the big sell

Well, well, well, well...we meet again boxes and packing tape! Yep, I've started packing up the house, little by little sorting and storing our lives into boxes. Sigh! And along with sorting and organising comes de-cluttering, already I have done two runs to the local charity shop laden with bags and boxes. 

My sewing room usually looks like a bomb has hit it, but I've tidied it up enough to realise I have way. too. much. fabric! So to Craftumi I went and listed some bits and bobs, if you are interested pop over to check it out. I have my minky for sale (in hot pink, lime green, red and black) which I have loads of yards of on bolts. This minky I buy from a U.S. wholesaler and isn't available in Australia (Spotlight and Lincraft have started selling minky dot in pastel colours, not these colours though). 

 

I am also over on eBay selling my soul our stuff. Go there for a bargain too ;) 

I am slowly but surely adding items as I find things in random cupboards and under beds. Stay tuned on both my Craftumi and eBay accounts as I still have lots of crafty items like flowers, buttons, beads, more fabric to list, as well as some things Mr M wants to sell on eBay (LED camping lights anyone? UHF radios?) and I have an (expensive!) Big by Fiona Scanlon girls tutu skirt bought from David Jones and missing a receipt to return! To eBay it shall go.

Right, back to the packing tape and newspaper...

burlap bunting tutorial

Hello there - apologies for the lack of blogging, as you can imagine I have lots going on in the lead up to the big day, not to mention all the things we have to tick off our list before we pack up our house and hit the road. 

If you would like a little dose of Cinderella at Brindabella country style I am a guest blogger over on Polka Dot Made today with an easy tutorial to make some cute wedding decor bunting. Speaking of which I need to go and heed my own advice and make some more...

Head over here if you'd like to make some yourself :)

Image by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

get your craft on #6: diy invitation pocketfold

With The Wedding Day approaching, my attention has turned to all things papercraft as I gear up to send out our invitations. In my true DIY wedding style I have taken it upon myself to make all the stationery for the wedding - this includes the invites, the reply cards, the gift registry cards, the map and any extra information we might want to include for our guests. All these inserts meant only one thing: pocketfolds (for anyone wondering what the heck I am on about you can go here to catch up).

In keeping with our rustic elegant theme we are going to use all classic creamy thick ivory card with kraft paper accents. After a search high and low for all things pocketfold I only came up with one supplier which did a kraft paper one. I got samples sent from the U.S to no avail as they were just not what I was imagining (too pale, not grainy enough and a bit flimsy rather than sturdy card). So I thought to myself how hard could it be to make them? All 70 of them?! Here goes...

To begin you will need...

• A3 size sheet of kraft card, or any colour/pattern which takes your fancy (I got mine from Papermarc)
• Paper trimmer (I use a fairly cheap Fiskars for this sort of work, I also have a more heavy duty guillotine but don't find it as accurate - you need accuracy for these pocketfolds to work!)  
• Sharp paper scissors (for any spots you can't reach with trusty paper trimmer)
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Paper scorer (I use Martha Stewart Craft's paper tool, purchased from Spotlight)
• Magic dot adhesive tape (available from craft stores and I find very accurate and strong, you can also just use double sided tape but I think it would be more fiddly and less adhesive)

I wanted our invites to be 5 x 7 inches and the pocketfolds to open like a book, with two sides as opposed to the popular tri-fold you often see with a wrap around cover. To allow some room around the invite I decided that each side of the pocketfold would need to be 5.5 inches x 7.5 inches, allowing half an inch border around the invites and inserts.

On your piece of A3 card measure and rule the following lines using your pencil and ruler, make sure they are accurate and straight as when you fold it together it will make a difference!

You should have two 5.5 x 7.5 rectangles as well as a rectangle below the right one which will become your pocket flap. To make the pocket flap sturdy and for your inserts to sit neatly inside the pocket you will need to add some 'wings'. My magic dot adhesive tape is 80mm wide, so I made my pocket wings 100mm wide to allow room to run the dispenser along the strips of wings.

Now you can cut out your pocketfold template using your paper trimmer. Slice down the 7.5 inches, careful not to slice off your 1cm wings, and  then all around the shape you have ruled up. You may need to use your scissors to accurately get in around the 1cm wings. You should end up with a template like this:

Using your paper scorer and ruler, score down the main fold line of your pocketfold. Then score the pocket flap fold and the two wings. Fold on all your scores to create your pocketfold. See how it's coming together now???

At this point I realised I wanted my pocket flap to not be as large so decided to trim that down to 2.5 inches. Ideally I should've done this in the trimming process, or at least before I scored and folded my wings. A lot of pocketfolds have a v-shaped pocket flap also, I wanted mine to be straight but you could cut whatever shape you like into yours.

Roll some adhesive tape along the outside of your wings (the side which will be pressed against the main body of the pocketfold). Don't tape down the inside of the wings, as this is what is creating a sturdy little pocket for you to fit your inserts in perfectly.

Now fold your pocket flap up and press the wings down to stick to the main body of the pocketfold. You can fold your pocketfold closed and press under some heavy books to make it sit nice and neat (and to make sure that the adhesive tape really sticks and your pocket flap doesn't jump back out).

There you have it - my DIY pocketfolds for our wedding invitations. Easy as pie. Now just another 69 to go...

*Note that this pocketfold was actually my third I had attempted and I still made a few mistakes! You will get really good at them after a few I promise, it's all in the accurate and straight cutting. The straighter your lines, the less room for error!

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

diy champagne cork shadowbox

Today I am a guest blogger over on Polka Dot Bride with a DIY tutorial on how to savour a special momento from your engagement. 

When I was approached by the lovely Ms Polka Dot to be a contributor for the Aussie wedding blog extraordinaire I may have done a high pitched squeal and a little happy dance (fists clenched above my head, you know what I mean). I will have more posts in the pipeline throughout this year as I prepare for our wedding, hopefully a lot more DIY tutorials for the budget savvy brides. If there is anything in particular you would like to see please let me know!

Head over here to check it all out.

Photo by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

welcome to my sewing room, my happy place

After literally months of living in total sewing-room-squalor, hardly being able to push open the door due to the piles upon piles of fabric, random craft supplies and unhung artwork, I have a sewing room of sorts back again. 

When we moved to Brindabella the sewing room was pretty far down on the list of things to sort out, and so it sat unloved and messy. Oh so messy. We think that the sewing room, the back porch area and the dining room (which also has the same lean-to roof) used to be one big wide back verandah, one day I'd love to reinstate that, currently though I need the space as my sewing room and the dining room can't be reincarnated somehow else in the house. But I digress...

One weekend not too long ago I got stuck into the messy sewing room whilst Mr M was away camping, it took me literally days to wade through the fabric and rearrange the furniture to perfectly fit the space, but I think I'm happy. It needs loads more finishing touches (like curtains, a lick of paint, hanging some pictures) but this is it in it's raw state - functional as well as being a little bit on the pretty side.

This is the view from the door, out the window I look out to our garden gate and I get a lot of afternoon sun (you will see a lot of my still life styling photos set up with that Ikea table birch background!) I used my Ikea desk from my old workspace in the cottage as my main sewing table, with my sewing machine,  Maude the mannequin and my overlocker on it. The shelving underneath the desk was built by Mr M to fit especially for my old workspace in the cottage. My trusty Ikea gateleg table acts as great storage with it's drawers and folds out to be ample cutting space. If I want more floor space I can wheel out those white drawers and fold the side of the table down also. My clothes rack just fits in nicely, so when I finish a piece I can hang it straight up. You can also see I keep my wrapping paper in a $3 Ikea rubbish bin, in the bottom is packaging tape and gift tags so if I'm wrapping a gift or order I can grab it all in the one place.

Facing back towards the door I have put two cupboards on either side of the door which we got fairly cheaply at Bunnings as part of their pantry range. When we lived in the cottage the big cupboard stood in our bathroom and acted as a linen press (as we had zero storage), now it holds lots of smaller pieces of fabric, my bolts of minky and any blank art canvas which is quite bulky. I also put three Ikea baskets on top which hold pieces of felt, MDF letters and shapes and my craft projects in progress. Of an evening I grab down my work-in-progress basket and just take it in to the lounge room to sew/craft, and try and keep everything contained to the basket so I don't have random cotton reels and needles all over the coffee table!

The smaller cupboard holds a lot of packaging supplies like bubble wrap, mailing bags and boxes, as well as blank onesies and t-shirts I am yet to adorn. My big fabric scraps bag also lives in there. On top sits my Ikea shelves I got for a steal in the bargain corner for half price (love me a good bargain corner find). These shelves hold all of my larger pieces of fabric which can be folded neatly and any current projects live on the bottom shelf. These days most current projects are wedding related, if you spy closely you can get some sneak peek's at some velvet millinery roses, burlap and glass votive candles. 

This room was pretty much perfect to be my sewing room as it was just the right size: not big enough for me to just fill with 'stuff' but enough space to be a separate room and not crammed into a spare bedroom like I used to be. It also has these cool in-built shelves which are perfect to have above my sewing table. On the open shelves I have my Martha Stewart ribbon organiser, as well as jars and storage containers full of more ribbons, bias binding, zips, lace trims, buttons and hair clip supplies. My fabric letters still are a feature of my sewing space, made by My Name By Design, and are the inspiration for the colour palette and patterns I eventually want to throw around in here: lots of duck egg blue, pink and touches of red (like the wrapping paper bin) with hints of Cath Kidston-esque florals. Also on the open shelves are all of my paint tubes sitting in colour order. In front of the window is my cutting mat and rulers. I have one cutting mat in inches and one in centimeters.

Here's a closer look at the shelves:

Underneath my sewing table is the shelving unit on castors which Mr M made for my old workspace in the cottage. It now holds all of my crafting and sewing books as well as all of my patterns which I have filed in a pink binder. All of my knitting and embroidery supplies live in the white basket (from Officeworks) and my scrapbooking and paper supplies live in the white gloss paper box (from Kikki K). There is another white gloss box above my books which holds a lot of random children's craft items, when my nieces or any friends children are at our house I just pull out the box and let them go nuts with colouring books, pipe cleaners and stickers.

I am not ashamed to say that the inside of my fabric storage cupboards are looking pretty darn organised, if I do say so myself! In my big cupboard I have little plastic tubs, each with a different colour group, there's one for blues and green, one for pinks and reds, one for neutrals, one for reds and yellows and one for random prints. I also have tubs for cord or denim, minky or jersey knits and toweling, satins, furs or speciality fabrics like that, as well as a few bolts of minky dot for blankets I make for Little Miss Emma (currently on holiday due to sewing room crisis!) On the shelf above my clothes rack and cutting table sits an op shop vase which cost me 50c to hold all of my paint brushes and some fairy wands I am yet to get around to making for my nieces.

All fabric over a yard or of a fairly square shape (and therefore easy to fold) I neatly folded up and stacked in my el-cheapo Ikea shelves. I was going to try and colour co-ordinate the fabrics to create a rainbow effect, but who am I kidding, these probably won't look this organised ever again! To store my growing collection of cotton reels I use a glass apothecary jar I got from Target (not before dropping and smashing one juggling Easter eggs and said glass apothecary jar! Sorry Target teenage boy who had to clean up my smashed glass mess). The floral tin I got from the op shop for 20c and it holds all my elastic.

And there you have it! My sewing room, finally coming into shape. It's fairly 'bare bones' at the moment but I'm hoping to add some artwork to the wall, make a new cover for my chair, sew up some pretty floral curtains and generally inject some more personality into it. No doubt I will come up with more functional ways to use the space as I get sewing - which is exactly what I'm off to do now! These bathroom curtains won't make themselves...

Happy sewing everybody! I hope you enjoyed my space, I'd love to see yours. I am doing a happy dance with all of this neatly folded fabric :)

Photos by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

our diy engagement thank-you cards

I thought it finally time I share with you our engagement thank-you cards that I made. Yes - we did get engaged in September, and yes it is now almost May! But we are still getting engagement cards and gifts from random family friends and distant cousins. And so the thank-you card production line rolls on...

If you remember way back when I designed our invites for our simple Sunday lunch engagement party, we went with a kraft paper and black vintage stamping method. I wanted to carry this through with our thank-you cards so I picked up some kraft paper card and envelopes which I folded using my handy Martha Stewart paper tool. 

I stole some of my mum's scrabble letters after discovering that (shock horror!) we don't actually own a game of scrabble even though I swore we did. I wanted to incorporate my engagement ring into the card somehow as every man and his dog keeps asking me about it, so I arranged some letters and my ring to spell out 'Matt Loves Em' (using the ring as the 'o'). I used our hall table which is made out of reclaimed floorboards as the backdrop to give it a more rustic look. Originally I planned on using a hessian or linen fabric but decided it wasn't enough of a contrast with the kraft paper card which would make up the card. 

I played around with the photo I took in photoshop (mainly using some of these vintage polaroid actions) and got them printed onto normal photo paper through Harvey Norman photos online. I then used some fabric floral tape I purchased from here to stick the photo down in a haphazard style, each card seemed to be a little different as to where I placed it. Some finishing touches with my alphabet stamp set to say 'thank-you' and voila! DIY engagement thank-you cards complete. 

local crafty knick knacks

I don't mean to bang on about the joys of living near some major towns now that we have moved home to Gippsland, but seriously - when we lived at Ythanbrae the hour and a half round trip just to get to the nearest crummy town with an equally crummy Target (Target Country no less, the horror), was doing my head in for just general supplies. Let alone craft supplies.

Now whenever I go to nearby Warragul (our nearest 'big' town) I stop in almost every time at Yarragon, a smaller town on the way. You see, Yarragon has the sweetest little patchwork, quilting, fabric and craft store. It's down a little laneway and is full to the brim with oh so many fat quarters, lace trims, cute buttons and delicious craft books just begging for me to take them home. I always go in there 'just for a look' and come out with an armload of things. Not for any specific purpose or project. Just some pretty things that caught my eye, and just because I can. How indulgent is that?!

My most recent loot included some fat quarters of pretty girly fabric I am thinking of making into a cot quilt for some impending babies in my circles (and hope like hell someone has a girl?!) I also scored some vintage wooden buttons, some resin roses and swallows to make into bobby pins and a lovely Scandinavian book featuring lots of home projects and embroidery. Hence the pretty shades of embroidery thread. I don't even embroider! That's how 'retail blind' I was. 

 

I'm looking forward to sitting down in front of the fire to attempt some embroidery and cross-stitch this week. I've also vowed to really get knitting this winter (same as last winter, and the winter before...), so we'll see how that goes. Perseverance is not my strong suit.

Now just to sort out the mess of my sewing room and I will have somewhere to put all of this...bringing more in is definitely not helping to clear the clutter! 

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella.


P.S. As much as I like the 'civilisation' here I do miss the quiet of living in the middle of a 1200 acre property with a five kilometre long driveway. You win some, you lose some I guess.

laura turns seven

Mr M's niece Laura turned seven yesterday. Seven! Goodness me. I remember vividly sitting on the bus on the way back from Alice Springs (with our school camp where Mr M and I first kissed on the beach in Adelaide - ha!) and him getting a phone call from his sister to tell him she 'had news' - which turned out to be her first pregnancy. At this point I hadn't met any of Mr M's family, nor did I realise that I would go on to become this little baby's only aunty. Bless.

I made one of these foldable dolls houses for kicks last year, anyone who 'likes' Little Miss Emma on facebook will have seen the photos of my first attempt. It is from a pattern by UK Lass in the US and she makes it look so easy! Laura loves dolls, playing house and families so I thought this would be the perfect gift, and I had been meaning to make another one of these for awhile. I will admit that this house is much better than my first attempt, but all the while fiddling through making it I was thinking my goodness I am never making another one of these! But then of course I finished it and thought how I could improve and adjust and make the whole process flow a lot better. That's the thing with sewing isn't it - the process versus the finished result? This house has some serious wonky angles issues (and too much fabric for the floor!) but I really think that my next one could be better still. Practice makes perfect.

I also added a little wooden doll family to Laura's dollshouse, she has a little brother Ethan so the family is all correctly represented!

Who knows, I might make some more of these...or I might stick to what I know with minky blankets and reversible skirts.

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

a very crafty christmas

Doesn't Christmas time make you want to make a million things all at once? Well maybe not, but I seem to go into crafty overdrive once December hits, probably because of all the amazing DIY tutorials floating around in blogland. So this year I decided to do a round-up of my favourites...

Scallop edge felt Christmas trees - I love these, they look super easy to make and I love the fun colours for a bright Christmas table setting. All I need is some scallop scissors...

Baby sock advent calendar - why didn't I think of doing that?! Very cute way to count down to Santa's arrival, who doesn't like mini-socks?

Felt 3D ornaments - also looks really easy to make for a wow-factor to trim your tree.

Lumps of coal gift boxes - these are so fun, I'd love to get a lump of coal with some diamonds inside! How ironic is that? Mr M's family is Dutch and are forever going on about how Sintaklass is coming and Black Peter might give you coal! Love it.

Fabric bird ornament kit - you can buy this whole kit from The Red Thread for only $12 to make these cute tweety birds to zoom around your tree.

And my favourite Christmas craft tutorial would have to be Belinda's book page cone wreath she created over at The Happy Home. Just the right amound of tradition, whimsy and sparkle!

Merry Craftmas everyone.

get your craft on #3 - paper butterflies frame

Happy Tuesday lovely readers! The sun is shining in my part of the world, the first time in a long time, my horrible cold is subsiding and all my spring bulbs are poking their little heads of the sodden earth to say hello. Lovely. Why not bring a bit of spring inside with some delicate paper butterflies? Good day for crafting I say. 

You may remember my little bedroom spruce up, and how I was still lacking 'something'. Well - I had a random Ikea ribba frame (don't we all?!) which I thought would look good in our white and neutral bedroom with the help from some aged book pages and a little help.

Here's how it all went down...

With a piece of cardboard to fit your chosen frame, use a compass and pencil to outline some circles where you would like the butterflies to 'flutter'. I did random bits of circles, smaller in the centre and getting bigger so my butterflies would seemingly fly outward. Well that was my plan anyway!

I got an old book from the op shop, I couldn't bear ripping out pages of one of my books, plus this book cost me 20 cents! You will need to be armed with a butterfly craft punch also, remember when I got all punch drunk and happy with my punches? 

Now punch away! You should end up with lots of little butterflies cut out from your books pages. Try and make the positioning of the butterfly punch quite random so the text is not running all the one way.

 

Fold the butterfly wings upwards to make them three dimensional. I stuck my butterflies down gently with a regular glue stick, running the body of the butterfly along the glue stick whilst it's standing up rather than trying to be fiddly and use the glue stick as a pen to put the glue on. Make sense? ;)

Position your butterflies as you wish, like I said I tried to do a bit of an outward spiral but found that I actually didn't need that many butterflies otherwise it became too crowded and you couldn't really see the spiral shape.

When you're done carefully use an eraser to rub out the pencil marks and pop the cardboard in your frame. Voila! Paper butterflies fluttering next to my bed.

(The photo framed on the other wall is by Tracy Edgar and in a recycled timber frame which was in the cottage when we moved in - love it!)

{ Get Your Craft On #2 - Fabric Yo yo }

Yo-yo wassup?? Want to make some little fabric rosettes today, also known as fabric yo-yo's?? Welcome to the 2nd installment of Get Your Craft On!

These little fabric beauties are so easy to make and can be used for lots of things - attach them to hair ties, clips or headbands, little girls tshirts or attach to pipecleaners for a fabric posie.

Ok so to begin you will need the following:

- fabric to make your fabric yoyo out of (about 15 cm square)

- a pencil

- needle and thread

- a button to match your fabric

- something round to use as a template, I used a saucer

- hot glue gun

Step 1.

Trace around your round template onto the fabric with your pencil. The size of the circle needs to be double the size you would like your finished yoyo to be. I used a saucer but you can use a jar, a cup or if you want something bigger a plate or bowl. Cut out your fabric circle.

Step 2.

With your needle and thread make a running stitch around the outside of your circle on the wrong side of the fabric, about 1cm inside the outer edge. If you want your yoyo to be quite precise and neat you should go try to go as close to the outer edge as you can, but I wanted mine to be quite shabby with the raw edges showing a little bit. Tip: the tighter you want your ruffles to end up the longer the stitches need to be. Work your way all around the circle and then stitch over your starting point. You should have something that looks like the above picture.

Step 3.

Gently start to pull your thread, holding the fabric in your two fingers as shown. The fabric will start to bunch and gather. Keep pulling and adjusting the fabric as you go.

Step 4.

You may end up with something that looks like the above picture - not a perfect yoyo. You can see it's a bit lopsided, what I like to do is place my finger on the centre and gently wiggle back and forth making the circle even and the 'centre' of the yoyo actually in the centre. You will have to push the fabric around a bit, adjust the tension of the thread until you get a more neat circle with even folds and ruffles of fabric. The back of your yoyo should look like the second picture above.

Step 5.

Ok now you have a fabric yoyo! Dependant on whether you would like a shabby yoyo with raw edges showing (like how I wanted mine) or a more neat yoyo you may want to fold the raw edges under and inside. This is when stitching closer to the edge of the circle earlier will help. Now it's time to get out your hot glue gun and your chosen button (I chose a wooden patterened one to go with my shabby chic yoyo). Carefully glue the button in place in the centre of your yoyo. You can chose a larger button to cover your edges or like I have done used a smallish one so you can still see the raw edges of the fabric.

And voila! You can make lots of fabric yoyos fairly quickly and use up scraps of fabric and odd buttons, in all sorts of different prints, sew them onto little girls tops or use your hot glue gun again to attach to plain hair clips. Have fun!