Wink Designs

Saturday afternoon, garden games....

Here are the girls enjoying a sunny Saturday afternoon in the garden, skipping and having egg & spoon races.  It seems the hot weather has arrived just when the holidays are at a close....

Miss Wink is insisting on dresses only at the moment and, if possible, in her preferred colour of pink.  So I'm going through the stash to see what's lurking in there that fits the brief.  Not a lot, I'm afraid.  This Heather Bailey print got the thumbs up, though.

Cee Cee is wearing a ruffle skirt made to this pattern.  I hemmed the ruffles instead of leaving the edges raw as I think it suits the fabric better.

And if the dress is not enough, you can always finish off the outfit with some hot pink sandals....

"Mini quilt" cards with washi tape

A bit of holiday fun: give the kids some washi tape and a pair of safety scissors and ask them to make a little "quilt" on a piece of card.

Mount each one on some matching folded card and you have some super cute gift tags.

Cap sleeved dress

A little design that's on the back burner is this cap sleeved top/dress.  The pattern needs a bit of tweaking but this one in a lovely dot print by Brandon Mably (partner of Kaffe Fassett) is cute enough to get a showing:

Of course, there's nothing like a spot of twirling on a sunny summer afternoon.

                 

Cross stitch bookmark and summer reading

I made this bookmark for Cee Cee (who is a big mouse fan) using an adorable iron-on cross-stitch patch made by Katia of Plushka which I've had tucked away for a little while. (As you can see Katia has made some gorgeous bookmarks herself - hence the inspiration!)

 

  

I think 7 is a hard age to find good books for if you've outgrown baby books but aren't quite into Harry Potter yet. (I'd be keen to know if you have similar aged kids and have any recommendations about books they love?)

Anyway, here are some of our summer reading picks:

Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot by Anna Branford (a gorgeous book which I loved reading with her).

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl (anything by Roald Dahl is good at the moment).

Meet Letty by Alison Lloyd (part of the wonderful "Our Australian Girl" historical series aimed at the under-12s).

Utterly Me (Clarice Bean) by Lauren Child (utterly fab!)

Chatterboxes

A bit of summer holiday fun: chatterboxes. How to make link here.

Checking in....

To say Happy 2012 (with the help of "Photo Booth").  Three, Two, One!:

It's hard juggling two squirming girls on your lap in front of the computer, but here you have it with some extra pics for fun:

 

Merry Christmas

Signing out until the New Year.

Hope you and yours have a happy festive season.

See you soon.

Christmas circles

Have been inspired by lots of embroidery hoop art I've seen around and decided to make a little Christmas scene of my own with some felt, vintage trim and little house buttons.

The Little Bits Quilting Bee book is an early Chrissie gift to myself.  I love the circles quilt featured on the cover.  It has a 2 star (easy-ish) rating so maybe even the quilt-challenged amongst us could tackle it?!

Christmassy....

This post pertains to nothing in particular, other than the fact that a Telstra technician has finished digging outside our house and assures us that our dodgy cable internet connection is now OK.  

So I'm having a go at flickering and blogging to check if, indeed, this is the case.  So far, so good....

Anyway, this is a little mock-up pattern cover I put together with some clip-art elements as practice for my InDesign course.  It looks a little Christmassy, I think:

Ah, yet more rain in Sydney.  What is it with this weather?  Hope you are having a happy Monday wherever you may be.

Yellow tutu

A certain little girl has borrowed her big sister's end-of-year ballet concert tutu (a serious tutu of the sticking-up variety) and is wearing it here.  She looks like a little angel that's fallen off the tree.

I was having a bit of fun with my Photoshop filters again: this one has the "fresco" filter applied.  

It looks a little bit like that app (forget the name) that makes everything black and white except for one colour splash....

Last day of school today and a serious amount of Christmas shopping was done!