Mermaid Party Invitations

Being a lover of all things mermaid and selkie, I threw a mermaid themed party for my second child's first birthday. I was googling 'round for any kind of mermaid inspiration when I found these postcards on etsy:

Image source

They were too cute not to have :) I contacted the seller (Kathy from The Dreamy Giraffe) to ask how long it would take to to get 25 from her to me to work out if I would have enough time after shipping to cut them up and work them into my own design for invitations. It all worked perfectly.

Once my assortment of blonde, brunette and auburn haired mermaids with pink, blue and orange tails arrived, it was time to find the rest of the scrapbooking supplies to make the invitations.

I headed to my favourite scrapbook supply shop where I spent a sublime child-free hour scaling the racks for mermaid, oceanic, watery goodness. I found "Pirates" by Absolutely Something 4 Everyone and was set:

Image source

Not only is it adorable and watery, there are slightly raised, sparkly sections in the sky and water just to add that little something :D I spent the next few days obsessively cutting out the waves. Then I cut up the sky to use as background, making sure there were no birds in the cuttings I used, pretending it was water ;) A bonus of using the sky as water in my design is that the raised sparkly sections look like bubbles, like it was always meant to be water. I also got a chipboard number one and traced it many times over on pearl coloured pages. I was once again very pleased with how quickly a beautiful design sprung to mind and ended up doing no drafting whatsoever, I love that about card making :)

Aubrey, Cressida and Ysosbel - yes I named them
Click to enlarge

And repeat twenty plus times...

I decided not to make a full card this time. Instead, these are postcards, with the details about the party stuck to the very dull back. I was motivated primarily by wanting to save paper. The only downside was that I didn't feel this design accommodated a magnetic strip like most of my others have, so they can't go straight on the fridge. If I had put the strip on it would have meant that the details of the party would be facing the fridge, instead I've left it to the invitees whether to have the mermaid or the details facing the fridge. The OCD in me wishes the details and the art were all together, but the artist in me refuses to get over how super cute they are as is  (and they sparkle in places!)

Naming Day Invitations & Cakes

About three months after our children are born, Huz and I host a naming day (for want of a name for the day lol). Shortly after their births' I send out hand made invitations to the naming days, featuring a melt-in-your-mouth image of our newborn. For our eldest I had a ton of this adorable black and pink paper:

 

For our second, I went with blue and brown (which I've always adored together). I was really drawn to blue when I was pregnant with her, and I've never really loved the colour beforehand. It's always been one of "her colours".

I hope we manage to get a photo as adorable as these two, for baby 3's naming day invites in a few months time!

On the day I make personalised cakes for our guests. Our eldest's naming day came before I'd tried my hand at cake decorating (I didn't even know how to make icing back then! I had help from a friend writing my baby's name on these cupcakes, lol):

photo by Laura Baker

Our family on edlest's naming day, photo by Laura Baker

By the time we had our second child's naming day, I'd had a few years of cake decorating under my belt. I bought a set of alphabet cake pans. I said to Huz "They're such great value! I can use them to spell anything in cake in English, French, Spanish, German and Indonesian" ;) I used the pans to spell out her first name in cake. Originally I planned to have her first and second name, but it ended up being quite a bit of cake, just having her first name there! Each pan in about the size of a hand.

After cooking the cakes and letting them cook, I covered them in white chocolate ganache to use as an adhesive for fusing fondant to cake. It tasted amazing, and it didn't ooze when pressed, like butter cream, and was thinner than butter cream, which I liked. But it wasn't as good at sticking as butter cream.

I spent an exorbitantly long time rolling out the fondant and making sure the blue food dye spread evenly (while I dyed the fondant myself, I did not make it, I bought it from my local cake guy). Then I divided it (1.5kgs of sticky, dense fondant) into seven evenly sized balls

This was my first attempt at covering cakes in fondant and it was quite tricky because of all the nooks and crannies each letter had. When I finished, they looked a little plain so I added a border of white butter cream stars, to give it a finishing touch.

And the only photo of our family all together on that day, lol:

I'll definitely use the alphabet cake pans to create the soon-to-be-born babe's name in cake, but will use different coloured fondant, butter cream for adhesive and not too sure about borders or other embellishments, you'll just have to wait and see ;)

Birth Announcements

To date, I've crafted paper birth announcements for the friends and family of three babies and two cross stitches for the babies themselves. The first announcement was made in honour of my eldest, in February 2008. I made long, horizontal postcard style announcements with her picture and basic details on the front, with more detail on the back and a magnetic strip so it could be stuck onto people's fridges:

 

  

I made the mistake of using rub on alphabet transfers for the lettering on the front of the announcements. It took forever! Mega pain in the butt! I vowed never to use them again, and five years later I can say I've kept my promise ;)

The second birth announcement I made was for Saree's second daughter, whom I had the honour of being doula for. I stuck with a similar design: long, horizontal announcement with magnetic strip on the back for easy display on the fridge. But this time I put all the details on the front, with the photo. This time I used a word processor to create the lettering myself, printed it off and cut them up into little squares which I stuck on card and then on foam squares so they popped up from the page and made her name stand out from the rest of the text:

My third set of paper birth announcements were in honour of my second daughter's birth. This time I decided to create a vertical standing card featuring a photo and her name on the front and her details and more images inside the card. I cut out two little flowers per card, stuck a tiny pearl sticker in the centre of one and stuck that flower on top of the other, then placed them in the corner of the photo, using a foam square for the pop-up. They also feature a small strip of ribbon:

 

I got a little addicted to cutting our flowers and ended up having extras, which I stuck inside cards to use up.

I will have to do this all again in the next few months, as we welcome baby 3 into our family sometime in July. I haven't even begun to think about the announcements, but as in the past: I'll get started before the baby is born so I only have to stick the details on at the last minute before posting :) My nesting manifests in birth announcement preparation. 

I have also made a cross stitch birth announcement for my second born and Saree's daughter Eloise (and will do it for my other kids too, I just haven't got around to it yet). I made the following for Eloise's 2nd birthday:

 

Unformately I don't have any pictures of it once it was framed, it looks very sweet in it's warm wooden frame. The strawberries are of special significance to our relationship, which still gives me the warm and fuzzies to think of. Here she is recieving it: 

For my second born's cross stitch announcement I only did text. I used an alphabet that remains my favourite. Part of the reason I'm finding it hard to get started on a cross stitch birth announcement for my eldest daughter is that I haven't found a unique font I love as much as the one I used below:

Photos just don't do this alphabet justice! You'll have to pop 'round some time to check it out in the aida ;)

And thus concludes my birth announcement craft.

Personalised Cross Stitch

For her 30th birthday, I decided to make our eldest daughter's godmother a personalised cross stitch. I sent her a message to find out her favourite colours and she was intrigued, but I managed to keep it secret (miracle!) until it was finished and ready to give. I put together a couple of different patterns (from my big book of cross stitch patterns by Reader's Digest), tweaked them for improvement/personalisation et voila:

Juls declared it "the best present ever!" and teared up #missionaccoplished :D

Yay, caught the moment!

I knew she'd love it, it was such a joy to stitch, knowing how touched she'd be. When I finished it I didn't know what to do with my hands. I felt a little lost, having spent every spare second on this.

Watching me get my stitch on, inspired the birthday woman's Goddaughter too :D

Dresses

Back in the day when I was firmly attached to a belief that I would not, could not sew a stitch (thank-you very much traumatising textile teachers from high school!) my friend Saree was determined to convince me otherwise. She sat with me for hours, sharing her machine and a pattern and donating beautiful corduroy fabric to the cause and with her help I sewed my first ever project that was not made in a fog of humiliation and tears: a very sweet dress for my then one year old.

For the first time in my life, I created something out of fabric without being graded, or watched by the eyes of a middle-aged woman full of disdain for my very being. I was not scolded for not concentrating hard enough and talking too much. I sewed! And not just some shitty pencil case or pin cushion, a dress! A beautiful, practical, dress for the person I loved most in the world :) 

This was a huge turning point in my life. At the time I was trying to reconnect with my long-lost creative side by hand making greeting cards, something new for me. I'd never been into hand crafts. A very big reason for this was that my experiences with craft at school had been so demoralising that the lesson I'd walked away from those years with was: you can't do craft. This broke Saree's heart and she didn't let me spend another minute believing that :) After making that dress I went on to learn cross stitch, try my hand at sewing more things, and eventually I came to identify as craft-competent and now I LOVE crafting. And I also had another daughter who the special dress was passed on to :D

Here is Saree's eldest and mine in those cord dresses (photos by Saree's very talented mother, as are the 1st two images in this post):

The cord dress was sewn in March 2009. In December Saree had another dress pattern she shared with me. This time I shopped for my own fabric and once again we sat down together and worked away. The straps for this dress required bias binding, which Saree did for me, and she helped get me started on gathering the part beneath the solid sash. The end result remains one of my favourite items of clothing and has been worn (again) by both my daughters. Initially it was sewn to be our eldest's special Christmas Day dress :)

 

And here is Saree's eldest and mine in their complementing Christmas outfits, December 24th 2009:

And our little family on Christmas Day 2009 at Huz's parents' place:

That was our whole family back then! The following Christmas was my due date with #2 :)

My machine sewing hasn't really taken off (aside from the ring slings), as I've found other craft mediums I enjoy more, but I reflect on projects like these gorgeous dresses and think to myself that I really should make some more :)

Shoulder Bags & Lotus Birth Bag

In 2009, my friend Saree helped me sew a shoulder bag, using the Lickety Split pattern from Made by Rae. I gave the finished product to one of my sister's for Christmas later that year:

Saree gave me so much help with this project, that when I went to sew a second bag for myself I really struggled. I ended up getting it half way done and then letting it sit on the shelf for a year. 

When I did get it out again and decide to finish it off (this time with more confidence and a lot less bugging Saree lol) I was heavily pregnant with my second child and had decided I would use the bag to store our baby's placenta in during our lotus birth (the first few days of life when baby, cord and placenta remain attached until they naturally detach).

We wrapped the placenta in a damp towel and a piece of PUL fabric before placing it in the bag so the bag didn't get damp.

Once she was lotus born I went on to use the bag as a handbag for aaaages. I used it so much the fabric faded and then I decided to put it away for safe keeping.

Birth Flags & Quilt Squares

A few of my homebirthing peeps have invited friends to create "birth flags" for them to display in their birth space, to have something gorgeous and meaningful with them, from those who care. Standard practice is that the pregnant woman sources fabric and sends it to everyone who wants to participate: to decorate and send back in time for the birth. Participants are free to use any crafty medium for their flags. Some mummas have more specific instructions, for example keeping to a particular colour. To date I've created three flags, and so far I've sewn each of them.

For Sheree I decided to create an image of lotus born baby: a child with an attached cord, still one with her placenta, because I know lotus birth is one of Sheree's birth loves. I used felt and machine sewed my picture:

September 2010

My only regret is that I didn't think to sew some more detail into the baby. A line of stitches for an arm and some legs and a little smile and closed eyes would have really finished it off beautifully.

For Owletmama I machine sewed a felt yoni/candle flame symbol in red. Five years ago when I was training to become a doula I learned about Ilithyia, the goddess of childbirth and that one of her symbols was candlelight, a reference to how she guides unborn babies to the light of life. I began doodling an image that could be seen as both a flame and an opening yoni and I haven't stopped doodling it since, lol.

September 2010

If I had a do-over, I'd hand sew this, as I could have controlled the fabric better that way, it got a little gathered as I raced through stitches on the machine.

For apwool I hand sewed/embroidered her circular calico with a short-haired birthing woman, ready to catch her crowning babe. She requested that participants stick to green and yellow only. I found a really nice multi-coloured DMC floss, which featured both colours:

February 2012

I drew the image onto the calico in light grey-lead pencil first and then stitched over the lines. And yes, I took creative license with the birthing woman's physiology, I like cubism, get stuffed ;)

Other women have asked their friends to create a quilt square to contribute to a blanket the mother sews for her baby, comprised of many squares from the extended community.  I have done two quilt squares, both in felt. The first I used a hot glue gun to put the pieces together to create an opening yoni and the second cotton and felt hand sewn onto cotton:

August 2010

January 2012

The latter quilt square was made from three different and significant pieces of fabric from my stash. The base fabric I used to sew a bag to carry my second child's placenta in during our lotus birth and this was some of the left over fabric. The flowers were from a fabric I had used previously to make a ring sling for this mother and her older child. And the butterfly wings were made from fabric I adored and hadn't used since sewing my eldest a dress (one of my early sewing machine projects) because it was so dear to me that no project seemed worthy of it, until this square.