Spring picnic!

I hope you all had a great Easter! I know I did, the weather has been wonderful all week. My friends and I arranged a spring picnic on Monday to celebrate the season.

I made these little Easter-themed cupcakes for the picnic. They are vanilla flavored, with raspberry filling and buttercream icing. Both the batter and the icing are completely vegan, but I added nougat eggs and some white chocolate shavings to some of the cupcakes for the non-vegans. The little nests were very popular! :-)

We had a great time at the picnic! Tons of food, sweets, egg painting, a nice blueberry hookah, some knitting, and excellent company! I also made some cascarones, mexican confetti eggs, and arranged a little egg hunt... They were so fun to make! There's a tutorial for making confetti eggs HERE.

Sorry about the blurry picture! I wish I could have gotten some better pictures of the eggs, but they soon ended up looking like this:

Needless to say, they were a hit! :-) Thank you friends for a lovely day!

Time for spring

Spring arrived in my kitchen a few days ago - at 1.15 PM, apparently!

I'm really glad spring is finally here, this winter has been pretty awful! Rain and sleet and icy winds... I'm SO ready for summer! My friend Sara and I are throwing a big Easter picnic on Monday to celebrate the season. Can't wait! I think I might make some Easter-themed cupcakes. What do you think?

My sister had a birthday a couple of weeks back, and I decided to make her some little lavender sachets. I love lavender! It reminds me of childhood, because both my mom and my grandmother used to keep lavender sachets in the closets and cupboards.

Recognize the lovely ribbon? It's the one I received in Jenny's giveaway in February! I thought it would look nice next to the soft colors and vintage buttons.

Oh, and before I forget: There's a lovely giveaway going on over at Diary of a Quilter. Pop in for your chance to win some lovely fabric squares!

ATCs

Thank you for all the nice comments about my little toadstools! I definitely want to make some more toadstool themed things soon, they are so sweet!

I have more swap stuff to show you today. These are two ATCs; one was made for the Alphabet ATC swap, and one for the Buy Nothing swap. I'm quite pleased with both of them.

I named the first one Weeping Woman, it is a collage made with scrapbook paper, vintage text, and plain white lace that I painted with black acrylic paint. I just found out about this trick - it's a great way to get exactly the color of lace that you need for a project, and you can paint as much or as little as you need!

The second one is entitled Marie Antoinette, and incorporates vintage text from a Swedish dictionary, acrylic paint, scrapbook papers and an old stamp. If the style of this card looks familiar to you, it might be because I was inspired by the lovely Malin of Dandelion Daisy - she makes wonderful ATCs!

Time for toadstools

My swap packages have been received, so I can finally post about them! I thought I'd start with the Buy Nothing/Green Swap I joined in an effort to de-stash. One of my partner's themes was toadstools, so I made her a toadstool pincushion!

Here it is hanging out in my craft corner... I almost didn't want to send it off! :-) But my partner seemed to like it, so I'm glad I did!

Continuing on the toadstool theme, I also made a little mixed paper notebook. I assembled the pages and sewed them together on my sewing machine, and it worked beautifully!

Don't you just love toadstools?

My favorite craft tutorials

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a while. There has been a lot of things going on, good and bad. The (very) bad thing is that we've been informed that our company is considering closing down their Gothenburg office, which means I'll probably be out of work in a month or so. And at the worst possible time, too! I'm very worried, but trying to stay positive.

The good thing is that I've been crafting away for several different Craftster swaps. Pictures coming soon! In the meantime I thought I'd share some of my favorite craft tutorials. This is the current top 5:

Photo from CraftPudding

1. Make a baby food jar pincushion - This is a sweet little tutorial that CraftPudding posted a couple of weeks back, I can't wait to try it out. A great way to repurpose old glass jars!

2. Excellent bookbinding tutorial - This is a wonderful tutorial if you have ever wanted to try bookbinding but feel intimidated by all the tools and complex techniques out there. Clear instructions, helpful pics, and no expensive tools required!

3. Toadstool tutorial - I recently rediscovered this tute, it's great! Make a cute pincushion or ornament and decorate it to your heart's content! Author LucyKate even arranged a toadstool swap - see all the photos here.

4. Fabric ATC tutorial - This tute has some great tips and tricks for making fabric ATCs. I want to experiment more with non-paper ATCs as soon as I'm done with the Craftster Alphabet ATC swap.

5. Fabric Dollhouse Tutorial - I haven't had a chance to make this yet, but I had to share it anyway. Such an adorable idea!

Crafty 2008 (part 2)

Time for some more pictures! This first one is from last summer. It shows my pincushion, made from a thrifted teacup. I love teacup pincushions, they're both pretty and practical! There's a tutorial here if you'd like to make your own. You can also see one of my ATCs in the picture, and the Booties I made when Stella was born.

The next photo shows a little bunny embroidered for Stella last fall... The cute pattern is a freebie from Wee Wonderfuls - check it out here! I turned it into a little doll but I actually think it was cuter before I stuffed it!

The last photo is actually from 2007, and it certainly isn't my own work.. But I just had to share it! Look at this vintage wedding dress! Look at those puff sleeves! All those ruffles! I just love it! :-D

Have a great week!

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!