Negleted

If this blog were a child, I'd be hauled into the slammer for neglect with my child sent to a foster carer who would tend to the child like it deserved. Luckily this is only a blog, however but oh how I have neglected her and you dear readers.
I'll give you my usual spiel – work is nuts. But I don't want to go on about that. I've realised I need to either shut-up and get on with things or leave my job. But I don't want to leave so I will just shut up. I will however take less 'to heart' (a frustrating trait to mellow) and I have also stopped the late hours. The dizzy spells, daily sickie tummy, nausea, headaches and blurred vision were my bodies "slow down" hints.

There's been loads of crafting – jewellery making, gardening, knitting for Born to Knit – I even ventured into the world of Video Tutorials and have made several knitting and crochet basic lessons!! They've even been watched too! I did them for a few friends and was delighted to hear that 2 people have now learnt to knit from them!

So why haven't I blogged – well, bloggging seemed to consume me for a bit. I've been a little obsessed with Pintrest and Instagram (find me as honidesign ) as it's so easy to share. Couple of clicks and I've posted. Will I be back – yes I will for sure. Maybe I'll actually post more over at 'From Shirley Withy Love' – they label under which I've been selling my wares. Speaking of wares, I'll be selling some more of my jewellery soon. I'll let you know more about that when it happens.

For now, I'll sign off with a 'see you shortly' because I'll be back, I promise

EDIT: Here is the link to my Tutorials!

Glitter Shoes

Wow - has it really been TWO MONTHS since I last posted??

I'm fickle with my social networking these days - at the moment all I really have time for is Instagram - which I love!! It allows me to post pictures of what I've been doing directly from my mobile. You can find me on Instagram under honidesign

Anyway I thought I'd post some pictures of one of my latest projects - transforming a friends pair of shoes that had been ruined by an ink stain..Here are the shoes before - Brown suede..

(BTW - i have noticed that a LOT of my 'crafting shots' have a glass of wine in the background!!)
And here are the shoes after!! Like a Blue Dorothy shoes, glittering like stars.

If you have a pair of old shoes that you like but are damaged, or you no longer wear them - i can transform them for you! Either like the ones above, or a variation of the fabric covered ones I made a while ago (image here) Just shoot me an email ( honidesign @ gmail . com - minus the spaces) if you're interested!

Sunday Frustrations

A little multiple choice game for you this evening dear readers.... Tell me, which is worse:

A. Spending $170 at Lincraft only to realise you've bought insufficient fabric for not 1, not 2 but THREE dresses

B. Buying crapola pins that put awful holes in your new (but insufficiently long length of) fabric

C. Having your cat tear through not only the instructions but also through your lovely, neatly re-traced patterns

D. All of the above

ps - am TOTALLY addicted to Instagram at the moment (which explains the lack of blog posts).....if you're on it too then find me - i'm honidesign xx

Sunday Crafternoon

Sunday afternoon – spent making Easter crafts with the uber inspirational Kelly Doust at the most wonderful craft shop in the WORLD (Calico and Ivy in Balmain) surrounded by really lovely, talented girls. I indulged in the afternoon tea; delightful orange cake and macaroons and earl grey tea served in the most divine Vintage tea set. To top it off, the rain fell dreamily on the tin roof. I was in absolute heaven! Kelly sharing her wisdom with the group Tea and craft - GORGEOUS Heather Bailey felt in the background Macarons and Kaffe Fasset fabric The Easter Finger puppets i made Me with Kelly A HUGE Thankyou to Amy and Sarah and Deb at Calico and Ivy, and to Kelly. I had the most wonderful afternoon and I left feeling so inspired and energised to create beautiful things!

I’ve had the time of my life…….

On Saturday I went to the National Blythe convention in Sydney and had the most magical day! I was surrounded by beautiful dolls and very clever, talented and wonderful peeps. The work that people had put into customising their dolls and outfits was just incredible (see below for the “mini me” competition) and gave me some inspiration to custom my third girl on Sunday. I received a heap of goodies and bought a gorgeous wig for Trixie. Once I put the wig on her – I knew she had to have some work done. BEFORE: She was ‘cute’ as Nicky Lad on the far left hand side AFTER: but I think she’s quite beautiful now. I’ve sanded her face, given her brand new eyelashes, new make-up and I carved and painted her lips (this was VERY daunting!) Her hot pink glasses are now worn by Violet (in the middle of the trio picture) I have a LOAD of photos over at Flickr – I took so many photos and have forgotten who owned each doll so I apologise for not crediting the owners of each of these girls! I’d like to extend a big thankyou to all of the organisers for such a wonderful day – I had the time of my life!

Sydney Blythe Meet Up

My Girls are all dressed ans ready for the Sydney Blythe Meet up tomorrow!! I am very, very excited!!

Will hopefully have a laod of cool pictures to show you after the meetup. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

My Creative Space Thursday

This is my WIP this week - a little lamb softie to donate for the Japan appeal (you can read more about this WONDERFUL idea here. If you're in Sydney you can drop softies off at Calico and Ivy in Balmain)




More Creative Spaces over at Kootoyoo!

Vintage Sewing pattern Book

I am a very, very lucky girl!! I found this divine Vintage pattern book from February 1958 on eBay. It wasn't cheap, but after flicking through each glorious page – it was worth every cent! The Seller (The Retro Cave) has another listed on eBay- from February 1959 as well as loads of other Vintage Items.

My Creative Space Thursday

I made this necklace on the weekend. I took a piece of pine timber and I whittled it away to make a branch. Then I used the hot tool to burn the wood.
Once it cooled I drilled a few holes to make it a necklace and also to dangle the Swarovski heart crystal..

Thankyou to everyone who commented on my blog last week – your comments overwhelmed me and were truly lovely. I will actually be selling some pairs later so I’ll post about it soon!

More Creative Spaces at Kootoyoo!

My Fabric Covered Shoes @ My Creative Space

I decided to be a bit thrifty and make some new shoes out of some old ones i longer wore. I used some pretty fabrics and i covered my red shoes to make pretty new shoes!


i used some gorgeous tape measure fabric for the heels


and a bit of lace, buttons and hot-fix crystals to decorate! What do you think? I'm really happy with them!

Whats going on in YOUR creative space? Check out Kootoyoo for more Creative Spaces!

Snoop My Stuff

This is my bookshelf....filled with crafty books and loads of art books filled with inspiration. The “Bride and Groom” mini easels were the name card settings we used for our wedding.

More pics you can snoop through on my flickr site – you can also play along here a Kootoyoo!

Pretty Dress

Forgot to post about this one. I made a dress for Ditty's Blythe "Araelia Sakura".... I am REALLY happy with it. Am considering making these to sell.....what do you think?

I ammended a patten from the Puchi Collective website

Making Blythe Eye Chips

I decided to do a little experiment to make some eye chips for Lilly. I took out her factory orange eye chips and used some two part mixing rubber to make a mould for the chips.



After I made the mould I mixed up some resin and let it set overnight. I wasn’t sure which side would work – the bottom half of the top half – I even thought of gluing the 2 together.

Once the resin had cured I painted it with some basic acrylic paints and I used a watercolour shimmer paint to give the opaque acrylic paint a metallic look.



There were a few “fails” along the way.
- I used to coarse a grain to buff the resin which scratched one eye
- The top half didn’t have the “depth” to it that the bottom half with the little knob did.
- The bottom half worked best, but had a very flat and reflective surface to it. I think I’d be best making a deeper mould and sanding it into a rounder shape.



Overall I’m happy with my first attempt at making Blythe eye chips – I will definitely persist with it till I get it right!!

A Little makeover

Let me formally introduce you to Lilly. Lilly is a Bohemian Peace Blythe Doll, with an RBL head (which means she is super easy to do custom work to!) This is Lilly before I attempted any work

This is Lilly during work. Trixie and Violet looked away in disgust as I took Lilly apart. It took them a long time to realise I wasn't hurting her and it was for her own good.

And this is Lilly after!

-I gave her face a de-shine

- applied fake eyelashes

- corrected her gaze so she looks slightly upwards (although i did a tiny bit too much and so you can slightly see a black dot under the eye - where the next eye colour is)

Below is the small bar that you need to shave the tip off in order to make the eyes gaze upwards.

- gave her a nice hair cut, got rid of her "bum part" and gave her a fringe.

- replaced her pull-cord ring with a bead.

I have also removed her orange eye chips and am doing a little bit of experimenting and am trying to make some new ones from resin. The below picture is the "glue stick" method which is very quick and easy. You don't need to open the head in order to remove the eye chips. More pictures of that later though.....

And here are all my girls together. Violet and Trixie were sprung having a little 'gossip' behind Lilly's back....i think they're a little jealous of her sexy new do and her pretty beaded cord

More pictures of the girls and some more up close images of the custom work in progress on my Flickr site.

2 pretty girls....

The quirky cute Nicky Lad and the hippy-cool Bohemian Peace arrived in the mail today! I am so darn excited! I plan on doing quite a bit of custom work on Bohemian Peace. More photos and names to come!

Sonny Angel

My newest little purchase....

Pretty Stamps

I’ve received quite a few lovely packages in the mail recently – mainly from Japan and Hong Kong and i've realised they have some really beautiful stamps over there!

I used to collect stamps when I was younger, but when we changed over to those awful (yet convenient) sticky backed stamps it took all the fun out of stamp collecting. There was something quite therapeutic about soaking the stamps and then ever so gently removing them from the envelope and setting them out to dry.

I have no idea what to do with them now, Oshiny on flickr suggested wallpaper! What a hot idea! It would take a painstakingly long time, but how cool would it look!

Vintage Liddle Kiddle

Vintage 1967 "Liddle Kiddle" necklace charm. I saw here on eBay and just had to buy her. I like to wear one crazy piece of jewellery per day - and she will look just great on a necklace! You can also take her out of her little "jewel house"...too cute!!
(you can read more about them here. Plus there are a few on eBay if you want to own one too!)

To Open or not to open...

When I was a child I had a mini vacuum cleaner that wound up and the little pads underneath would swoosh around in a buffing motion.

With my recent regression into collecting 'toys' – such as my growing collection of re-ment items, restoring old Barbies and fixing up my Blythe Violet I got a bit nostalgic about some of the toys I used to love as a child – long ago donated to charity or played with till they broke.
So I Googled ‘wind up vacuum cleaner’ and whaddaya know – I found it! I also found the mixer which I had forgotten about and a sewing machine too!!



The lovely Amanda at ‘Hey Yo Yo’ on Etsy put them aside for me and I snapped them up toot-sweet. (Amanda – if you’re treading this thankyou for guiding me through my first ‘reserved’ etsty item purchase!!)



Now, the only question is – Do I open them??? Or do I leave them in the packaging? Yes I know that they’re ‘worth more’ in their packaging – but I’ll never sell them. Like a child, I am DESPERATE to see the sewing machine work and to once again see the vacuum cleaner buff away… Tell me – what would you do???

Mini dresses

Quick blog from the mobile today... I'm making some teeny tiny dresses for Violet.. with this hot sticky weather she needs a few summer frocks!

My new Pencil set

May I share with you...my new colour pencil set. Not sure if any of you adore pencils as much as i do.... I cherished my Derwent pencils growing up, so I couldn't resist buying these...




They're quite special though...because when you put a $0.10 piece next to them you can see how tiny they are!


Yes, re-ment pencils!! Amazing! And each one is an individual pencil that comes out of the case. They're a special "secret " item from the My Favourite Stationery set.....i am just besotted with them!

Waiting

Waiting patiently for this package to arrive....filled with Re-ment goodies from the love Jane at Harapeko Doggy Bag..