etc  that would be awesome!  Please feel free to use any of the images for that too.  Thank you :)

PS - If you are in Turkey and would like to buy some the cards you can just contact me at thelightgarden@gmail.com and we can organise it that way - you can write in Turkish if you would like too.  No problemo :)

On Wednesday I will post about working with a professional printer if you are interested (just finishing off writing it now).  And I also have some making planned...Yashar's birthday party is next weekend so some party related things are in the works...let's just hope all goes to plan this week :)