An 'A' for effort

Last week I showed you a sneak peak of my daughters' new room and this week I want to dive into a couple of the things I used in the decor.

The handmade quilt and the wall decals




First the quilt. I have a complete new appreciation for all of you that quilt on a regular basis and do it well. This quilt is not going to win any awards but it was made with love, so that counts for something right? In my normal way of cutting corners where I could, here's where I did:

- squares were precut and purcahsed from The Fabric Square Shop in Amy Butler prints
-batting, well instead of using quilting batting I bought a double sized duvet from IKEA and used that. I saw a few benefits to this:

-I wouldn't have to be as careful with the actual quilting as the quilt should hold it's shape on it's own
-The price was right at only $7.99
-It is fully washable

It likely took me about a month off and on to get going on the quilt. Laying out the squares and peicing together. In the end some of the edges aren't quite square as I did the 'pattern' (if you can call it that) by hand. I used a pink cotton fabric for the backing and some nice blue bias tape for the binding. Viola. I like how it turned out and if I ever get up the courage to make another one I would like use the same type of materials again :)



Now for the wall decals. I used 3 different suppliers on used them in 3 areas of the room

1. beside her bed
2. above her bookshelf
3. on her dresser

I purchased the two wall decals from Etsy from Empressive Designs and Six under a tree. The 3rd set was purchaed from my local Michaels store.

In general I'd say these were easy to apply. One word of warning is to pay attention to decals that have lots of small peices that aren't joined. For example the little orange flowers on the custom peice were all induvidual petals they weren't joined, so getting them off the backing and onto the wall was a little more tedious then I would have liked. In all I still did all the decals in under 2 hours.

The decals on the dresser were an attempt to make it look less adult like and more kid like. Since they can be safely removed later we can always reuse the dresser if she outgrows it or we change it up when she's older too.






That's all for this week hope it gave someone a few ideas. Next week I'll give some details on the clip holder/wall art I made...stay tuned.

New room for a little/big girl -7 ideas for a toddler room

With baby #2 on the way I've been thinking and planning about moving my 2 year old into her new room. It was a big step as it was not just a move from a crib to a bed but also a whole new environment. New decor, furniture, different side of the house. I was nervous about how she'd take to it but so far all is well. She woke up a few times in the first week, likely wondering where the heck she was. Now two weeks in she's back to sleeping through the night. Yeah!

I had so many great ideas for her room but as always time and money play a factor. We pushed the move date back twice as we just didn't get around to things as planned but it's finally done and I wanted to share it with you.

Most furniture was bought from Ikea, bed, bookcase and dresser then I added my finishing touches. There are about 7 things that I made for the room that I'll share here over the next few weeks and hopefully it can provide some inspiration for others.




-Quilt - my first attempt at one. It won't win any awards but she loves it
-Hair clip holder/picture
-Wall decals
-Butterfly bouquet
-Curtains
-Bird accessory holder
-Decorative pillows

Stay tuned for more details on a couple of these items each week with some tips and tricks.

BTW the great dress my daughter is wearing is from a local mom to me, her store is Blue Calla, you should check her out!

Snails and puppy dog tails

So we now know that baby #2 is a boy - yeah :) We'll have one of each, which is great! Now the problem, it's seems like there's so much more variety and fabric for girls clothes now I'm on the hunt for boys clothing options. Maybe this will inspire me to make some new peices. I have a cap and and a tie pattern from Leila and Ben which has great modern kids patterns but I need to find more. I made the cap for a friend in the summer in a great modern seersucker plaid fabric.

I suppose it's an opportunity to create some of my own as well for the clothing peices I just can't find on my own. All of my friends with boys say there is defintiely a lack of good boys styles out there but it's always hard for them to articulate just what exactly they're looking for. They'll just know it when they see it I guess.

Holidays, new patterns and new jacket

Well my brain has started to take me into holiday season already. I don't want to put up any decorations until after my daughters birthday on the 6th as I'd like to keep a clear separation between Christmas and her birthday. But...that doesn't mean I can't be ready for right after that.
I want to create a nice skirt, blouse and jacket for Christmas I just bought a great new pattern from WholeGrainBaby for their reversable swing coat and can't wait to make one!
I also bought a nice pattern for a comfy yoga outfit from a fellow Toronto company HeidiandFinn I think I'm going to want one in my size too!

I have one new listing for the Jitterbug Jacket a great bolero style jacket that is great over short or long sleeves and dresses up or down. I'd like to take it to another level and add more embelishments, that's another project I'm working on. I would love to try felting, I've been reading about it and watching uTube videos so I'll dive in one day soon :-)

Fall vacation and studio tour

Well I'm getting ready for a week at the cottage. I LOVE fall up there. I can't wait for a fire at night to take the chill off and warm cups of soup and tea. Plus it's the annual Studio Tour weekend up there so I'm looking forward to being completely inspired by the fabulous artists that live and work up in the beautiful north full-time.

I'm currently working on a personal project, my daughters bedroom for her 2nd brithday. I'm making curtains and pillows and a quilt, I may also try a floor cushion or two. Now that she has a baby brother or sister on the way she needs to move into her 'big girl' room and get settled. I hope she likes it :)

Fall is here!

There is nothing that invigorates me more than the first few crisp days of fall. It makes me want to run away to the woods, light a fire, warm up some tea and wrap myself up in a cozy blanket to just stare at the nature outside. What can I say I absolutely love fall! The family has a weeks vacation up at the cottage in a few weeks so it should be perfect fall weather and I don't think I've ever been this excited to get up there. Hopefully I'll find lots of inspiration up there, we plan to do little day trip and will likely visit other artisans and parks.

So since I'm on the fall kick I should share some of my photos of fall items from my photo shoot. I absolutely love how they turned out, now I just need some more buyers! :)

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7221894

Free swatches from Spoonflower

So Spoonflower http://www.spoonflower.com is having a free swatch day on Aug 20th. It's on my calendar and I'm ready and waiting.

I've ordered swatches from here before as I'm working on a little project that will require custom designed fabric and Spoonflower is just the place to do it.

It was super easy to do, I just uploaded a design pic and chose my fabric then a week or so later had my swatches in the mail. Now I don't know if that's cost effective for bulk orders but it lets me test out my ideas on a small scale easily.