Baby Inspiration - nappy cake, posie, card

Thought I'd share some of the pics of things I've made in the last little while as gifts for the 'new arrivals' and their parents..

I made this nappy cake for my nephew. It's made of rolled nappies, which were arranged into tiers and decorated with sock and singlet flowers. I used a face washer, muslin wrap and clothes to wrap each tier.

I was quite pleased when I found the giraffe baby booties, which I thought looked great on the giraffe's feet!

 Here's one of our baby cards...

The latest 'baby creation' has been sock posies.. When I gave this one to one of our friends who recently had a baby girl, at first she thought I gave her a bunch of fabric flowers, as she didn't realise that there were socks in the posie!!..

Hot Magenta and Cool Aqua

Been busy, busy, busy 'round here again!

Not long till our market debut (28th November at the Mulgrave Makers Market), so there's lots of creating happening around here!

I got my hands on some beautiful magenta and deep Aqua fabrics for our flower brooches/hairclips so here are some of the designs..

Also, our packaging boxes have finally arrived! Here's what our flowers look like inside the boxes..

Fancy Packaging

Our friends' daughter recently had a birthday and I purchased a T-shirt for her. I wanted to pack it nicely, so I thought of putting it into a clear plastic cube box.

I folded the shirt to create a rectangle, which I then rolled into a tube. I placed this inside the box and put tissue paper in the middle to help it hold shape. I popped one of the TOMNI design flower hair clips on top of the shirt and put raffia around the box to hold it all together. I was really pleased with the result!

Owls on the way...

We've been working hard the last week or so sewing our Owl Toys in preparation for the Mulgrave Market..

Here's some of our owls lining up and getting ready to 'fly off to find new homes'..

The smaller ones are called Ollie and are one of our first toy designs. They are a smaller owl and make a great gift for all ages..

Recently we've created a new version of these owls which make a rattling sound when shaken and have a loop on top, so they can be attached to a pram or cot.

The larger owls these were inspired by the picture of the owls I used to draw (which now became our logo).. I'm still working out what I should call them.. These owls are bigger and make a great soft toy or house decoration.



We also have a new bird design that will be joining our collection.. Stay tuned for pics!

Congratulations Card

Here's a Congratulations card that I made for our friends' Engagement. I wanted to make something elegant but not over the top and here's what I came up with:

I used grey shimmer cardstock which I had in my stash for the background and border and I embossed the white shimmer cardstock using the Birds & Swirls cuttlebug embossing folder.

Their theme was "a touch of red" so I used red satin ribbon and added Anita's small red gemstones

The rub-on sentiment was another item I had in my personal stash..

Hope you like it!

Mulgrave Market HERE WE COME!!

I'm so excited - we'll finally be heading off to a market to sell our handmade products!

 

We'll be attending the Mulgrave Makers Market on:

28th of November, 2010

19th of December, 2010

It's located in the grounds of The Body Shop's HQ, Mulgrave (enter from Jacksons Road)

and is on between 8am and 1pm

So put the dates in your calendar and we hope to see you there!

You can find our more about the market here 

Also our TOMNI design ribbon arrived today! So we FINALLY have our own ribbon!

Humble carrot pineapple salad

The carrot + pineapple salad is one of my favourite salads (you know the one - grated carrot which you mix with canned pineapple pieces)..

While making it recently, I began to wonder how many different versions of this salad are out there.. I know of the 'carrot + pineapple + sultanas + coconut', but I'd like to find out about the other versions of this salad - as I said, it's one of my favourites! So if you know of another versions, please let me know via the comments section below...

I look forward to all the suggestions!

Congratulations Card - Cuttlebug Challenge

This week's challenge is "Create a project with an image, a bow and at least two buttons ."


Our entry is a Congratulations Graduations card:

I embossed the white paper using the Cuttlebug Birds and Swirls embossing folder. For the image I used a My Mind's Eye diecut, which I mounted using foam tape.

 The bow was made from grossgrain ribbon and I layered the two buttons (from a stash I've collected over time) which I sewed on top of the bow. A 'congratulations' sentiment for Karen Foster Design finished off the card.

Magnets in store now!

We have finally had a chance to add the super strong magnets that we recently received to our TOMNI Scrapbooking store.

So if you've been thinking of creating your own fridge magnets, these little magnets are great for just that! (Just make sure you have a really strong glue, or if you like the 'simplicity' approach to things, you can use them on their own for holding up all those notices, bills etc on your fridge). Each magnet has a 12mm diameter and is 4mm thick, (which means they are quite easy to separate). But don't let the size fool you!

These are Neodymium disc magnets, making them very powerful - each magnet can effortlessly hold over 10 sheets of A4 paper!

The magnets are available in packs of 10, 25 and 100. To purchase go to our magnets listing in the Scrapbooking shop.

Feta, pear and greens salad

I recently saw a recipe for barley, feta and pear salad, which inspired me to make the following Feta, pear and greens salad.

Here's what you'll need:
- leafy salad mix (I had a 175g pack and used about half of it)
- 1 cup salad sprouts
- 1/2 to 1 green firm pear
- about 1/2 cup walnuts
- about 50g smooth (like danish feta) feta
- oil, salt, pepper to taste

This is quite a quick salad to make:

1. Cut up the feta into small pieces. Core the pear and cut into slices/wedges/cubes (up to you how you prefer it)

2. Combine the leaves, sprouts, walnuts, pear and feta.

3. Season with a bit of oil (I used olive oil), salt and pepper. Mix well - make sure the sprouts and feta are spread through the salad (they like to clump up).

Enjoy!!

Let me know if you make this salad, or if you have any suggestions similar alternatives!

Cuttlebug Challenge Entry

Cuttlebug Challenge is celebrating its 2 years, and for this week the challenge was to create a Birthday card with at least two layers. Here's my entry:

I used the Core'dinations cardstock for the background and the Core'dinations whitewash cardstock for the border layer under the embossed piece, both of which have been sanded along the edges and top to give it a more vintage look.

The Provo Craft Limited Edition Daisy Pattern embossing folder was used to emboss the flowers, which were adorned with small aqua gemstones.

The flower was created using a Sizzix die - the flower layers were cut out from fabric, felt and tulle, layered and decorated with a button. White grosgrain ribbon and a rub on by Finishing Touch Ideas finished off the card.

Magnets have arrived!

I finally received my shipment of the super strong magnets!

The styrofoam packaging made a great toy as well.. though the cleaning up won't be!

Keep an eye out for the button fridge magnets that will be available for purchase soon..

Apple Pancakes

We were coming back from a drive today and wondered about what we should eat when we get home, without having to go to the shops to buy extra ingredients. The idea of apple pancakes came up and I'd like to share with you the recipe that I came up with for them. I must say I was quite surprised with how tasty they ended up! Also, these are quite filling, so the amount I made would be enough I think for about four people..

Ingredients I used for pancakes:

about 750ml milk

4 eggs

organic unbleached plain flour

3 apples (we had red ones, I think they were the pink lady ones)

Cream:

Thickened cream (I used about 300 ml)

Vanilla extract

1. Using an electric mixer, mix the thickened cream and about a teaspoon of vanilla extract until it thickens nicely. 

2. Peel, core and dice the apples into small pieces.

3. Pour the milk into a separate bowl, add in the 4 eggs and add in the flour as you mix with the electric mixer. If you like, you could probably add some vanilla extract or essence into this mixture. Also, some people like to add a little bit of lemon juice (I think it's meant to make the pancakes a bit crispier), but I didn't have any on hand. 

Keep mixing and adding the flour until the mixture becomes quite thick and it slowly pours off the spoon. I found that when adding the flour I pointed the mixer handles towards myself (opposite to what's in the picture) the flour stayed more contained in the bowl.

4. Add the chopped apples and mix with a spoon.

5. Heat oil in a pan (on low to medium heat), then pour on some of the mixture. These pancakes will not be perfectly round (bit hard to shape them with the apple pieces) and they'll be quite thick.

6. When the edges become brown, flip the pancakes over, pat them down a little and fry the other side until brown.

7. Once fried, place the pancakes on some paper towel to absorb some of the oil. I recommend taking them off the pan before they get too dark, like the one below!

8. Serve with cream and jam. You should be able to see pieces of apples, which should still be a little crunchy.

Let me know if you make these - or how you alter the recipe!

Wool Hand Bags

Here's one of our original bag designs crocheted from green and cream wool - I think that mixing the two wool colours together creates a nice colour effect.

A cherry motif was added and the bag was lined with an apple print cotton fabric.

Thought I'd also put up some pictures of the bags I've created from wool a while ago from patterns that I came across in my google travels.

The green bag ended up MUCH bigger (and heavier) than what I predicted. It was meant to be knitted then felted, but being the first bag I knitted and attempted to felt, I didn't keep the felting process going for long enough for the fibers to shrink. Still, it makes a nice decorative piece!

New Handmade additions

Over the weekend I was able to add some new necklaces and brooches/hairclips to our Handmade shop on ETSY, so here's some of the images:

The items are available for purchase at the TOMNI design Handmade shop on ETSY