Shopping list board, in 5 minutes

A few days ago I saw a shopping list board made out of an old picture frame and fabric on Pinterest and I had to have it! So voilà... 5 minutes later I had it done...

What will you need?

• And old picture frame, you can also buy a new one as well... make sure the glass is ok (it is the only important part of the deal, that is has the glass!
• A piece of fabric big enough to cover the frame... you could do a patchwork as well, but then it won't take 5 minutes... so forget that!
• Nail and hammer (or any other method of hanging a picture frame in the wall);
• And a board marker...

There is basically one step here, just put the fabric inside the frame... you can stick it tight to the back wood panel of the frame or wrap it around a cardboard of the same size... hang it in the wall...and start writing what you need... 

I used some of the leftover fabrics from my balcony chair cushions (will be showing those very soon)... as the list is hanging next to the balcony door I thought it would look cool to have the matching effect!

Then before leaving to the supermarket just take a picture with your phone (or write down the list on a piece of paper) and you have a new, creative, customised board!

Artist Trading Card Swap

So a little while ago I joined the ATC swap organised by Ali @ Very Berry Handmade and now it is time to swap... look at some of the amazing creations that have been popping around our flickr group!

A lot of thinking went into this card, the theme was "Something New" so I wanted to try small stitches - sashiko like. But on a very modern take... plain dark fabric a lots of little doodles with the sashiko stitches. And although my stitches are not as small as I would have liked.... voilà, here's my ATC.



It is already on the post on the way to a very talented lady... surprise surprise...

So as I was about to post this my card arrived, and I thought I had to show you what I got, especially as I had put it in the mosaic above (I promise I did not cheat!!!!). Thank you Dianne for sending me this lovely card, I love it and will treasure it for ever!

WIP Wednesday

I am back! Off on holidays for one week and very little crafting lately, I am back and with lots of things in the pipeline... a little bit of news I am working on a new set of patterns for the shop. Sales in the Craftsy shop have been very good lately, so decided to focus on that and get some new things on offer for all of you... so a little sneak peak on what I am working on for the shop....



And another four on their way... all drawn waiting for me to get stitiching...



Lots of doodles, romantic hearts, and kids related... there's a little bit of everything coming to the shop very soon!

Linking up to WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced.

Fabric in canvass wall art: A 5 minute craft

I am not going to tell you all that I found this fabric especially for this project, or that I searched all over the Internet for it... I will tell the truth... I was out shopping with the puppy, and I have to be in a very especial frame of mind (which I wasn't) to make sure I smile lovely at all the people that stop to cuddle Feli... yes he is so handsome!

Anyway go into the fabric shop ready to indulge for 20 minutes before I had to run to the station to take my train... when the shop assistant saw the puppy, and went crazy for it! She was so sweet (we even went back later on the week to say hi again when she was working) but I spent my whole 20 minutes watching her play with Feli instead of fabric shopping...

So on my way out of the shop, I quickly stop by the clearance section, spot a fabric that has colours matching the ones in the spare bedroom and bought it... three weeks later I am looking at it thinking what to make of it... only to discover that it has postcards and stamps from so many places I have lived and travelled in... A stamp from a hotel and an antique shop in Buenos Aires, a postcard from Monaco, a tag from a Hyde Park hotel, and it felt especial.




So I made it into wall art, for it to be displayed in all its glory... and it took me 5 minutes.



So I had two 50cm x 40xm canvasses... I didn't even bother to take the fabric off them (who knows I may paint on them some time anyway)... I just cut the fabric to size, ironed and starched it very well and attached it to the canvasses with staples!

And voila, lovely wall art in 5 minutes!

Do you have any fabric you treasure and would love to just display it for the art it is? This is a great way of doing it... and if you are easy on the staples, you may be able to make it into a temporary art display and just show your latest purchases maybe? Oh the possibilities.

Picture wall art

For a little while I have been taking in our trips black and white pictures or pics that I will then convert to black and white... with the idea of making some wall art. And finally I decided our pictures were good enough to display them and up it went...

It was so much fun buying a huge assortment of frames, selecting the pictures, then deciding what goes were...getting some new prints in the right sizes... and then voilà... here was the new wall art...

I still have tons of pics but we are not sure if we want to grow it now... so for the time being it is staying as is... but I really do see it as a live project that will chance and grow with time... for example there are no pictures of Feli so that's a must and we need to work on some photo sessions for him.

But what do we have on display...

On this side we have a picture of an old post box in Vianden, a town near Luxembourg, where we live. There's also a picture from a museum in Syria from my husband's trips before we married, the London eye of  course from the time we lived in London, the river in Annecy in a rainy autumn afternoon and finally a picture of "Puente Transbordador", a bridge, in La Boca in Buenos Aires.

Then we have a picture of us, right before our wedding in 2011 (it is the only picture from the lot that we haven't actually taken ourselves). We had so much fun doing that quick and very relaxed photo shoot before our wedding, that those pictures are our favourite from the whole event... and below it, the famous heart-shaped ginger biscuits they sell all over Luxembourg and Germany around Christmas.

On the other side we have a picture with the Avignon bridge song... that was displayed in the tourist office in Avignon, of course... the back view from our old apartment... a statue in Paris, right next to Notre Dame de Paris, a modern sculpture in Antibes and a fountain in Munich, I just loved and found so funny...

We tried as much as we could not to take the obvious picture, to try to portrait different pictures from the places we have been and places we love...

Unfortunately we are not such great photographers so we find that we haven't got pictures from everywhere we've been, but again we would need a huge wall as we love travelling (so much that there's a competition going on with some of our friends and we count how many countries we've visited...). So we are very happy with our wall, it reminds us of where we've been and where we want to go... and of how lucky and blessed we are...