Crafty 2008 (part 1)

I've been cleaning up the photo folders on our computer today. Guess what I found? Tons of "must-blog-about-this-soon" photos, all forgotten an un-blogged! Well, better late then never I suppose, so here are a couple of things I made last year that I really like:

Pink elephant cookies! This photo was taken back in October. I made pink sugar for the first time - super simple; just puree a couple of raspberries, mix them with regular sugar and dry in the oven on low heat. Pretty, tasty and a lot cheaper than sprinkles!

More pink! This is the baby quilt I made for little Stella this Christmas. It's very simple, but I like the colors a lot. I really need to learn proper binding though! What do you think?

Flickr friends

We had a lovely time with my mother, I just wish she could come visit more often! The picture below shows some of the OREO hearts from my last post, all wrapped up as a Valentines gift for mom.

I'm leaving town tomorrow morning to visit my sister, her fiancée and my little niece, so there won't be much craftiness this weekend. I thought I'd leave you with a mosaic of wonderful photos from some of my Flickr contacts. Such talent, and wonderful photography!

1. Lavender Love, 2. babette blanket - the beginning, 3. For the Birds Swap, 4. ATC: Jardin, 5. buttons, 6. fabric collage, 7. Crochet granny's, 8. Work in progress, 9. shabby tea -- postcard to-be

Have a great weekend everyone!

I (heart) OREOs

Happy Valentines everyone! I hope you all had a great day! Keith and I didn't celebrate too much, but we did go see a movie (Seven Pounds, loved it!) on Friday night, as my mother and her hubby arrived to visit on Saturday afternoon.

The only other Valentine-y thing we did was inspired by this lovely Craftster post: OREO balls! Or more accurately, OREO hearts - perfect for the occasion! I used to love OREOs when I lived in the US, but I don't eat them much these days as they are super expensive over here. But these just sounded too yummy to pass up... And they look pretty, too!

Are you a fan of OREOs?

Lots of goodies in the mail

I received some lovely treasures in the mail yesterday! I was having a really bad day (I hate job hunting!) and they really cheered me up. Look at my loot!

Of course I started ripping them up at once, and this is the first thing I found: My lovely Valentine from Jenny of Stitcher and Scribbler! I won her Valentines giveaway last week, and these are the goodies that she sent. An adorable felt pin, lovely Valentines-themed art and some cute bunny Valentines. Plus, look at that gorgeous ribbon! Thank you SO much Jenny!

Next was my notebook from the Collate project, a journal collaboration organized by Sweet Jessie. Paper crafters and journal writers from all over the world gathered and sent in 50 pieces of pretty, vintage or repurposed papers, and Jessie had them all bound into these beautiful notebooks. Look at all the papery goodness!

Some of my favorite pages:

Thank you Jenny and Jessie, you made my day!

Swap stuff

At the beginning of the year I joined a couple of small craft swaps over at Craftster. Cutting back on swapping is one of the many ways I'm trying to save money this year, but it's way too much fun to give up completely! So I've decided I'm only joining swaps that are small, low postage, and allow me to work from my stash.

For these latest swaps I decided to make some stamps - I bought about four sheets of grade A PZ Kut a while back so it was a great way to de-stash! These are the stamps I made!

A little mermaid to suit my swap partner's mermaid theme. This was probably one of the fiddliest stamps I've ever made, and I'm not completely happy with the way the scales turned out. I need to get a finer blade!

This little turtle was adapted from an image in my partner's Wists, so it's not my original artwork, but I still really like it!