Well done!

Here I met some family members of the stick horse:

1. Betje on the Jip & Janneke forum
2. Under the pecan tree
3. Ik heb een bep
4. Practically perfect Polly
5. Vanmarieke.

Well done, isn't it?

Keep on trying

Yesterday evening I was exhausted from work. Once I had decided to make a bag for my birthday neighbour I got soon in a better mood! I loved to combine different fabric samples for the front. The small stripes are Paul Smith's. The bag was almost finished, I thought.
Today only the zipper had to be added. Do you recognize this: party started at 1 p.m, would last till 5 p.m. I, again, 'only' had to add the zipper. But actually I didn't know how to. And, as a like-to-be-autodidact, just started and tried out. Due to timepressure it didn't work out. In the end I searched for a how-to on internet. Still, at 3 p.m. I sadly declared this bag for failed. And quickly went for a cold glass of white wine in our common garden. Dear Cariene, please be patient. There will be an improved one soon. Wine and food were delicious.

Trula

And (after Tord) do you know Trula? Oh, I would like to meet her! She's having a great blog straight from Barcelona. Look at her pics! When she posted these, I was in love.

Lucky ballet dancer M. To be honest, I didn't like to make this tutu and it wasn't simple. I made six layers of supple bridal tulle (2x white, 2x beige and 2x black) and a lycra band and waistband. These unnatural materials are not ment for me. It takes a lot of time to cut them straight and to control their slipping.

Mama, it works! Then she disappeared to play outside with tutu and summershoes.

My sweet niece

Yesterday we spent the afternoon in my sister's sunny backyard. Every year when my niece Janneke is having her birthday, there're plenty of first sunbeams. What a gift to let all the kids play outside and us lazy sitting in the garden!
My niece turned thirteen. In this age there's no more playing, but more hanging around. It's was quite hard for us to think of a nice present. So I sat down and started to sew. I changed this free pattern a bit, one of my saved tutorials on Pinterest. I'm quite satisfied with the result, especially how the striped piping detail turned out to be. Striped fabric is from Ikea. M+L added drawings they made for Janneke in the bag.

Tord

Who (except the Dutch among you) knows Tord Boontje? He's a Dutch designer, known for his floral designs on textiles, furniture, tableware and so on. If you're triggered you could go here to read more about him.
In the office I often use his floral textiles by Kvadrat, but I'm not an overall admirer. We have one little item of him in our sitting room: this long metal garland of flowers that is wrapped around a light bulb. You buy it as a flat metal sheet in which the garland is punched. We had to break it out of the sheet. Love this genius idea, so great job Tord!

Good-looking

Wannahave-beads are best found in a not-being-internet shop. I think you should feel beads in your hand to make the right choice. And nosing around in beads shops is a feast to the eye! This tutorial brings you to a necklace to show the beauties you've bought.
If you like to read more about pictured necklace, just go here. And if you like to read about different possibilities, just go here, here, here and here.

This is what you need to make a single wired necklace.

1. a handful of beads you have fallen in love with
2. wire. Length, thickness and color fully depend on your personal preferences. The wire I used was 3 meter long, estimated 0,5 mm thick and green colored. You could even lengthen the wire during the process by connecting one wire to another, using a tiny squeezable metal ring. You can get the tiny ring out of sight by positioning it inside one of the beads.
3. a small lock
4. 2 tiny open rings
5. 2 foldable end pieces.

In case the length of the necklace is that long that you can put it over your head, you don't need the tiny pieces mentioned at 3, 4 and 5. All you need then is one tiny squeezable metal ring to attach both ends of the wire.

Published!

Today I got a special email: my blog is mentioned in the April issue of an Australian lifestyle magazine, called Home Beautiful. How about that?!

Nails

We have this nail wall in our house. It's ment for temporary expositions of pictures and drawings. The first years we lived here, we did change the wall on a regular base. You can see that it has been quite some time now! But these pics are still so precious to us.
The idea was so incredibly simple: just make a grid with nails (can you see it?) on an empty wall, to hang wooden boards. I promise you the realisation wasn't that simple. The nails couldn't be hit into the concrete wall just like that. At first we drilled holes in the wall, entered plugs inside, hit the nails and plastered the rest of the holes around the nails. Long time ago...

Wannahave-beads

Too much sewing around here lately. I like it that the tags on the sidebar show me that it's time for something else, something down in the list, for instance jewelry! That's why I visited this shop in Amsterdam selling a great collection of beads. There were just 5 minutes left before closing time and I hardly managed to select a handful of beads.
Today I wore this at the office. I'm not yet finished experimenting, but for this basic model I could do a tutorial. Would you appreciate that? Maybe you're aware of plenty of such how-to's on internet. To be honest, I didn't check myself yet... I told you before I was inspired by my neighbour's necklace some time ago.

Another apron

My eldest daughter M is a horse lover, I told you before. She attends a riding school every saturday and hardly wants to leave there after the lesson. Although she's a very girlish girl, she liked to idea to go like a blacksmith to school carnaval. Our neighbour had a gold painted horseshoe for her, which made the idea even more attractive.
She knew that her best friend, of course a horse lover as well, would be a horse riding teacher. But what wasn't agreed on was the very funny purple horse, made by her mother and that her friend brought along. The heavy horse was best carried by both girls. M was happy indeed to give it some horseshoes!