MOVED

Sew Lovely Handmade has moved to a new home. Now you can find all graphic design, crafting and everyday ramblings at www.hellokirsten.net

See you soon!

New Dress Pattern!

I decided to try my hand at a sweet little reversible criss-cross dress for the Christmas craft fair this year. I found the pattern at a lovely shop on etsy called wink designs and am so happy to report that it made perfect sense, the pieces were drawn out accurately (have had some issues with pdf patterns in the past) and was so much fun to make. I appliqued some cut flowers to the front and left the edges raw to fray naturally for a soft look. The front main fabric is a linen cotton blend, and the inside is from the Heather Bailey Pop Garden collection. I'm really happy with the outcome.

I'm hoping to have eight of these dresses completed by the end of the month but we'll see. If I get half that amount, I'll be happy. So far, I've completed a dozen sock monkeys, made about two dozen pairs of earrings (they are so lovely) and am in the process of creating a pattern for the 'Bowen Bear'. I'm hoping to spend the upcoming week cutting and preparing so I can just dive in and start sewing by next weekend (oh please, please, please let this be the case).

Bowen Bear - The Stuffed Version.

It turns out my good friend, Karen, is also doing an illustration of the Bowen Bear and seeing as our tables are right beside each other, I decided to forfeit my design for a card. Instead, I'm going to shrink them down and use them as labels for these cute little stuffed critters:

Still working out the details, but thought this little bear would make the CUTEST Bowen mascot. Now, I just need to actually make them...

Bowen Bear

Every year, I design a christmas card for my family and send out to all our friends, family and colleagues. I have had a few requests from friends, to sell some of my card illustrations this year at the local craft fair. I wanted to come up with a 'Bowen 2010 Theme' and that's when I decided on the following:

This year was very exciting for Bowen Islanders as we had not one but TWO bears show up on our island. They were able to trap and re-locate one of our bears but the other one still remains roaming our isle. I thought it would be fun to do a series of the 'Bowen Bear'. Here's one idea - I may take the text off the front and put inside...or I may keep as a postcard...or both. Who knows...

Monkey Business

I'm probably totally crazy for deciding to take this on, but, who knows when I'll have the chance to participate again in a craft fair. The christmas craft fair on Bowen is HUGE! It's a one day event with about a 100 vendors (just a guess). Last year, my table was not in the best location so this year, I made sure to have prime real estate. Last year, a lot of people recognized me from previous summer markets, when I would make and sell sock monkeys (I'm officially known as the sock monkey lady over here - could be worse), and were disappointed that I had dropped off the monkey making wagon. So, seeing as my time is tight with other deadlines, I have decided to focus on monkey making once again, and have a pretty good start on the assembly line. If time permits, I may try to add some pinafore dresses, journals and christmas cards.

Progress:

Pretty Little Invites

Very good friends of ours just had their dreams come true...a baby came to join their family four weeks ago. They are enjoying the roller coaster of new parenthood and to help celebrate this beautiful addition, a couple friends and I are throwing a little Jack and Jill baby shower this weekend. I wanted to make some invitations and decided to use some supplies that I already had at home. I am very happy with the outcome.

I was inspired by all the pretty bunting flag patterns I've seen recently, and decided to use that simple repetitive shape in pretty, girly colours. To jazz up the back of the invite and to add some more thickness to the cardstock, I spray glued the invitations to two different scrapbook papers. Cut them out, then used my round corner punch to finish them off. The envelopes were looking a little blah, so I printed up some labels, glued them to the fronts and added a little butterfly accent with some of my scraps left from the card backs. Voila - pretty little invites for a pretty little girl.

All Work and No Play...

Working . working . working....that seems to be my life right now! I have three exciting graphic design projects on my plate at the moment - one HUGE one, one medium one and one super duper fun one that I'm really excited to start. It's great to be using these skills again, but I really, really miss my crafting.

Which brings me to another little project I've had on the back burner for awhile now and would like to get up and going before Version 2.0 makes an appearance in March. It's a little project that encompasses my love of crafting, snail mail, children, moms, crafty folk and pretty packages. That's all I'll say for now, but I will leave you with this...

I've been creating some lovely graphics for the site, newsletter, packaging etc...what do you think so far?