dear friendships

I feel so privileged to have so many lovely friends all over the world (leaving Stockholm wasn't easy for me). a very dear friend in Stockholm has a lovely collection of hearts hanging on a branch when you enter her house. when i visit her I always have to stop to look at them. All hearts have a lovely little story. Then I realized she didn't have one of me. so about time to make her one ;-)

prima ballerina

a little bag for a little girl. I made this bag as a swap for family pictures taken by a friend who is a photographer. she did a lovely job! one more bag to make for her. luckily she is still working on the pictures so that gives me some time ;-))

birthday party

jilles was invited to a birthday party of one of the girls in his class. because it is not so often he get's invited by a girl I used this occasion to make her a small zipper bag. I added some nice crafting goodies....I made two bags at once and realized it is not that much extra work ;-))

from mexico with love

my dear friend Ayde gave me this beautiful piece of art from mexico to make a bag for her. the bag turned out as colorful as she is ;-) loved making this one.

lavender bag

another bag, with the request to make a nice big summer bag to take to the beach as well. I gave this one a steady leather base.

oslo

it's been a long time, but I have been quite busy. we moved to oslo. and it all went very fast. we live in oslo now for a few weeks and are slowly adjusting to life in a different country, even thought it is not so far from stockholm it is still very different and we have to find out a lot of things. just before we were leaving a lot of friends asked me to make something. which I love to do, and I even managed to do, but also publish it on the web was a step to far, with most of the things I was happy if I at least remembered to make a picture. I will show you some of the things I made in our last days in stockholm.
this bag I made for a mum of a dear friend. she picked the embroidery and together we put together the design. I combined it with leather.

flowers

it always takes a while before spring reaches stockholm. it is still cold and no sign of leaves on the trees, but we have a lot of bleu sky, sunny days. so that makes me happy and longing more for spring.
I finally got inspiration for a large and beautiful embroidery I had in my collection. for sale as a set in my shop (and if you are interested, but living in holland, I could bring them, because we have a trip planned soon, just let me know)

penguin

I had a small sample of POM scarf fabric and this pattern from Purlbee just fitted. this little fellow is on his way to Bejing to meet his new friend Emmelijn. It is a fun pattern to make and not difficult.

rebecca

lots of new babies lately. I always try to make something as a gift... but unfortunately don't always find the time. I made this doll for a friend who really appreciates handcrafts. i found the tutorial via vlijtig. it is a martha stewart tutorial...you can find her here...

valentine

another great tutorial I found via vlijtig. We are having a small valentine dinner at our house, think I will use them as table setting cards, with some chocolates on it. happy valentine!

cardholders

made these cardholders using suede and leather. I started with this tutorial, but ended up using only the big shape and fold it with an attached cord. it keeps the cards better at place.

swedish fabric

I had a small leftover of this swedish fabric and found this lovely tutorial at vlijtig. I gave them to a friend where we had dinner. she was very happy with the potholders, because hers were missing after the move ;-)
thanks kristel for the great tutorial.

welcome

a little lady is born, anna-may. love that name. maybe that is what inspired me to embroider it on the owl. I thought it was hard to embroider the name, but wasn't so difficult after all.

tiger mum

I had this embroidery with a tiger mum and her cubs for a while and it was waiting to become a bag.. I just didn't figure out how to make it. Then this beautiful piece of suede came by and a bag was born. I updated my shop and you can find it here!

colorful and creative

.....this is the theme for a wedding we are invited for this weekend....oke...what to do/wear? since I love wearing black. a specially the little black dress has taken over my closet. I made this brooch, from a lovely japanese book about felt. I took me a while to figure out some of the stitches...but I pulled it off.

belated birthday fun

We still didn't find a chance to celebrate jilles his birthday with his friends. he wanted to invite his whole class including the girls. we were a little hesitating but because he only has a class of 12 we decided to go for it. 11 children came and we had big fun. doing games, dancing, making fun pictures and we were so lucky because last saturday the snow finally came....so lots of outdoor fun. we feel so privileged to life in this beautiful country. jilles was still smiling when he fell a sleep that night.

more dimension

a good friend is always motivating me to experiment more. I love her for that and of course for being a fabulous friend. she loved this embroidery and she loved the rough edges of it. how to make them visible?? that was the challenge. I think this gives the cushion some nice extra dimension. I gave this one as a gift and luckily she loved it!

class mum

as a class mum (of two classes) teacher's appreciation gift are a challenge, because I like to involve all children in the making of it. with stije's class we made a christmas bunting, with flags the children decorated. it is fun to do and easy to make (with a laminator and sewingmachine). with jilles his class we made a christmas cd for the teachers with all the favorite christmas songs of the children. a big hit and so lovely to see all nationalities united in the songs.

Oh deer!

oh dear.... i haven't been posting much...first of all happy new year!
Lots has been going on here. I organized a christmas market at school, where I sold this deer bag and lots more. organized the sinterklaas feest at the dutch school...my! that's is nerve racking....so many children depending on you to deliver a good sinterklaas and zwarte pieten (and I can assure you this is much more complicated when you live abroad). but we pulled it off again. and it was a big hit and lots of fun!

this one is for me

inspiration comes from funny places. the inspiration for this cushion came from a text my husband send me. Luckily I had the time to make it right away. I always make things for other people, but this one is mine!

newborn

welcome sweet little olivia!

swedish horses

a swedish horse shopper for a good friend's birthday ;-))

babygirl

my husband asked me to make something for a colleague who is expecting a baby girl. I used a pattern from cool baby. a book with very nice recycle craft projects.

love birds

for a friend in sweden who just got married in the netherlands. a swedish embroidery I found in myrorna, one of my most favorite thrift stores in sweden.

beautiful corfu

after the book presentation we had a crazy schedule. before we could enjoy a holiday on corfu we moved within sweden and we had some more visitors. more work then you expect, but we love our new house!
for me this was a first visit to greece. what a pleasant surprise, want to see more of greece!

bookpresentation

finally the day was there, kristel and I had our bookpresentation. so excited and so much fun! a little unrealistic to see your own book in every bookstore.

birds

my sister found this lovely embroidery in belgium. a friend saw it and fell in love with it. In between the preparing for the moving and the bookpresentation I made her this small shoulder bag in exchange for some closets (which we really need, because our new house doesn't have any build in closets...) good swap, right?

het stoere zelfmaakboek voor jongens (en meiden)

yes, so great I can finally share this with you! Kristel and I have written a book about crafting for boys. It is published by ploegsma and will be in stores end of june. we have been doing a lot of outdoor playing for the book. most of the times the boys loved it (of course ;-) but sometimes the posing and waiting for the right picture was no fun. thank you, my lovely boys, couldn't have done it without you! and thanks kristel for doing this together with me!

wood and felt

oke...much going on in my life right now. we just found out that we have to move (this summer!!) we will stay in sweden, but will have to find another house here....and since we already made plans for the summer it is quite a challenging thing! we will work it out, but I needed a small project to clear my mind. made this necklace for a friend's birthday. combined wooden beats with felt.

big one

a friend asked me to make a very big cushion. quite a challenge to find a cushion which would fit the size of the embroidery.....so i decide to make the cushion myself, by attaching two ikea head pillows (can tell you that was a messy job). so happy i know now this is a possibility!

fluteman

together with a Finnish friend I composed this bag. so nice to do the start up of a project together. for the first time I made a big bag with a leather back...she was very happy with the bag and so am I.

sevrige

life in sweden! we celebrated 1 may here

fabrics

yippeeee! fabrics from the states arrived...and no disappointments, bought them via this site

for juul

we will miss my niece's first communion (i don't know if this is the right translation from dutch). the disadvantage of living abroad is that we won't be able to be at every special family occasion. i made her a case for her new ipad mini. she bought it herself with money she saved and it's so nice that she and stije skype a lot now a days....and they have the best conversations!

my little artists

a week of easterholiday and my mum was visiting, but guess what I got sick, high fevers etc... so not much fun. by the end of the week when I felt a little bit better i decided to do a simple task. making pictures of all of the children's drawings. I always do this after a term is finished but I was running behind. so it was quite a lot of work....but when I loaded the pictures in the folders it looks so beautiful! happy I did it again.

auction

very exciting. I won my very first bidding at an auction. here in stockholm we have bukowskis market. you can visit the place and see all the stuff and then place your biddings on internet. i found this nice piece of art of stig lindberg, he mostly designed for gustavsberg. so happy with our new piece of art!

spring where are you?

let the spring begin!

together

together with madeline from POM-amsterdam  I organized a sale at our place. it was a lovely sale and very busy. when everybody was gone, we sat in the sun (with a big wintercoat!) and enjoyed some rest ;-)

thriftstores

in sweden the thrift stores are great! this time i was lucky to find a whole lot of dmc thread and a delft blue pottery, which matches my small collection of delft blue potteries perfect. and some wooden beads always useful.

with the dmc thread I tried to make some friendship bracelets with this tutorial at honestly wtf. jilles wanted the colors of the dutch flag and orange...happy he still feels so connected to our home country.

moose from sweden

this thursday i will have a sale at my place together with a friend, she sells beautiful shawls from POM amsterdam. very excited about it. so i needed to make some more stock and examples. most of my embroideries come from france, but every now and then i find one in sweden. this moose was a lucky find!