And time went by

Back to "normal" again. The Christmas Market is over and I've got a bunch of impressions. I've learned so much, thanks to my booth neighbor Mara and my costumers and visitors!
The market went well, we had nice weather, lots of visitors and my husband brought me a can of coffee per day and I sold a lot of cool things. What can I ask for more?

The only misfortune was our car not willing to start on day two. So I had to bridge it twice. Once at home while being late anyways and once at the market while still being late...by the end of the market not even the bridging did help. It was dead.
Well, we changed battery yesterday and my nightmare of trashing our car did not come true. :)

Here are some photos of my booth. I loved it dearly and I think that I will participate on more markets. I had such a great time!!

A big thank you to everybody that supported me kindly!!

Me doing funny faces...

cleaning up

I also found out that the date my homepage went online is 11.december.2010 and the first day of my first market is 11.december.2011

It was so fun to look back. Great memories, great times! :)

Much love,

Dina

Stockings

Japanese Cotton

Good news at first: I got accepted for christmas market in Vaduz. Yay! Got the answer waaay late and have to get going on a lot of stuff now. But I'll make it! :)
It got cold and foggy outside anyways, so there's nothing I possibly could miss.
First I started with stockings. That's something we did not have here, overseas, but through out the last few years stockings start to pop up here and there. I just love them and I think that we need more stockings here! :)
So here are three of them, I did more but it seems like I'm just not up for good photos today...sorry!
Maybe I'll be able to post them later on.

I'm totally in love with the red and white striped one but I ran out of that fabric. I spent half of yesterdays evening to find some more of it. Not much but it'll make me happy and I hope it will arrive before the christmas market!

The graphics are from Karen's Blog (The Graphics Fairy) and I printed them directly onto a linen fabric.
I'm thinking about doing a full stocking tutorial with a pattern to copy for you but somehow it feels silly to tell a whole bunch of americans how to make stockings...so if I do, please just ignore that post if you are born with hanging up stockings for christmas!

And here are the other ones.

Japanese Cotton

Felt

Have fun, much love,
Dina

Butterfly or Moth?

All tired out today I'll just quick show off the latest thing I did. It's an old box I did a redo on. I first painted it in a bright white and then in duck egg blue (my new love!) of ASCP. The Inside I did with old white. Edges, surface and lines distressed.

I used this absolutely stunning graphic from Karen (The Graphics Fairy) of a butterfly or moth, I guess it's a moth and used mod podge to glue it on.

On the inside I used an old sheet music.

Much love and sorry for this sloppy post!!
Dina

Jewelry Dresser

Today was kind of awful and I'm glad the day is over. But let me show you what I did yesterday.

Some days ago I received my first Annie Sloan Chalk Paint but didn't find time to try it out. Yesterday I did!

I had this neat little jewelry dresser from Mösi's and prepared it to be painted.

before

I used old white on the body and old ochre on the drawers. I was SO thrilled about the paint!! It's so different than anything I ever used and it's awesome to paint with it!

The "thing" happened when I applied my "wax-you-get-at-any-DIY-store"... suddenly a orangy-yellow appeared on the paint. Somehow this wax was not as translucent as it said.

I ended up telling myself that a little patina wasn't too bad but somehow I still got that shiny old white in my head it had before the waxing.

My husband likes it a lot this way, so I guess it will be ok to leave it as it turned out.

For the inside of the drawers I used a japanese linen (50% cotton, 50% linen).

I also tried out the duck egg blue and was in awe while looking at the painted piece! But I'll have to show you this later.

I'll have a very busy weekend including Friday, so it may get a little quiet on here...

Have a great and creative weekend,

Dina

 

Happily awarded

There has been plenty to do since my last post but today I decided to just hang around and do a little scanning (I'll get right back to that a little later on) and blogging since tomorrow is an official holiday and all of the people out there got long weekends.

In the middle of working on a lot of different things for christmas market, Peggy, from PJH Designs awarded me with the "Liebster Blog" award.

The "Liebster Blog" award is given to up coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. "Liebster" is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, beloved, loveliest, cutest...

Thank you Peggy!! :)
Peggy refurbishes furniture and other lovely things that other people would pass by or even trash and is doing an awesome job on it!! Have a look at her blog.

The rules for the Liebster Award are: 

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it  to you.

2.  Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3.  Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4.  Have faith that your followers will spread the love too!


So this are my five picks...it was hard to choose amongst a lot of great blogs and bloggers!
The listing is in no particular order.

kUnTer BunTes from Blüämli Claudia :)
Claudia is a swiss girl. She is sewing and doing all kind of craftsy stuff and sharing it with the rest of the world. I love her fresh and free way of writing about what she's doing.

Kuunlilja from Sari
Sari is a lovely lady from lovely Finland. She also is sewing and doing a lot of different crafts stuff and sharing it with the rest of us.

Nid de Reves from Luisa
Luisa is an ex pat living in the french speaking part of switzerland. I got to know her over Annie Sloan Chalk paint :)
She is redoing furniture and in my opinion does a great job on it!

Moonbeams and Fireflies from Ann
Ann is doing a lot of different things. "Anything from vintage treasure hunting to journal making, from sewing to gardening, from butterfly watching to photographing the wildlife in the yard." is she saying, talking about herself.

Heart Vintage Design
up's and down's, a journey of opening up an own booth at a flea market.


Make sure you visit these cute blogs and leave a comment or two, or three ;)
And I guess I'll get back to the scanning in another post :)


Much love and THAKNS to Peggy again!
Dina




*Für Claudia ;))*


Regeln für die "Liebster Blog" Auszeichnung:


1. ä Link setzä zu dem wo Dir d Uszäichnig verliäh hät
2. suäch Dir 5 Blogs us wo Dir super guät gfalled und weniger as 200 Läser händ und tuä sie uflischtä damit sie alli anderä chänd gu aluägä
3. kopiär z Bildli vu der Uszäichnig (ganz obä im Itrag) und tuä's i Dinä Itrag setzä
4. Schriib bi denä Blogs wo Du uszäichnet häsch ä Kommentar dass Du sie uszäichnet häsch :)
5. Spass ha ;))

Look, look what I've got!

Hey there, I was an early bird this morning and started work at seven a.m. and made quite a few more of the felt hearts. Not only felt. There are also normal cotton fabric hearts and linen, of course, in three different types.
They are all pretty glittery and just give you that christmas and winter feeling.

In the afternoon I had to get some walnut stain for the signs I planned....wooha...I planned them last spring. Hope they'll make it to the christmas market!
On the way home I decided to visit Mösi's flea and antique market and just wanted to get a few things.
Well yeah...a few things...look what I found:

haha! Little Mad Helper in the background!

And I actually can NOT believe that I did this, because I wanted to wait way longer to do it, but I just could not pass those excellent beauties!

Now I want to see your faces!!!

Look: :))))

Sorry for the bad garage-floor-and-junk-in-the-background-pictures but I first will have to figure out a suitable place to work on them. Aren't these beauties?? At least two of them are original baroque, not sure about the third one. 

Sorry, I'm just going completely nuts over them!! :D 

Now my budget is SO depleted but it was worth it a hundred times!

Have a good night. Me and myself will dream a dream about the thousand ways those three sucker punches could be done. :)

Much love, Dina

Surprise par Excellence

First of all a big Welcome to all of "my" new readers!
I actually would be on vacation now, in Austria, sippin' on a fresh orange juice, lying on a deck chair next to a well temperate pool, reading a good book......enjoying the vacation I was in desperate need of for more then two years now.
We actually where in Austria, in our hotel...for exactly ONE night, until Abby (our beloved dog) decided to bark because of every little sound. It started at five o'clock in the morning when the guys of the hotel kitchen started to prepare breakfast.
Our room was right next to the elevator, so Abby heard it every single time they used it and next to this, just about freaking everybody had to pass our door on the way to the elevator.

I don't think anybody heard her but only because I jumped out of the bed every time she was up to getting loud. I got one hour of sleep, just like Abby, and we both where letting my husband know that we are NOT going to take this another night. We packed up our things and left.

It was just too much for Abby and she really got crappy before we left. We rather have a happy dog than a fresh orange juice at the pool ;)

When we where back home I started my computer and wanted to check on everything and guess what: My Tin Milk Can made it to get featured on lovely Karen's blog "The Graphics Fairy"! Thank you big time for this Karen!
There where also a lot of orders and mails to check so it was a good thing to be back home and get things done.

Before I left for Austria I started on sewing hearts for the christmas market and this made me come up with this small sewing tutorial for today. Lace framed pictures.
For some of you this may be "an old hood" as we would say, but I've seen projects with the lace cut in four pieces and glued on with overlapping edges. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with handling it that way. I just wanted to provide an easy method how you also can handle it.

Lots of words, here are the facts:

Don't cut the lace before you know how much you will need. If you are not sure if the trim is long enough, you can wrap it around the picture and you'll see if it will fit.

Using pins is no disgrace! They help you, all the more if you're not an experienced sewer. 

Flip over the end vertically on the edge.....

....pin it, so you won't have to fix it with your fingers. It will get more accurate and easy...

....and flip it back, horizontal, or what ever direction your frame has to follow.

You can just flip over the end and cut it off. If you are happy with the precision you can start to sew on your trim. If you feel safer with the pins, just leave them in while sewing and take them off afterwards, just please (!) make sure you don't hit the pins with the sewing needle! I did once and was lucky enough to close my eyes before getting hit by the needle splitters...Be careful or take the pins out right before you are getting to that area.

And here is how the first few hearts look like:

(JOY and the bird image are from Karen's Blog "The Graphics Fairy". 

"Forget me not" picture from The Graphics Fairy

"Joy", made with typography from The Graphics Fairy

Hope you like them!

Love, Dina

Book Page Cone Bundles for Christmas

Christmas Book Page Cone Bundles

It's all about preparing for christmas and christmas market these days and I really need some time to calm down, for I was in a rush all day for the last few weeks, hopping between my other jobs and Mad Tea Parties. So I'm slightly over worked.

The idea of posting another tutorial was a friendly thought and off I was, making and preparing pictures to show you how to make these cute cones out of old book pages.

First of all you need an old book. I prefer really old books that even have the old script, stains and natural darkened vignettes.

Roll three, or five, cones. It's always better to use odd numbers in decorations. I used three on this.

It's better to use odd numbers in decorations.

You can roll the cones as you prefer, there are many ways. Just make sure you glue the ends so the cones will stay cones.

Then glue one cone to another and the third one on top. I did not glue them in one line because it looks less straight.

Original old lace trim fits so well on this but I did not have as much as I needed for all of the bundles, so I ended up on using new lace trim as well. Both looks fine but the original old lace makes it...old. :)

You might want to use a little glue to fix the lace so it won't slip towards the points of the cones.

Now to make the decoration richer, because that is what's mostly wanted on christmas, you can add some flowers, leaves, stars, snowflakes... I used these stunning flowers which I found in "Papierwelt", a scrap-booker's paradise. 

Those flowers are kind of expensive but so worth the money when you see the effect of them.

You can place the item of your choice where ever you feel like. I glued it right next to the lace trim on one side. You even can glue items to both sides or to the top. Use as much decoration as you like. It's all about taste.

If you feel like you also can add some glitter, which is what I basically do with everything that will attend christmas ;)

You can use glitter-glue or loose glitter, flitter, shapes, flakes, what ever sparkles and catches the light.

I used loose glitter on this because it sparkles brighter than glitter glue.

For loose glitter just add some glue where ever you want, I did on the edges of the cones.

Then you can either pour the glitter onto the glue which maybe will make you loose a lot of glitter, but you can catch it with a paper underneath your work and safe it, or you can dip the cones. I'm kind of doing both techniques.

And in the end you, at least (!), have to look like this. Otherwise you missed the christmas preparing spirit... weeehee ;)

So I hope all of you will be able to preserve plums now...

For now I will head for some more shopping and afterwards get back to my glittery atelier.

By the way, I FINALLY, found a distributor of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint here (!!) and I ordered a lot of milk paint and wax to make my boxes and chests and hopefully another furniture soon!

Stay tuned if you wish!

Much love and choccolat-cinnamon-apple-glitter-cookie-fireplace-spirit to you

Dina