Rainbow Crochet Gifts

For my littlest sister's birthday this year I got hookin' with the 7 colours found in the rainbow. The year before last I pinned this, totally in love with the idea of a rainbow scarf, but not so in love with the heart. 

 

Once I knew enough crochet, I decided to have a crack. I didn't really follow the tute initially, just chained as long as I wanted and then double crocheted in each colour until I was done. But I did use it to get me started on the clouds, with some adjustments as I didn't need to make them as big with the yarn I had. A nice little coincidence of making them the way I did was that they turned out looking a little like love hearts, which wasn't my plan, but cute.

For the clouds I used a Lincraft brand yarn called "giggles" which was a massive pain to work with, but ended up getting the result I was after and my sis just loves them. She tells me she plans to use the clouds to help deal with stress by giving them a good squeeze when she needs, lol.

For the hat I used this tutorial. My stitches were quite tight so I added another row and did 2 in white for the cloud at the bottom of the double rainbow :)

Despite the 3 months wait, Sis was delighted with her belated rainbow birthday gifts and oh my, how cute she made them look!

Xmas Cards in 2009

Inside them Huz wrote a quote about peace by Dorothy Thompson:

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict - alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."

And we also glued paper notices to the inside of the card letting the receiver know that a donation had been made to the War Widows Guild of Australia on their behalf. We donated $3 to War Widows for every card :)

Owl Themed Craft

For Presh's 2nd birthday we had an owl themed birthday party. I chose owl because her 2nd birthday marked the two year breastfeeding milestone, which is the minimum recommendation for breastfeeding duration made by The World Health Organisation, or WHO as they are more commonly referred as. Who! Who! Get it?

Not only was the owl in the centre on pop-up foam squares, but all her body parts too! Double popped.

For her cake I created my own owl design, using chocolate cake, chocolate icing, seven banana lollies, and two fun sized flake chocolate bars. The eyes were not my own design: two halves of two oreo biscuits and two brown MnMs:

I got the idea from this recipe for owl cupcakes but tweaked it (eg. making a cake instead of cupcakes, using different lollies for ears, talons and beak, adding flake, and cutting two triangles out of the sides to create the illusion of a separate head and body).

It was chocoliciously delicious.

Presh on her birthday in an owl themed dress made for her

Babushka/Matroyshka Invitations

When I was pregnant with each of my girls I had a blessingway (or mother shower - an alternative to a baby shower, where the focus is on the mother and supporting her in preparing for an empowering birth experience). Both times I felt babushkas were necessary for my hand crafted invitations to guests.

In 2007 I made these simple cards:

In 2010 I found this template for a matryoshka/paper doll style greeting card and sent the link to me. I fell in LOVE with the concept, but I wasn't keen on that particular shape for the matryoshkas, so I decided to make my own template to make a shorter, fatter doll.

I used a sheet of A4 paper, grey lead pencil and a stencil set with various sized circles to create my own template. I played around with overlapping, different sized circles until I got them to make the shapes and sizes I wanted. And I made sure they joined in the middle so I could concertina fold them closed.

 

Almost finished, they needed details (the middle ones were what they looked like open, side two are what they look like folded closed):

And then for the details...

I debated whether or not to put anything on the biggest one's belly, but (obviously) decided less was more.

They also had a little magnet on the back of them so they can be stuck to the fridge :) (coz who doesn't hate losing precious fridge magnets to new invitations, artwork etc that goes on the fridge?!).

By the end of this craft project I was having nightmares about these sweet little faces coming to get me, lol: