This is genius!

A friend sent me some photos by Adele Enersen... How cute and cool!

Aren't mums the best?

My creative space

little bits and pieces, mostly work in progress.
More book making:

Kids' pants made with upcycled men's pants waist:

Making dinosaurs out of toilet rolls for the dinophile of the house:

Head over to Kootoyoo for more creative spaces!

The urban hunter gatherer

A friend told me about this fig tree in Gisborne that has fruit rotting on the ground because no one picks them. I felt the obligation to remedy to this (plus I looove fig jam, even more when it's close to free and homemade)so a friend and I spent half an hour picking them, came home with over 3kg of them and made some yummy jam! The recipe I used is here. There was still lots of fruit left (forgot to take the ladder), so if I have time I'm going to go for seconds.

Another friend pointed me to an apricot tree in the same situation, so it is on my list for this week too.
Feijoas are just coming into season too, more trees to visit! They are one of my favorite fruit, can't wait to bite into my first one of the year!
For the past two years we've also been picking olives on trees around town and pickling them, so hopefully  we'll get to do it this year too (we're running out!), and I would also love to pick some for turing into oil.
Who said everything has to come from the supermarket? It's an interesting way to get to know our town, and I love knowing that I am living off fruit that would otherwise go to waste and is free.

Josh has also been hunting a couple times with some friends, and brought back a wild hare (pictured is the dinner we got out of it!) and a deer! luckily we bought a chest freezer a few months ago. On his other hunting trip him and his friend brought back a wild pig and a goat. we decided to try and cure the pig leg, and our tiny little fridge has got even tinier with the leg taking up half the space!

Book binding part 2

I've made more book, this time following another technique called "coptic binding". I'd wanted to know how to do it for a while, and was surprised at how easy it is! I made a few mistakes here and there but can't really see it, and it's going into my stash of emergency presents.

After making it I stumbled upon this post on Mayamade, so clever! And easy too. I set to making some for myself straight away. I have a stash of opened envelopes I keep for making notes, but they often get misplaced or lost, so sewing them into a little notebook is genius! And since I also keep a variety of cards that get sent to us, I used them for the covers.

Little recycled notebooks from MayaMade

mini art journal challenge: weeks 49

This week's challenge: "time flies!". At a super sonic pace at the moment I might add. Miro is already 6 weeks old, I can't believe it's gone so fast! I always thought it sucked a bit to be growing old but now that I've got kids I'm actually looking forward to it and watching them grow, and hopefully watch my grand kids too! (am I getting a bit ahead of myself here?). The koru (the unfurling frond of a fern) represents that idea of life cycle so well... I also added some numbers which represent my age at significant stages of my life (I'm not sure the last sentence is entirely clear!).

15mn pterodactyl wings (or any other flying animal)

What do you do when you have less than half an hour to make things with your oldest son (who is obsessed with dinosaurs)?
Wings to make him fly!

First grab some cardboard and draw the outline of each wing with your model lying flat on the ground. The base of the wing should be where the shoulder blade is. Cut it out, then use it to cut the second wing out.

Use some scrap fabric (I used an upcyced tee shirt) and cut two strips for where the hands are going to be holding onto the wing.

Then cut off two larger strips and sew where the shoulders are going to hold the wings.

Lastly, cut a strip of fabric that is about the width of the shoulders and sew it along the inside of each wing.

This is what the finished wings should look like. Ready for take off!

my creative space

Not a huge amount of exciting stuff, but I finally got round to making a couple of pillow cases for our triangular pillows, the original ones were looking ready for a holiday (in the washing machine). I used whatever I had lying around in the workshop... can you tell?

Find the baby hidden in this picture!

I also made some little booklets inspired by that book making book I got from the library, they look great and took 20 minutes to make, I think these ones are called pamphlet books. I love easy projects! It's about the only things I can do at the moment ;0)

Head over to Kootoyoo for more creative spaces.