Craft Blog

Jess from How About Orange created this very chic cushion using painter’s tape to block of sections of her fabric and then painting over the gaps with fabric paint and then sewing the finished design into a simple envelope cushion.

I love the effect of the torn edges, my mind is already racing on what other projects I could use this technique in.

See the full tutorial here.

I’ve been playing around with printable fabric recently, and have followed with great anticipation Curlypop’s journey to create something beautiful from a piece of fabric that she accidentally printed her Medicare statment on to.

Cam over-printed a scan of one of her beautiful drawings to add more colour to the image, and sewed it up into a handy little pouch for those miscellaneous tissues and aspirin packets that lay around the bottom of every woman’s handbag.

I love the process of turning a mistake into an awesome fashion statement. Cam’s project has inspired me to stop throwing my mistakes into the plastic tub of doom, where projects go to die, and to reinvent them into something completely unexpected.

What do you guys do with accidents and projects gone wrong?

I always enjoy finding new uses for tshirts, so I LOVE this easy tutorial from SewLikeMyMom, with instructions on turning an oversized tshirt into a comfy skirt, just perfect for the summer that is fast approaching. This may even be the last boot up the bum I finally need to try my hand at shirring.

See the full tutorial here.

Hmm.. kind of anyway, these are less cracker and more puff, but they’re still delicious and make a very welcome treat in our home as we slowly remove the unnecessary additives from our diets.

This is the recipe I used, slightly adapted from Country Living.

You will need

• 1 cup plain flour
• 4 tbsp cold butter
• 2 cups grated tasty cheese
• Italian herbs (or dried herbs of your choice)
• 3-4 tbsp water
• And a food processor!

1. Process the flour, herbs and butter until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Add the cheese a bit at a time
3. Add the water, a little at a time, stop once the mixture forms a dough.
4. Wrap the dough up in cling wrap and place in the fridge until chilled. I made up a batch and split it into two halves, the first half I baked after 2 hours in the fridge, the second I didn’t bake until 2 days later and there was no discernible difference in the texture or flavour.
5. Once chilled, preheat your oven to 180 degrees C. Run your hands and rolling pin under cold water (cold hands = good pastry!), flour your surface and pin and roll the dough to just less than a cm thick.
6. Slice into triangles, squares, or whatever shape you fancy.
7. Grease a baking tray, place your shapes on it, making sure they don’t touch each other.
8. Spray a little oil over the top of them, for the grown ups I also sprinkle some salt and pepper over them at this stage, the kids don’t like pepper and they don’t need any more sodium than the cheese and butter already have!
9. Bake for 15 minutes or until they’ve gone crispy and golden brown.

They’re best eaten straight out of the oven, but can easily be “re-crispied” by five minutes on a low heat in the oven.

We’ve been putting them in brown paper bags for snacks for all of us while we watch movies, so far they’ve been a big hit, and it’s nice to know the kids aren’t getting a less than healthy dose of MSG that the store bought crackers contain *insert a grumble at Arnotts here*.

Variations (omit the Italian herbs)

• Add some sweet chili sauce in place of the water to make a spicier version, or some jalapenos in the initial processing.
• Add some bacon (cooked or raw, whatever is on hand), process it finely before adding the flour and butter.
• For a true Aussie snack, throw in a teaspoon of Vegemite into the dough.

Apologies for all the cooking themed posts recently, I’ve been on a bit of a mission to cut out store bought snacks and premade food to see if it helps my eldest son’s behaviour, I promise there should be some sewing soon!

Tiny little socks and underwear are the bane of my laundry life. They go out on the line, some how vanish, or if they do manage to come in they end up piled up in laundry, far away from their partner and never to be seen again. When I use the dryer is even worse, I think I’ve had socks being dried for months on end because they’re so small I don’t collect them with the rest of the clothes and eventually they give up and take a trip to wherever it is that socks go to die.

Recently I’ve been pulling the boys’ socks and undies out of the washing machine and spreading them over the little counter we have in the laundry room so they could dry out. It worked well, everything stayed together, nothing fell off the line or was consumed by a underwear hungry dryer.

It was super, other than the fact that my worktop was covered in miniature pants and socks.

Then the beadboard tutorial I posted the other day popped into my head. The Nester had used hot glue to attach the wood to her tiles. Ahah! I tested out a small blob on my laundry room tiles, let it cure over night, and then the following morning tried to get it off. The glue popped straight off without leaving the slightest mark.

Enter stage right some wooden clothes pins, and my worktop is once more a work top, not somewhere to dry socks on.

I added a blob of hot glue on the top and the bottom of the peg and just stuck it straight onto the tile. No more lost socks and when it’s time to move from this house there’s no worries about the security deposit.

I’m even planning on putting up some more pegs to hold notes from preschool and reminders – particularly pertinent considering today is a fancy dress day, and I completely forgot until I arrived to see Declan’s teacher in a Snow White outfit, fortunately a hard hat and a tool belt was quickly found in the toy cupboard  so he wasn’t the odd one out

Jodie of Vintage Ric Rac posted this very useful tutorial on how she makes her circles so neat. All it takes is a little extra fabric, and it definitely saves all the hassle of needle turn.

This is also the same method I use to turn the inside of any appliqued letters, I love the neat edges it gives.

See the full tutorial here.

The label part that is… not the basket part, although ooo, basket weaving, that could be something else I could buy all the supplies for so they could sit in my craft room with the promise of “one day…”.

I love labels, our label maker is named Leroy and lives permanently on my fridge, ready for me to label anything with a moments notice.

Leory’s labels look like this:

Practical? yes! Cute? No.

Sarah’s labels look like this:

Practical? Yes! Cute? Totally.

See the full tutorial for Sarah’s labels here.

Sorry Leroy.

Today is my birthday, not that you’d know peeking in at my home, everybody is still asleep and I’m busy writing out meal plans and baking my own cake.

A birthday just isn’t a birthday without cake, and for my birthday, instead of the usual icing covered Disney themed cakes I normally churn out for the boys’ birthdays I thought something simple would be the way to go, and knew exactly what I wanted.

My Dad (baker and chef extraordinaire) makes the most amazing cakes for his restaurant, but no matter how many different varieties he has on, you can guarantee that the sponge will always be the first to sell out, I think people appreciate that it’s so classic.

So this is my twist on the traditional sponge, incorporating that classic Australian breakfast treat, passion fruit spread and with more than a lingering hint of vanilla going through the sponge and the buttercream.

For the cake

• 200g butter, softened (you can use marg, but I highly recommend butter!)
• 200g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1tsp baking powder
• 200g self raising flour
• 4tbs Passion fruit pulp

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Grease two 20cm cake tins – I like to just use spray oil.
3. Cream the butter, eggs, vanilla and caster sugar together in a mixing bowl – you can do this by hand or mixer.
4. Fold in the (sifted) flour and baking powder.
5. Add the passion fruit pulp – it’s up to your personal taste whether to include the seeds or not, I love them, my sons and husband do not, so they won out this time!
6. Split the mix between two 20cm cake tins. Chuck it on a middle shelf of your oven for 20-25 minutes or until it rises when tapped in the centre (just don’t tap too hard because you’ll end up with a finger shaped hole in your cake!)

If you replace the pulp with milk, that is your standard sponge mix, it can be played with to your hearts content, so long as the ratios stay the same. Remove 100g of flour and replace it with 100g of cocoa for a chocolate cake, add lemon juice instead of the milk and you have a lemon cake… it goes on. Also note the ratio of 1 egg – 50g, so if you want to increase the recipe, just remember that for every egg you add, you need an additional 50g of flour, butter and sugar. I actually tend to halve this recipe and make just one cake, which I cut in half vertically and then stack. So it’s just half a cake, but it means we’re not eating cake for an entire week

For The Filling

• 40g softened butter
• 100g icing sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Passion fruit spread

1. Cream the sugar, butter and vanilla
2. Spread over the bottom layer of your (cooled!) cake
3. Spread your passion fruit spread over the icing. We have this amazing passion fruit and lemon butter made by a lady called Jan who goes to bingo with my husband’s grandmother on Tuesdays, or something like that, if you can’t get your hands on Jan’s Jams (I seriously hope she’s trademarked that!), then you can either buy some at the store, I recomend “Three Threes Passionfruit Butter” – it has a kangaroo on the label, or you can make your own. The amount you use is purely a preference thing, I like it tangy, so used plenty, if you just want a hint, use less.
4. Nom and enjoy!

It’s birthday time again in a few more weeks… I wonder if i can persuade my two year old he wants a basic sponge instead of the Thomas cake he’s been requesting.

I am a renter. I think I’ll die a renter. A combination of ridiculous house prices and incurable indecision (a 30 year mortgage combined with my fickle nature would likely lead to a melt down of epic proportions) have kept us in the rental market… and that’s not even mentioning the whole city/country mouse my husband and I have going on, I often think that to keep both of us happy we’d have to buy two completely different homes, but that’s fine, he can have the kids, I can have the fabric… that’s fair right?

Went off track there.

Rentals!

Grotty kitchens.

Well maybe not grotty, our current rental is a nice new house and has a beautiful kitchen, but the first unit I lived in after first moving to Australia was built and decorated in the 70s, and was never updated… but it was a $180 2 bedroom rental in Sydney, and who’s going to say no to that right? The kitchen featured a family of roaches glorious mottled brown tiles, featuring vignettes of harvested vegetables, orange flowers and bales of wheat, they were cracked, there were some missing under the window and they were just generally gross.

Which is why I am completely awed by this idea from The Nester. She completely made over her rental kitchen, giving it a beautifully bright fresh feel with just some beadboard, best of all? It’s completely removable, when it’s time to pack up and move just pull it down, pick off the hot glue and enjoy getting your deposit returned!

I think we need another picture…

Love.

See the full tutorial here.

How do other renters deal with making someone elses house your home? I have learned to love wall decals and Command Poster Strips, we’ve also been very lucky in that our current place is about as neutral as it gets, so it’s easier to put my own stamp on it.

I recently discovered Frills In The Hills via Retromummy Corrie, and may have gone just a little crazy reading back on Liss’ recipe archives and picking out new things to try. My eldest son reacts strongly to colourings and certain preservatives, so it’s always exciting to find a blog detailing healthier living and treats for kids that don’t contain twenty different E-numbers.

My first try was Liss’ apricot slice, mainly because I had almost all of the ingredients on hand. They were VERY easy to make, about five minutes in the processor, and have gone down a treat with Declan, Connor isn’t so keen, but he doesn’t have the same sweet tooth as his big brother so I wouldn’t take his word as gospel. I think they’re delicious, about the only thing I would add would be just a couple of drops of vanilla extract to give it even more of a punch.

Next on my list are these Cheese and Bacon Rolls (much to the delight of my husband) and Caramelised Garlic bread (less enthusiasm from husband on this one, he doesn’t subscribe to my theory that there is no such thing as too much garlic).