By hand this time

This week I will be visiting Denmark. I'm invited by Kvadrat to enjoy three days of esthetic delight, full of design, fabrics, architecture, interiors, art...
The felt for this bag I bought already some weeks ago. The yellow strap is like here a thrifted judo belt. It's clear that last weekend a Kvadrat bag had to be made to accompany me to Denmark.

On the outside felt of Wernerkinck, on the inside a mix of fabric samples of Kvadrat: the traditional Hallingdal, Stripes of Paul Smith, Layers Vineyard of Hella Jongerius, Happy of Tord Boontje. I'm happy to carry all those great designers along.

Today I used the bag for the first time. A new project?, a colleague asked me. Yep, just finished. To be honest, it's wasn't a simple process. But it is what was in my mind. It's made all by hand, because I preferred to sit on our couch :). The stitches are done as invisible as possible (but very visible in strong sunlight!). It appeared to be easy to get the needle through the felt layers. Luckily the fabric samples already had overlocked edges. I'm not fully satisfied with the snappers. These are of Prym (I thought a trusty brand), but I think they snap not strong enough. Anybody better alternatives?

Bye Melissa

L's teacher asked us to bring a flower for their intern tomorrow. Didn't matter of what kind, a real or crafted or drawn one. L and I discovered the fine crafting-with-kids possibilities of YouTube. My daughter of 5 liked to scroll, pick a flower and watch the video again and again. This pink one she liked most.

Making this post right now I discover the site of this amazing origami man, where he explains how to fold excisting flowers.

Pancake house

We Dutch love pancakes. Imagine: every Sunday we bake a whole pile. From now on M is into baking too. Here she is doing the job with lieve Lieve.

Hometowngirl

Last Saturday I bought two (!) new dresses. The silk one above (which is consiously shown unsharp ;)) is designed by a for me up till now unknown hometowngirl: Monique van Heist. After some research on internet, I discovered she's kind of spectacular in the fashion world: she won several awards. I can imagine, because I'm so happy with this dress!

Then a question. In my favorite fashion shop in Rotterdam I was recommended to wear my low boots with bare legs to a wedding which I attended Saturday evening. I felt quite comfortable, but what do you think?

Finally, the beautiful body on the right is certainly not mine. The bride's sister was wearing this dress. A better look at her dress brought me to the idea to sew copy (new English word?) this model some day. Of course I'll keep you posted.

Lieve Lieve

This sweet (her name translated, I so love her name...) friend of M (and daughter of my friend) had her birthday party last week. She loves to craft, so we made a variation on this theme.
As you can see the stamps were still laying around! The stamp effect is everytime surprising to me. Now the ink liquified into the unsanded wood, which was really great. I made her a pincushion too, by hand this time. M said she really needs one :).

Nice to meet you!

About nine years ago we designed and (some later) built our own house. People tend to say: your house will be perfect. I always answer that the house is not perfect, and that I'm neither stuck to it for the rest of my life. To be honest, I'm more stuck to our neighborhood. We have such nice people living around us, and then I'm talking about 10 families with their young kids. In our backyards they all play together on a save, harmonious way.
Today our neighbor twins and neighbor girl turn 4. Because I pick up the trendy word 'personalized' all around, I thought it would be nice to make them a bag that looks like them!

Here the finished bags are shown by L, before they disappear in wrapping paper. Note the yellow straps: a while ago some old judo belts were smiling at me in a thriftstore. Irresistible color to me! And don't you like the beautiful fabric samples of Kvadrat I used? I'm happy and love to give the presents in a few hours. Congrats, fresh 4-years-old!

Iceland

Two weeks ago my boyfriend F was on beautiful Iceland. During his holiday he sent us pictures and films, which we could view via Dropbox. Imagine: M and L had to go to bed. But ok, it's nice to view papa's pics. So we sat down behind the screen, mama and a sweet girl on each knee. Truly hundreds of pics of nature, nature and even more nature came by. F was rarely shown on the pics. I would almost say, that's boring for kids! But... after seeing all of them, M had a deep sigh and said: Oh, I wanna go to Iceland too!
Now happily he's back home. Look what he brought for M and L: a wonderful collection of amazing stones, many of them lava. L loves to sort and play with them for hours!

This was one of the mini films. So we knew already what presents he would bring back home!

Wrap it!

Last weekend I had a full program. On Saturday afternoon our neighbors gave a really great party, so many people enjoyed our common garden. Then there was Rena's party and at night (till 4 a.m., that's late for a brave mother like me) I loved to join all neighbors and a very big crowd at De nacht van de Kaap. I like to mention this, because it's to be recommended!
This present was for sweet Rita and Jack. Here are the ingredients for wrapping a present like this: cheap brown wrapping paper, nice stamps (I used these, like I did before), and adhesive textile tape (found at Xenos). I stamped on the uncoated side of the paper. More stamping fun is following...

Frosta for Rena

Sometimes people are that sweet, you just want to bring them self made presents. For Rena I did before. And I loved to see that this former present was even in use yesterday!
She gave a housewarming party. To make her spacious new living a bit less empty I thought it would be nice to bring along a small piece of furniture.

This great styled idea inspired me. The felt was bought at Wernerkinck in Delft in thicknesses of 5, 3 and 1 mm. Colours were chosen in combination with Rena's Eames' chairs. The legs of an Ikea Frosta were shortened to make it more suitable for little kids. One of them is growing in Rena right at the moment :). An option is to reassemble the legs slightly inwards, I might do that next time. The thread of the crosses went all the way through drilled holes in the seat (thanks F for doing this drilling part of this little project). There was no need to use adhesive foil to fix the seat cover. The funny part was Rena's reaction: Oh, I know where to put it! And she placed it next to her red rocking chair right away.
There're so many possibilities to design such a stool. Go ahead and make your one! It gives you energy!

And again

Yes, I like this fresh, summery one too! I'll use it to cheer up my quite greyish wardrobe :).