Miss C is 3

Birthday Adventures… Part 1

Rum-ball-truffle-cake-pops

Inspired by two of my favourite blogs, RetroMummy and Bakerella, I embarked on a Cake Pop mission today. I don’t know why cake pops haven’t occurred to me before – bite size pieces of cake on a lollipop stick decorated …

What do you think?

Want to win $50 in Bloombub custom made clothing for your child?

I am currently looking back on Bloombub’s first year of business, and evaluating our products and choices for next year.

If you were a Bloombub customer (or a fan, or a browser!) I’d love to hear what your experiences with Bloombub were – both positive and negative – and get your thoughts on some new products and fabric choices for 2011 themes. All feedback is valuable to me to assess what changes I need to make to my business to made it bigger, better and more useful to you!

Of course, there is an incentive! One lucky survey entrant will win $50 in custom Bloombub products for their child. The survey is open from now until December 26th.

Go on, tell me what you think!

The art of contact

My mother taught me early-on the necessary skills to apply Contact to my school books. Now that I’ve been doing it for 20-odd years, I can see why she was eager for me to learn how to cover my own!

These days the crafter in me sees a myriad of uses for Contact (or Duraseal, whatever brand you choose!), and you can find a fair bit of it slapped up around Claire’s room. (Alongside the removable wall stickers of course)

Today’s adventure in contact was to spruce up a chest of drawers for Claire. We picked up a half-price Malm chest at Ikea last week, marked down due to some chips out of the edges. I don’t mind chips – Claire is sure to do way more damage to that piece of furniture in the course of her childhood. And it’s a perfect excuse to brainstorm some creative covers.

Don’t mind the bubbles (I don’t). It took me a good 20 minutes to get this stuff onto the top, and then another 10 minutes of negotiating with Claire on the placement of the bird, butterfly and flower stickers. But it now looks a little more girly than it did when we brought it home, and is in keeping with the loose ‘Flower Garden’ theme we have going.

(Ikea is getting some good business out of Claire. She also had fabric bedhead covers made from their textile department, a doona cover and some soft butterfly and snail toys stashed around the room, as well as the obligatory hanging toy storage!)

No rest for the wicked (in case Santa is listening)

And if finishing the market stock wasn’t exhausting enough, I’ve been straight back into some Christmas crochet embellished tees and singlets, with bloomers, Mini-Pinnies and maybe a skirt or two to come!

Do you buy a special Christmas outfit for your little person each year? Or are you crafty and make your own? This is Claire’s Christmas outfit from last year…

It had a little striped/starry skirt with red mesh overlay too, but in typical toddler fashion, she sat on some concrete and wrecked it within minutes of this photo ( at the daycare Christmas Party).

What do you do to celebrate Christmas with your little ones?

To market, to market…

To buy a pretty dress!

I’m very excited to have been accepted as a stallholder at the very first The Mummy Tree Markets, to be held on October 31st at River Park, Morningside.

So close to Bloombub headquarters (that was a BIG motivator.. not having to drive for miles early in the morning!); AND we can all celebrate with  dip in the new Colmslie Pool afterwards. I hope to be so busy I need to cool off!

Hopefully I will be able to debut my Summer range at the markets too – if you haven’t had a look yet, pop over here and see what I’m planning… I ordered the first reels of ribbon today and am cutting pink, ocean and sky blue shorts this evening!

Singlets, Sailor Dresses, ribbon trim shorts and rainbow mermaid Mini-Pinnies

Win a Bloombub voucher!

The Bloombub spring catalogue is almost complete – just two more mini-pinnies and some lounge pants to go!

Bring on the sunshine!

I’m also very excited to be applying to hold a stall at the first The Mummy Tree Markets, which will be held in Morningside (just around the corner!) on Saturday 31 October. How exciting – the sewing machine and overlocker have been put into overdrive to finish up the de-stash Mini-Pinnies and there’s wool scraps all over the house from the embellished t-shirts and singlets!

To celebrate the new range (which, I might add is selling quite quickly) I’m going to give away a $25 Bloombub voucher.

The lucky winner can choose anything they like from the Bloombub catalogue to the value of $25 – that might be: 3 embellished singlets; 2 embellished t-shirts; a Mini-Pinny or set of lounge pants and a tee, or, you could put it towards a Garden Party Dress. So much choice!

What will the winner choose?

How to enter?

I’m making it really simple – just leave a comment on this post and tell me what you think you might like to choose if you win! AND, if you’re a Bloombub Facebook fan, I’ll give record two entries for you.

How long?

I’ll leave the competition open until August 31, OR when we have reached 250 Facebook fans – whichever is sooner.

So – off you go – get referring and commenting and maybe you’ll be choosing your very own Bloombub original in a few short weeks!

Oh, and I”ll give away another $25 voucher when we get to 500 Facebook fans, or on October 31st (when we hopefully have our first market stall). More details about those competitions when we draw this one…

Tell your friends!

At our house

This week, we have been crafting up a storm for our part in the CHA Craft Swap. My partner is the lovely Lana from AromaPlay Clay, which seems to be the hottest new kids product in town! Gluten free, bright colours and infused with aromatherapy scents to invigorate/clam your little people – what’s not to love! Our task was to create something for our PARTNER, not their children (!) so I had a lovely time freebasing some crochet goodies, trialling a few tutorials from Craftster and I couldn’t resist adapting some of the Bloombub catalogue for a grown up. Here’s some sneaky peeks of what Lana can expect in the mail later this week:

I have also tried my hand at patchwork this week. What. A. Frustrating. Art. I hope the Merry Church Mouse’s skirt turns out okay, cos I’m pretty sure it will be the last time I attempt any kind of piecing work. I won some lovely charm squares from the Lily and Will bunny range at Sunshine and Stitching, thinking: I know, I’ll make a lovely little skirt for Claire. The lovely Ally was also kind enough to throw in a cute spotted fat quarter to coordinate, and another spotty FQ from my stash rounded out the lineup. And then the pattern matching debacle began. Three days later, this is where I’m at:

Oh, and I managed to thread my overlocker wrong and snap two needles just as I was about to begin, so no doubt that dampened my enthusiasm for this project as well! I’ll do the gathering tonight and MAYBE finish of the layers tomorrow (if the terrible two-yr-old doesn’t go on another sleep strike). I admire all you ladies who quilt and patch regularly – you must have the patience of a Saint!

I had some Mummy-time-out on Saturday and took a wander through the Matilda’s Market at Eagle Farm Racecourse. I hadn’t been out to the new venue, and was impressed by the scale, though it is still difficult to manouvre through the room with all the prams and baby bellies. In wonder if maybe MM should investigate designated ‘No Pram’ visiting hours so shoppers can get up close to the stands. I had a chat with Stephanie from Mon Petit Poppet, who was a stallholder for the first time, and talked about joining the BrisStyle team and attending their markets later in the year. BrisStyle have a new twilight market in King George Square on a Friday evening, which sounds like a much more civilised way to shop, especially during summer!

To cheer ourselves up we made some brownies this afternoon. YUM

Claire has clearly enjoyed the batter and the finished product. The sugar high continues….
And tonight we’re taking her for her first haircut – the Albert Einstein look is no longer becoming. Stay-tuned for neatness and (hopefully) girly curls.

Check out what everyone else is doing this week, at Lou’s blog!

While you were out…

… at the movies, the pub, the soccer, generally having a life

I made this!

7pm:

Just a pile of remnants

9pm:

A cute bag!

It’s the 1 hour bag from RicRac. Okay, so it took me 2 hours, but my laminated Marrimekko fabric from local supplier I just Love That Fabric was a bit of a shock to my no-name brand sewing machine and I have to manually feed the straps through to prevent sticking.

There’s a wee little pocket to hold my phone, a pen, some business cards. The strap is held on with a groovy button from my Nana’s stash – I think it matches the modern aesthetic perfectly.

Laminated Marrimekko fabric pocket

Retro button from Nana's stash matches perfectly

Maybe I’ll take it to the Ron Mueck exhibition this morning, to mingle with the arty types

World Environment Day

Today is World Environment Day. An while we’ve not been particularly ‘green’ this week, what with sick children and car trips to the doctor and various soccer, school musical and work appointments, I have been thinking about all the ways Bloombub tries to be sustainable. We seem to be right onto the ‘minimising waste’ stuff – maybe there are other things we can do to reduce our carbon footprints?

Firstly, if you’ve ever purchased a Bloombub item, you’ll notice I’m not big on tissue paper and ribbon wrappings. Our parcels come in a zip-lock bag (which of all the plastic packaging options, can at least be re-used as it’s quite durable); I use real ribbon to attach our tags; I post in ‘tough bags’ wherever possible to maximise recycling efforts.

The first-ever mini-pinny

Secondly, I hate fabric waste, so my scrap bag is actually more like 3 scrap boxes. The Fat Quarter Mini-Pinny was dreamed up one afternoon after finding some perfectly shaped ‘yolk’ pieces came from the scraps after cutting out a pair of bloomers. A few more rectangles stiched together and some elastic (or a button for bigger sizes), and you’ve got a perfectly cute little summery top or pinafore. While I’m only selling the sewn up items at the moment, if any of my blog followers would like to see how a Mini-Pinny is formed (for private use only), I’m happy to share. Now I just have to take up quilting to use up all those smaller scraps! I also have mad dreams of one day creating a Selvage bag like these fabulously crafty people.

As regular readers will know, the remnant bin is my favourite part of a fabric shop. Lil C is still small enough to fit into an outfit made from less than half a metre of fabric, and I am always coming h0me with scraps of beautiful fabric only large enough to make something for a child. On the odd day that I find something big enough for an adult garment, it usually sits in the bottom of the fabric drawer for months before I get around to doing something with it,

Thirdly, I find crochet to be the least wasteful needlecraft. A Bloombub crochet embellishment has often been made from the last metre or so of a ball of wool or cotton. My initial attempts at embroidery were patchy and i was constantly covered in cotton/thread scraps;  for some reason my childhood longstitch/tapestry never seemed to work out particularly well either. I haven’t cross-stitched for a long time – perhaps I’ll be inspired to re-look at my embroidery or cross-stitch by this talented person.

Lastly, we’re sticking to ‘digital’ and marketing and sales for the time being. Apart from our business cards (which actually double as our swing tags by printing them on both sides), Bloombub hasn’t printed flyers or posters, or even whipped up very many ‘samples’ to shop around at real bricks-and-mortar stores. By keeping the majority of our business to custom orders, I’m not making lots of items that take up space and are potentially wasted if a buyer wants a garment in a different size and I don’t have enough fabric. Our Facebook, MadeIt and Etsy stores allow us to minimise waste, continue to purchase small amounts of fabric so your purchase is always a one-of-a-kind, and save me time to spend with Lil C.

Did you celebrate World Environment Day? What kind of ‘green’ things do you do at home or in your craft business?

Rainbow Cake #1

Four hours of baking & decorating later, we had ourselves a lovely Rainbow shaped cake at Playgroup today. The M&M toppings were a huge hit with the kids, though I did notice a bit more rambunctious activity after morning tea.. perhaps a few too many colours and additives??? Oooops.

Claire loved her cake, but we didn’t have enough breath to blow out the candles. It was quite an effort, even for me! Thanks to Lizzie for taking such beautiful pictures of us – there are never enough photos of Mums and Bubs together – Mums are always behind the camera!

Tonight’s task: top these rainbow cupcakes with icing and sprinkles for the final Birthday extravaganza, at daycare! Let’s hope 17 cupcakes is enough… as I’m all baked out. We made a chocolate cake for Miss G’s birthday this evening too, that’s tonight’s dessert (as if I hadn’t eaten enough cake and ‘faulty’ M&Ms today already).

**If anyone is interested, I took some photos during the construction of the big cake, so will attempt my first tutorial on the weekend.

Many happy returns!

Northern Adventures

Today I was super efficient in the morning, so at lunchtime decided to embark on an adventure to The Northside (fellow Brisbanites will recognise the significance of this trip, since I live on The Southside. Never the twain shall meet.)

My primary mission was to stakeout the shopfront for Funky Fabrix at Mitchelton, whose online store funkyfabrix.com.au I have been eyeing off for sometime. After navigating my way via all the main roads, i was surprised by how quickly I made it to Mitchelton. The shop is set at the back of a horseshoe shaped row of stores, and I have to say I would have walked straight past it had I not spied a fairly plain sandwich board amongst several others placed on the footpath.

Once inside, I was again surprised by the small scale of the shop. It must be the spotlight / Lincraft shopper in me – I always expect massive, cavernous shops piled high with fabric. And while Funk Fabrix was most definitely piled high with fabric, they were stacked neatly by designer in white ‘bookcase’ style shelving.  I’m glad I didn’t take Little C with me as there’s not a lot of room between shelving, and she would have wrecked/knocked over something within minutes. I did see a little basket filled with toddler toys hiding under on rack, so clearly the owners have encountered this issue before!

I had intentions of buying an Anna Maria Horner bag pattern (the sidewalk satchel) to use up my laminated Marimekko fabric, found in the remnant ‘bin’ at I Just Love That Fabric. However the prices inside the actual Funk Fabrix store seem to be higher than their website (which, of course makes business sense given the overheads etc) but gave me a bit of a fright. It may also be that the website prices are listed by the half metre/half yard, and the pricing on the fabric rolls in store is listed by metrage. Regardless, my $25 would have been blown in an instant, so instead I picked through the (very small) remnant bin – my favourite place in any fabric store, online or real life – and picked myself up some pretty designer scraps. I think one may be Amy Butler or Anna Maria Horner, and the other looks possibly Michael Miller? Will have to cross-reference later.

So the Sidewalk Satchel will have to wait for another day – Funky Fabrix are the cheapest online listing I have found for this pattern anyway, so might be sneaky and wait for another free shipping sale they announce on their facebook page an order it then.

I scored some bargains at the OpShop across the road too – Seed designer pants for Lil C, pajama pants and a wool skirt for me, plus a cute remnant of white fabric with a raised gold pin-spot pattern.

I got majorly lost traversing my way from Mitchelton to Everton Park (really – just the next suburb over and I think I made 4 wrong turns…) and had an absolute SPREE in the Spotlight remnant bin. It must have been my lucky day. Why would I buy a fat quarter for $3, when I can get remnant fabric at $2/metre. I picked up three different coloured spot prints, two groovy stripes, a really loud orange/pink geometric pattern that will look fabulous as a Fat Quarter Mini-Pinny plus some beautiful rose print stretch cotton that is just the right size to trim a little gathered skirt for Lil C.

I had a birthday voucher from spotlight, so the end price just kept getting better – I ended up with 8 different fabrics suitable for baby or toddler projects, plus a light bulb for my scrappy sewing machine (please Santa, bring me a new one for Christmas) and some overlocker thread for less than $20. Hooray for me!!!

Tomorrow’s project – sort, stack and re-arrange the sewing room to get myself back into the Bloombub groove. And stop swamping the ironing board and study desk with pins and fabric scrap.

Brag post – Look what I did!

Etsy shop also LIVE!

Step 1B – Bloombub is now also available on Etsy. Same deal as Madeit – Garden Party dresses for now, will add swing tops, singlets and bloomers in coming days. Spread the word, and please ‘Heart’ my shop!

madeit.com.au shop is LIVE!

Step 1a in the Bloombub adventure is underway… I’ve listed the Garden Party dresses on madeit.com.au as a test run. All the dresses will be made to order at this stage. I will have some swing tops finished over the weekend too, which I will list individually. Tell your friends!