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Thursday, April 7, 2011

emporium of fine wares

last weekend we had a market at elwood and it went swimmingly. not literally this time: the sun was almost shining... we didn't take a lot of photos which is a crying shame because our stall was absolutely beautiful!

happy customer

a happy customer

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publicity corner

wares

our fine wares, beautiful pencil cases

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me, looking very proud of myself

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so much bunting. bun-tastrefy.



We will definately be back next month. on the 7th of may.

to find out more about the Elwood market check out their web site.

see you there!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Learning to Crochet

Beginning to Crochet

A while ago now my mum and I decided to learn to crochet granny squares and make a blanket together. But it wasn't until recently that I have began to try and learn. I think it is best to say up front that i am not very good at doing intricate tasks with my hands and so for me learning to crochet is going to be a very slow process. So it has taken me 5 days to conquer a slip note, foundation chain, and a single crochet.

I am using a book called 200 Crochet blocks for blankets, throws and afgans by Jan Eaton.

But also found these youtube videos helpful -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfFRoZxeNrU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVBnFHGbeK4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqca00LdmAc

These video made me realise that i was making each chain to tight, which was making it way too hard to single crochet. - So there is hint for anyone learning like myself.

Hopefully I will have made some progress to show you soon :)

Monday, March 28, 2011

Making Button Badges

badges

Have you heard of the Sticky Institute? Well it is a super tiny place, with super great benches to work on, plus typewriters plus badge makers & supplies.... oh yer and its full of zines!! To find it head to Degraves Subway.

Ainsley and I have made it our home away from home and last Friday we decided to make some themaybepile badges and some business cards as well!!

To make the badges we just cut out appropriately sized circles from gift paper, and plain coloured paper. Then Ainsley typed ( using the type writer) ' themaybepile' on each circle. Then using the badge making equipment supplied by sticky we easily put them together, in a matter of minutes we had 29 beauitful badges ( and one that I made that wasn't so good... oopps).

Typewriting on Badges

We also made some business cards, using a stamp Ainsley had created and her corner rounder.

Stamping

By afternoon tea time we had made some great things to hand out at the Finders Keepers market, to let people know how to find our blog.

Standby for a post all about our favourite stall holders, this Friday!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

My dearest friend Frankie

Frankie Issue 40

When I was 15 (six years ago)a friend of mine, Lloyd, gave me a great gift...a frankie magazine, issue #9... last week i brought issue #40 and I am not missing one.

Frankie and I have a ritual, i devour her quickly, then cut her to pieces. These pieces are sorted into three groups - items to further investigate, activities/recipes and images for my box full of pictures.

Wall Pictur #2

Items to further investigate:

These usually come from 'frank bits' but are also found in other sections as well and are usually websites, blogs and shops ( though in past issues has included books and movies as well) - these then get 'investigated' and if they are worthy get stuck into a a scrap book, to remind me later.

Activities/Recipes

Sometimes Frankie gives me nice craft project to do, or something nice to make and eat - these are stuck on to paper and kept in a file.

The Picture Box

I have a show box over flowing with image taken from the pages of Frankie - these are often looked at and sorted into size, theme or colour palette depending on my mood. But I also like to share them around by using them to make birthday cards, sticking them on my inspiration wall or my scrap book journal, or leave them in the random interval in my diary for me to find as treats later on, and sometimes just given away to people who i think they should belong...

Pictures

Christmas Card

To end this post i would like to leave you with an article from long ago by Mia Timpano

20 ways to impress your love interest By Mia Timpano

You may have been seeing your love interest for years; you may be seeing them only through the means of a small, illegal video device. Be that as it may, these techniques will impress upon that person the degree of your emotional investment. Go forth and cherish the moment!

1 ) Turning up unexpectedly at their house is not impressive; it’s just a surprise. Turning up unexpectedly in the boot of their car, however, is impressive. While you are hiding, remain fixed with an over-sized smile and two thumbs up, eagerly awaiting the moment you are found.

2) Systematically go through all your love interest’s photo albums. Draw a crude smiley face into all the photos.

3) Later explain that the face is you.

4) Keep loose food items in your pockets to offer to your love interest — biscuits, candies, tuna in brine. Wait for an appropriate moment — say, while they’re driving — then push your tight fist of tuna towards them, screaming, “Take it! Just take it!”

5) Swap your love interest’s existing mouse pad for a customised mouse pad — one with your face attached to the body of a small dog.

6) Draw hands onto the dog so that it appears to be giving two thumbs up.

7) Repeatedly send a text message to your love interest that reads, “So. What are you doing now?” Initially, send at intervals of an hour. Progressively shorten the intervals to ten minutes.

8) Then five.

9) Then send a smiley.

10) Wayne Thompson, one of Cleo’s 50 Eligible Bachelors, says that in order to impress his love interest, he would buy her “a flower”. Weak. What Wayne, like many others, clearly does not realise is that flowers are free and in abundance. So are glasses of water. So are used tea-towels. So is asbestos. Do you give any of these to your love interest? No. Because they’re cheap and useless. A gift to impress your love interest should be bold and expensive. In the film Monkey Shines, Alan receives a monkey that makes him sandwiches and dials phone numbers and vacuums the carpet. Granted, the monkey later kills Alan’s mother and burns down Stanley Tucci’s country house with him in it, but the point was that Stanley Tucci was sleeping with Alan’s ex-girlfriend, who only left Alan because he had become a paraplegic, and what’s Stanley Tucci doing now? Shall We Dance. Sure, it was a great film, but I don’t even think he was getting top billing. The point, I think, is obvious: a bold and expensive gift — in this case, a monkey — leaves an impression.

11) Consider also the delivery of any gift. Say, for example, you were to give your love interest a trained chimp, as in Monkey Shines — why idly present it over dinner when you could trap it their house for them to find at a later date?

12) Remember that a chimp could fit snugly in a bean bag.

13) Or a Vac Pack.

14) Whenever you eat with your love interest, keep an eye out for pieces of food that look like them. If you find one — say, a bean — pick it out.

15) Fashion a small chair for the bean from your serviette.

16) Pet it throughout the meal.

17) Throw a brick into the window of your love interest’s workplace. Tie a note to the brick that reads, “So. What are you doing now?”

18) Scan a photo of your love interest and a photo of yourself. Morph the two faces digitally and draw in a child’s body.

19) Set it as their desktop background.

20) Set it to tiled.

21) Blair McDonough from Neighbours says that if he had five dollars, he would buy his love interest “an ice-cream and a ride on a roller coaster”. I like the way Blair thinks. Fill your love interest with a dairy product and then pay to have their body violently shaken. Although Blair is clearly trying, his idea is, at best, repulsive. Instead, with five dollars, he could have bought his love interest a fibre supplement. Impress your love interest by keeping them regular."

Wall Pictures #1

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

lovely pip

lovelypip

You guys know Pip right? You must. Meet me at Mikes? Sew La Tea Do? Writes for Frankie magazine? Maybe you saw her on The Circle spreading the crafty love? She a Craft extraodinaire; surrogate mother to a million crafters all over Melbourne? If the answer is no then I definitely recommend you get to know her...

The Age (Melbourne) Magazine Craft Feature

Pip is a MASSIVE inspiration for us. It's difficult to over state just what an impact she has had on the way we imagine our futures and our lives. And Pip is a very busy lady. She's a shop keeper of a lovely shop called Meet Me At Mikes on Brunswick st.

4meet

She's already published 2 books and we learn from her blog that she's currently working on 2 more! Through her books we've learnt a whole lot of skills. As well as being extremely beautiful they are full of pretty great projects that are very very do-able. Mostly we owe Pip big time because by her example she makes themaybepile... seem like not just a pipe dream but a genuine possibility.

Cosy times

Pip's not really into specialising which is great because neither are we, instead she works in any medium that takes her fancy. She's sort of on a mission to revive the lost art of crochet which she is really good at. Go here to get a nifty pattern with step by step instructions to crochet the some decorative baubles you may've seen in frankie magazine in Decmber. Knowing my crochet skills i'd probably have to start now to have them finished in time.

3Meet-me-at-Mikes-225x300

Raindrop

Mostly we love the way she's interested in making the world a little bit more beautiful and bringing communities closer together and making everyone feel involved and special and talented, which everybody deserves all the time. We both have personal stories of how pip has affected us so here they are:

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Steph - After about a year of living in Melbourne, I returned to my home town of Perth, Western Australia. To ease back into the company of my old friends, My dear friend Ashlee suggested we have a craft circle. So we packed up our mums sewing boxes, dipped into spotlight and made cupcakes before heading to Ash's house for our very first afternoon of craft. Before we began we looked through Pip's first book 'Meet Me At Mikes!' cover to cover and were so inspired by what we saw. So we began - it took us 6 hours to make 4 fabric coasters each... Ash was the only person who could use a sewing machine so it made it a bit slow!! Well 18 months later, my ability to sew has greatly improved, and my love of craft has grown and grow, all thanks to one lovely lady!

Ash is pretty

Elephant Tea Pot


Ainsley: back in way before before time, such a long long time back, when I was still in high school, Meet me at Mikes was located on Bridge Rd and I happened upon a sign in the window asking for crafters to put their wares in the shop. This was before themaybepile.. was even a glint in my eye. Back then my medium of choice was wire. I know it sounds yuck now but in the early 00's wire and beaded jewellery was a hot commodity. I was so so nervous to show anyone my stuff let alone a shop owner I didn't know but Pip was so sweet. She said "these are works of art", she said "you are very talented and creative", I can almost remember everything she said. She said I should price them up and up. She was the best. And when I went in to collect the unsold pieces and a cheque for $83 I was the happiest 14 year old in the world. It was the best $83 I ever made. It was the beginning of my craft empire. Thanks so much Pip. It still means a whole lot to me.

pip lincolne

You can check out Pip's blog here.
And I defs recommend you check out her Flickr. It's pretty spesh.
And check out her books "Meet me at Mikes" and "Sew La Tea Do" or drop into the shop sometime. You won't regret it!

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Sunday, March 20, 2011

a gem from my friend Ash.

Vogue #1

My friend Ashlee recently told me about this website -

http://www.ciaovogue.com/

She is not wrong in describing it as an "amazing website, it is a simplistic catalogue/visual reference of US and UK Vogue magazines from the 60′s and 70′s."

Vogue #2

Also this one http://trove.nla.gov.au/

Which she pointed out for its copies of old women weekly's from the 1930's but i discovered it also have photos, diaries and letters as well a book and journals are going right back through Australian history!!!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Old Dress, New Skirt

Skirt

When I was about 15 (so about 6 years ago now) i brought a dress from Target.. for the first 4 or so years i wore it out to friends houses, the movies, shopping etc, the next couple of years of its life it was only worn in the house as it was getting a bit old. Then recently it literally started to fall apart, the straps began to break apart as well as the the whole top section really... So as i couldn't bear to part with a much loved piece of clothing, and i don't like buying new clothes anyway, I decided today was the day I would give it a new life.. IT WOULD BECOME A SKIRT!!

I forgot to take a picture of what it looked like before cut it, but I think i must have one in he archives so will edit the post when i find one!!

Step 1: Cut off the top leaving 1 inch of material above top part.

Bottom & Top

skirt #5

Step 2: Turn it inside out, and fold over the extra inch and iron down, to make a tunnel for elastic.

Step 3: Sew along the edge of this tunnel leave a inch gap at the back ( i made the mistake of accidentally leaving the gap at the front, which meant i didn't get a nice finish!)

Step 4: Get some length of elastic, attach a safety pin at one end, and using the pin to grab, pull it through the tunnel. Once all the way through make sure there is some overlap and pin through the fabric into the elastic to hold in place ( I didn't do this very well, so there ended up being a gap between the beginning and end of the elastic.. but it still turned out okay)

elastic trick

Step 5: Sew a box with a cross in it - this hold the elastic in place, and is neat ( mine wasn't very neat...)

Skirt #3

Skirt # 2

Step 5: Tidy any threads, Turn it in the right way, give it another iron and put it on!!

Step 5: Show your cat your handy work :)

Skirt and Cat

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