Etsy Mini Meetup

On Saturday I caught up with Franziska from Lyptis and Anna from muchlove . It was great! So much fun to meet some other crafty people and talk Etsy all afternoon! Both girls are lovely and very talented artists. Franziska makes beautiful dresses that are stunning in their simplicity, great everyday wear with a special touch!

Anna makes such pretty and cute jewellery, her pieces are so playful and sweet. Satisfy your inner girl with beautiful, sweet images and nice colours!

I had a great time with you girls, hope to see you again soon!

Being inspired by...

Roses and Frangipanis..

I love roses, they are my most favourite flowers ever. Recently I have also discovered frangipanis and have fallen in love with them. On my personal ranking scale they come straight after roses :-)

This huge print hangs on our bedroom wall, I love the look of it! It's one of the first things I see in the morning and it always makes me smile. I'm afraid the photo I took of the print is not that great, I hope you get the idea :-)

My wedding bouquet was made just of cream coloured roses, it looked great together with my dress! I made the bouquet by myself, it turned out really nicely. Just the safety pin I had to use to fix the florist tape gave it a slight cutting edge look :-) luckily it wasn't really visible..

I found some fantastic rose prints on Etsy, check these out:

This gorgeous print is from gardentreasuresphoto I love the bright pink colour of the rose

This is a greeting card from LandscapesWithin . I'm always amazed by the beautiful and intricate shapes of roses..

This beautiful, subtle print is from SusannahTucker, a fellow Melbourne Etsian

There is my other love, frangpanis. I recently bought myself a little frangipani (a Donald Angus frangipani) on ebay, hehe:-)

Well, it doesn't look too exciting at the moment.. Here it is, currently next to out front door. (And you can also get a glimps of our sad and dead lawn..)

But one day it will hopefully look like this (the frangipani, I mean. Don't know about lawn..)

photo by frangipaniworld.com.au

or this

photo by tropicamente.it

I found two wonderful prints on Etsy

This one is from Kirsty2715

And this one from creativedesignz

Hope you got all inspired too by some of these photos! Have a great weekend!!

Etsy Finds

Luke got me this beautiful print from Tummymountain for Valentines Day. I have been eyeing these gorgeous little drawings for quite a while, and now where I finally got one I think I need more of them ;-)

"There's room for one more"

I love the happiness and simplicity the drawings have about them. It's like images of a daydream, of happy places, far away and yet so close.. This picture will go into my new creative corner, sure to help me daydreaming of new, exciting and creative adventures!

I have also stumbled across BlueLadore , an Etsy seller who has the most wonderful Vintage supplies. They are treasures from an almost forgotten past, full of stories and inspiration. I got two of the little fairies and leaves and some tiny golden keys. Aren't they gorgeous?

I wonder where these little keys would lead me to..maybe they fit into an old, gnarling trunk hidden away in a dusty attic... and once opened release some wonderful stories..

handmade help

Some lovely, crafty Melbourne Ladies have started handmadehelpsout.blogspot.com. They post all Etsy and Ebay listings that are set up for the bushfire appeal, and lots of other great information how to help out. I have just put the tea cup above up on Etsy for the bushfire appeal. Find the listing here
It is amazing to see so much compassion and help everywhere. It seems like everyone in Melbourne and the rest of Australia is doing something to help these people that have lost everything. It always amazes me to see how such catastrophes can bring out the best in people And it is good to knwo that we all can do a little bit to help out.

Being inspired by...

a blank space.. Well, you probably wonder why I have posted these not overly pretty photos of a messy room up here: This is going to be my creative little corner of the house! It is part of our second bedroom, half a room basically. So far we have mainly used it for storage (as you have probaby noticed).

I'm very excited about turning it into my own little space, and I have already started! A few days ago we have cleaned everything out and went to IKEA where I have bought myself a rug.

I'm going purely by what feels nice for this space, not thinking of what I might like longterm or what would look particularly good together, I just let it happen. It's interesting, definitely very creative!

This is my new rug, I love the happy, simple pattern on it!

I have bought this fabric, also from IKEA . I'm going to tun it into a curtain to separate my corner from the rest of the room. It is another happy, simple, cute pattern.



Recently I have found these beautiful cups at the Camberwell market. I bought them to turn them into candles but I cannot make myself to give them away. They look soo pretty with their pastel colours! Obviously they will go into my creative corner ;-)

Bushfires

photo by ABC news

photo by dpa

On Saturday I went to the Sisters market in Brunswick together with Katrina from Belsizesquare . She had a stall there selling some of her handmade goodies and lots of cool stuff from her Online Patchwork store and I used the chance to try and sell some of my tea cup candles. I will add a photo of our stall as soon as I get hold of one.

I really liked the market, there were lots of high-quality handmade goods from very talented atists. The fact that we didn't sell much was due to the weather that kept everyone inside.

We have had some days of terrible weather lately, but Saturday was the peak of it all with temperatures up to 47 degrees!! When Katrina and I left the market it was like we were being cooked alive. The aircon inside Brunswick town hall had already given up and the market closed down early but the weather outside was unbelieveable!

I haven't come across anything like it. It wasn't just this unbelieveable heat, a hot and very strong wind was blowing hard through the empty streets and there was dirt everywhere in the air. But the most horrible thing was the colour of the sky, it was like there was no colour left. Everything had turned grey. There were very few clouds and the sky was just..grey. It's hard to describe. It had a real apocalyptic feeling about it, very scary! I found this photo on flickr to give just a little idea

Only later I realised that it must have been smoke from the bushfires that covered up the sky.

Victoria has been hit by the worst bushfires in history. The extreme heat this summer allowed the fires to spread out quickly and burn out of control. And Saturdays heat and wind were just too much. Within hours, the fire had reached a range of remote communities, people had no chance to get away. Whole towns have been wiped of the map and many many people have died..

It is horrific to hear the news, the stories of people that have escaped but lost everything they had, that have lost family and friends. .

I have made a donation to the Salvation Army bushfire appeal this morning, there is also the Red Cross appeal which has been set up in associatin with the Federal Government. If you can donate, even a little bit, please please do so!