Piper

Just look at my little Sweet Princess! That cheeky little face just makes me smile from ear to ear.

Just after Mothers’ Day I went for a trip to Ikea and spent waaay to much money in the fabric department, and to be honest, i haven’t used the fabric as much as i would have liked. When i was there my little brain was in inspiration-overtime but crafty time is limited so i haven’t been as motivated to start long projects which will take several nights/ weeks to finish.

I had an idea for a dress for Piper, but before I wanted to make that particular dress (which is going to be awesome by the way!) I thought i would throw together a simple dress first, just to see how i would get on. This way i could learn about the tricky parts, and the challenges before i start into the real, super cool, i-cant-wait-to-see-it dress project.

I used one of pipers current dresses as a guide. I simply laid it down onto a roll of paper and drew around each of the sections: the front bodice, back bodice, front skirt, back skirt, and shoulder straps; and then I added about 1cm to allow for seams and cut out the paper templates. Next I cut the various pieces of fabric using my rotary cutter, then got sewing.

I had lot of fun on this project, and learnt A LOT! – Which bits to do first, the importance of marking each piece clearly, which were the tricky bits, the best stitch to use for different sections and i even learnt that its best to keep cats out of the sewing room because they sit on EVERYthing. Every piece of fabric i reached for had either a big pile of cat hairs or simply a big bundle of cat on there! Bless my little fur baby!

This is what the dress looked like before the final touches. {Now, don’t be distracted by all the crafty products in the back ground! 🙂 lol}

I made a few roll up flowers for the front- you can probably see the pins holding them in place. I actually only added one in the end (the biggest one), and i added star buttons to the straps which you can probably see from the photos at the top.  I also used some bias around the bottom edge to finish the seam. I love that it gives a punch of colour for the bottom edge.

I’m so very happy with the finished product, and now i can’t wait to get started on the super cool ‘real’ project. 🙂

Okay, Okay, just one more photo to melt your hearts….oh, there she is! ♥♥

This layout was inspired by one of Jen Gallacher‘s recent layouts which featured a layout based on four blocks, and i thought it was pretty cool. Check out her layout here at two peas (video).

For once I started with the papers and designed the page with no idea of which photo to add. It felt a little weird because I don’t normally work that way, but it’s good to push yourself outside of your comfort zones sometimes.

In parts it was a little freeing, but when it came to adding a photo I found the frustration kicking in as I had to trim my photo much more than I wanted to in order to make it fit, but im sure you probably couldn’t tell that from looking.
🙂

Did you spy the journaling card which I chopped up and added? This is one of the free downloadable journaling cards which I made for this Thanksgiving Project. I cut out the bracket shape and used this as a stand alone embellishment in the bottom right quadrant then used the rest of the card for writing my journaling on the top right section. You can still download these journaling cards if you are wanting to get your hands on them. Here’s how

All you need to do is to click on the sign up tab at the top and become a free member. This will give you access to all the free digital downloadable elements. Be sure to also sign up to our newsletter so that we can let you know when new stuff is available. Also, all newsletter subscribers are automatically entered into any competitions we run on Hungry Heffy Crafts. Great, huh?

The middle section was a bit of an experiment. It started life as a piece of stripy paper – i used a craft knife to cut in between the stripes, but left a couple of inches uncut which is the section on the left under the button. Leaving this section untouched made it easier to stick to the layout and also easier to create the waves in the thin pieces of paper. The little arrows are left overs which i cut at a 45 degree angle in order to make the pointy-bracket shape.

I also got to use up some old supplies – these chipboard starburst shapes have been in the stash for well over three years i think! I have absolutely no idea where they came from, who made them or how they managed to find their way into my chipboard drawer. heehee.

Thanks for stopping by.