Thank You Card

A pull-up pop-up thank you card made for my parents for taking care of my sweet Nina for the past few days.

OWOH giveaway results

So, that's it. Winners are drawn, although not from the hat, it was just a big tin can. Nicely decorated, though :).

Since I am ill, Nina is in the "foster" care with my parents for a few days. She came home today for a few minutes to get her things for school and I asked her to draw the names from the can. Pictures are not really good, but I didn't have time to do them better. Anyway, here are the results:

1st: daytoncat (February 8, 2009 6:16 PM)
2nd: Stephanie (February 5, 2009 9:26 PM)
3rd: Kimberly Hellams (February 4, 2009 9:13 PM)

Congratulations!

Since Daytoncat whishes to get the hidden magic pendant, I am going to change the order of my giveaway, so:
Daytoncat gets hidden magic pendant
Stephanie gets necklace and earrings and
Kimberly gets stamped pendant.
Hope that is fair enough.

I'm going to pack the things during the weekend if I get all the addresses from my winners and send them off on Monday. Thanks to all for participating! Hope to see you around sometimes :).

Scrapbook Album For Nina

I'm going to make a scrapbook album for Nina with some of my favorite photos of her. I bought blank Maya Road 20x20 cm album with 8 pages which is going to be just perfect. I finished the first page today... guess it's done for now...

GIVEAWAY - CLOSED!

This giveaway is now closed, comments will not be accepted any longer. When Nina comes from school, she will announce 3 lucky winners, who will be conntacted through email. (Since I am on a sick leave because of virosis, I think I will not be able to send the items before Monday, but I will try to send them sooner.)

Thanks to all of you who took the time to enter. I hope that at least few will be back from time to time. And thanks to Lisa for hosting this great event. It was fun participating.

ONE WORLD - ONE HEART

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Lisa is hosting third in a row annual project, One World One Heart. The idea is that bloggers host their own giveaways on their blogs, all at the same time. That sounds like a great project and I want to be a part of it as well.

To be considered a contestant for my giveaway you need to leave a comment here, on this post! It doesn't matter where you are from. Only one comment per person, please! You need to have an active blog (or write your email address in your comment) where I can leave a comment to notify you of winning. When I let you know of your winning I will then need an email address so that we can communicate to get your snail mail addy! THE WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON FEB 12th or 13th! You have time until February 11th at 11:59pm PST to leave a comment!

Good luck!!!!

Since the number of comments is constantly increasing, I'm offering more than just one thing. Here they are:

1. Polymer clay necklace with handmade beads and earrings (flower cane work)

2. Polymerclay pendant (made with stamping)

3. Polymer clay stone pendant (hidden magic)

P.S. How am I going to pick up the winners? Hmmm... on12th, I am going to print all the comments, cut and fold them and my lovely daughter Nina will pick 3 of them. Fair enough?

Few Cards (Cuttlebug + Nestabilities)

Hi there,

It was snowing again this weekend, weather was horrible and just perfect for creating - beside being lazy and cuddling with Nina in front of TV, of course. It was about time I properly try my cuttlebug (which I got almost two months ago) and nestabilities dies (which I got almost two months ago as well). I love it! It saves a lot of time, it's easy to work with and the cuts are perfect every time...

Few of the cards I made in the past few days (click on the pic to enlarge):

Paper: K&Company, BasicGrey
Stamps: HeroArts, AudDesign

Macarons / Macaroons

I've never heard about French macarons until few weeks ago. I saw some pics of cute and colorful cookies before, but somehow I was sure they are just lovely fake decoration of some kind. I mean, you can't bake cookies in so many different colors with different fillings and make them look so perfect, can you? But obviously you can (well, not me and probably not even you, but some can). When I realized I was wrong, I had to make them to learn how they taste and what's the feeling when they fill your mouth. I read a gazillion of pages, trying to learn exact procedure of making macarons and the more I read the more I was convinced that I shouldn't really try that at all. But I did. And the result was... hmmm, probably not perfect, but close enough... and if you ever wondered, how they taste like - perfectly yummy!

My first green macarons. I have always suspected that I am a cooking genius and that all my cooking failures are just the result of not practicing enough. Now those lovely macarons proved that that's almost certainly true! Maybe I should open a pastry shop, huh? :))

P.S. Recipe follows :).

Some Leftover Beads Turned Into Simple Necklaces

Blog awards

That's sooo sweet, all those blog awards. Even I got a few! One is from my talanted crafting friend Kitty:

The other one(s) is from a lovely talanted Romanian crafter Squash:





































I am not really sure what the lasr two awards mean, but somehow I know it's something really cool! :)

My rewards go to few crafters who blog:
Moi
Kitty
Hali
McCrafty
Squash
Zabica-Fimolandija
Phoenix
Boheme/Flo
Isa
Lunes

If you are listed and read this, pick up the award you like, post it on your blog and pass it on.

Take a look at their blogs, I am sure you will love their work and find some insipiration! Thanks girls!

P.S. The cane from the previous post didn't really turn out that well - it looks like a crossbreed of butterfly, moth and dragon-fly. I'll have to put together another one, which will hopefully look like a real butterfly! :) More pics when I find the cable for my camera...

Butterfly cane

Sorting blocks of clay & a quick cane

Some Polymer Clay

Nuno Felting

For quite some time I have been fascinated by felted scarves and bags. Somehow, I didn't even dare to think I could do something like that. When I did some "research" with Mr. Google's help, I learned how to do it. It was quite a short, but also a messy, bubbly and wet way from learning visually to making my first nuno felt piece.

In short, nuno felting is a way of wet felting where wool roving is felted into silk or some other sheer fabric. In wet felting, soapy water is used to bind the wool fibers together - you put down layers of wool, dump them with soapy water and then roll and/or rub until wool fibers lock together and make a soft cloth. Nuno felting is the same thing, except that you use a silk or some other sheer fabric as a base on which you put wool. After fiber are locked together, you start throwing your piece (to the floor, sink is even better), which causes wool fibers to shrink for about 1/3, while the size of your base fabric remains the same - hence the wrinkles on the silk parts.

I bought merino wool and used silk... since it was just a try, I didn't buy whole rainbow of colors (yet!), just a few. Here are the results (on the last pic are needle felted embelishments):

My little Studio

1. The balcony after we put laminate flooring.
2. Tables and some shelves done, some of the stuff already moved to a new place.
3. No more balcony, it's a Studio now! :) Already messy and I like it much better this way. :)
4. Nina's table. She started to use it by now, making her own girlie painting.

At first, it was just an open balcony. In the first few years when we moved here we grew plants there, we had a small table and chairs... and then The cat came. We mostly kept balcony door closed and for years it was just a place where I kept some useless things and a place for clothes drying rack.

If you are like me and have a creative soul, then you know how the craft supplies start to pile... and if you don't have a room or a place for doing your crafts, it's really hard to start doing anything if you have to put everything away daily (I was not doing that, my computer table was always full of different materials, depending on what I was doing, and there was at least half of the kitchen table full of clay almost all of the time).

I got tired of that. Last year I bought windows for my balcony and got them built in. My uncle and my dad made walls and wall isolation this spring and i did rough coating. After our vacation, my dad put laminate on the floor. I did molding, tables and shelves. I loved that part, maybe I should have been a joiner! The whole project took quite some time, but now it's finally done.

Now I have my own Studio! Hooray! I'm really happy I have a place where I can keep all my craft materials and where I have enough working space for everything I want to do. And the best thing is - I don't have to put anything away until I finish what I am working on. That is the best part.

There is a place for everything now: papers, pencils, books, clay, color pencils, brushes, acrylic colors, wood panes to work on, sketch books, heat gun, glues, embelishments, rulers, pasta machine, molds, stamps, powders, ribbons,... and all the other things. I still have to move some of the stuff from my computer desk drawers, but I have enough empty boxes under the tables lef. There was even enough space for placing a smaller table for Nina.

The other day I found this video clip on Suzi Blu You Tube - it is a great idea how to make an art closet. The best thing is that you can just cover your workspace with a curtain when you stop working and all the mess on your table is hidden. But my Studio is great as well. I'm really pleased with it!