Personalised ceramic heart necklace

A little while back I made these golden heart necklaces for some young friends. This time I made one for me.

As you may know by now, I have an illness which requires me to personalise everything. At least once.

I painted some more of my little ceramic hearts and this time, added a tiny letter to the back of each – one for each of my beloveds.

After the paint and ink dried, I sprayed each heart with a protective gloss coat (I like this because it’s low odour and non-toxic once dry).

I put a jump ring through each and then strung them on a long chain and I’m really happy with the way the hearts fall back into this lovely line with gold on top each time they move around.

Plus, this way you can keep adding hearts as new beloveds appear.

I love the idea of having my three most precious ones on hearts and close to my heart. And in keeping with my slightly superstitious nature (I rail against it but, really, what’s the harm?) I now refuse to travel without this necklace around my neck.

And my lucky edible undies on.

I’m thinking of making some of these for my girls for Christmas but with their whole names stamped on the back; a different colour for each heart. Surely there will come a time in the future where they look at me with a pleading “for-the-love-of-Gaga-no-more-personalised-crap” look in their eyes. But that day has not yet come my friends. And so, in the meantime, I shall personalise it all on up.

PS: If you’ve a mind to try this, I bought my ceramic hearts from this Etsy shop – I recommend it – the owner is lovely and helpful.

Ceramic heart necklaces

I’m on such a gold kick at the moment.

I made these for the daughters of a very dear friend of mine. I stayed with her recently and was delighted to reconnect with her little babes who I’ve known since birth but are not so little now at 10 and 13.

I wanted to make them something but worried about the reaction of a tween and a teen to “handmade” stuff.

I needn’t have worried. Their mother trained them well in the gentle art of gracious gift acceptance. As a result I will never know if they really liked these or not – but they certainly made all the right noises.

And of course I never miss an opportunity for personalisation.

I KNOW! I can’t believe she called her kids Salt ‘n’Pepa either.

I made a rather more restrained one for my eldest gal.  She’s still far too little for anything golden anything except sunshine.

But she needs to be able to turn it over and be sure it’s hers, yes?

How fabric serviettes will convert waves of chaos to nightly fine dining.

I have this vision of gorgeous family dinners where my handsome husband and I sit down with the girls and we all eat nutritious, home-cooked food, laugh, chat and dab at our mouth with real fabric serviettes.Or napkins if you prefer. No judgment here. From me, at any rate. I can’t vouch for what my mother will think of you.

The reality is that the girls are fractious and hungry by 5.30, I’m not hungry and the handsome husband isn’t home. So most nights, there’s nary a fabric serviette in sight. And more frozen fish fillets than I care to admit to.

But I am forging ahead anyway on the basis that if I build it, they will come. Eventually.

So I made these little napkins (using my very own free motion sewing technique*) for the girls and while they’ve enjoyed using them for their early dinners, one day I hope we will all be sitting down together and they might be using these napkins to wipe not only their food but also their tears – tears of laughter – from their eyes. Because the sooner they realise how hilaaaaaahhhhhrious their mother is the better.

* WARNING: This is cowboy sewing at its most extreme. Not only did this linen fabric from IKEA come ready hemmed on one side, but to “write” the girls’ names, * I removed the presser foot, dropped the feed dogs and just whirled that fabric around like it was my bitc… bit of good fabric. You WILL sew through your finger if you attempt to do this after a glass or two of red wine when you’re not concentrating.

twirling betty cake bunting and banners

I recently re-photographed my cake bunting and photographed my new decorations: cake banners.

By the time made all the banners and bunting, iced the cakes, came up with decorations to dress aforesaid cakes up and sorted out a professional lighting set-up ie, sticky taped my lights to the backs of chairs so they were at the right height, it took me a full weekend but I’m happy with the results.

My handsome husband took the girls off to his mum’s for the full 48 hours (I’m in love, still) so I didn’t have them crawling into my light tent and just generally doing other helpful things like that.

I was grateful as I do tend to feel product shots are more effective without little kids’ sticky hands reaching for the cake in the background. Just my personal opinion, though.

Can I just say, learning how to set a custom white balance and availing myself of appropriate ISO settings have changed my photographic life.

If you’ve got something to celebrate, cake bunting and cake banners are available now in my Etsy and Made it shops.

What do you think my friends? Do you like the banners or will you vomit if you see one more thing atop a cake other than icing?

PS: I only sell the non-stamped bunting (the one on the pavlovas) in Australia. If readers in other countries would like plain bunting like that, please do visit the lovely Dawn’s Etsy shop: Kiki La Ru.

Longer-term readers might recall the great cake bunting scandal of 2010 (that’s what it’s referred to as in official documents at least) when twirling betty and Kiki La Ru clashed wooden skewers over who originated cake bunting. If you want the full details you can read them here (not one of my finest moments), but long story short, we both came up with the idea independently around about the same time. And now in the happiest of happy endings, we are taking on the cake bunting world as a united force! Well, that might be putting it a touch strongly, but we do refer business to each other and out of respect for Dawn I don’t sell plain bunting in my Etsy shop and she doesn’t do personalised bunting in hers.

Dawn lives near a picturesque Austrian forest and has a lovely blog too. And after a hard road (I’m not telling you anything that isn’t on her blog) she’s pregnant again and that makes me very, very happy.

Ahhh, cake bunting: bringing people around the world together one little string of flaglets at a time.