Cleaning and packing

Tomorrow we are of to France to have a lovely family holiday and I'm looking forward spending quality time with my family. I'm busy packing but also cleaning and getting the house ready for our Holiday swap. We will stay in a house of a french family and they will stay in our house, for us this is a great way to go on holiday and meet the locals, this is the 5th time we are swapping our home for the holiday. The only downside is that you have to clean and tydy your house before leaving but then again it's always good to have a reason to do house shores you should have been doing a long time ago. If you want more info we change house with Intervac but there are many more organisations.
***
So this will be my last post for at least two week, hope you have a great summer. The shop is closed untill the 10th.
***
by the way the pretty artwork I got from a swap with Guusje, I finally framed it!

Miss prints and holiday break

I do all the screenprinting still all by myself and of course sometimes there are some miss prints and little flaws that make the set not suitible for selling, at least at the normal price. Normally I make the mix and match sets with these but now I have some sets that are almost perfect and so I decided to sell them as a normal set ( with paris skirt and bag) but with a reduced price. There are only a few sets availible so be quick if you want to catch one. You can find them here .

The shop will be open untill thursday evening and then the shop will be closed for about 2 or 3 weeks, after the holiday break there will be a few changes in the shop regarding prices and shipping rates.

Travel pillow cover tutorial

Here we are busy preparing for our trip, one of the things my man bought where travel pillows for the girls for some comfort while they sleep in the car. These cushions are not so pretty and I think the material is not so comfy so i decided to make a cover for them and made some pictures during the process so if you feel like making your own you can see how. I used my padded fabric from Petit pan I bought in Paris, so now the pillows are comfy and colourful!!

See the whole tutorial here.

Mix & Match sets

I finally had some time left to make some new mix & match sets, the sets contain pieces of screenprinted fabric to make 3 creatures. So if you want to start mixing & matching be quick because there will be only 4 sets availible in the shop!!!

Happy Bastille day

Vive la France

I realy like this treasury Shannon made to celebrate the 14th of july and of course it's nice to see my fabric set in there.

*****

Now for something completly different, due to the rising cotton prizes I'm forced to increase the price of my doll kits, I will do this at the beginning of August, so you can still buy the sets for the old price untill the end of july.

***

Thriftshopping

Yesterday we went to our favourite thriftstore and I found some really nice things including the above, I also found some nice vintage teatowels & hankies and some doll clothes pattern sadly they turned out to be for a bigger doll than they have, but I'm sure we can fina a good use for it anyway. Here it's raining and doesn't feel like summer holiday at all, perhaps we will try to make some doll clothes this afternoon from the patterns of Marie Claire ideees so the girls can practice their sewing skills.

Serious holiday planning

We still have some time before we will leave to France on summer holiday but I'm already planning and preparing some of the things I like to take with me. Since we made some watercolours for Mila's birdparty I refound my love for aquarel painting and I'm very happy the girls like it too, so we are planning to make a diary with drawings and paintings instead of writing and want to make at least one drawing a day. I bought some nice A5 blocks with heavy paper and some new pencils and fineliners and extra paint colours. I really look forward to our holiday, two weeks in a house in a small village in the Loire. What do you take with you for your holiday?

Coranda Zine

I've told you already that some of my work flew to Tokyo to be part of a expo in Japan, at the expo Coranda they sell the book dutch interiors where you can find the interiors of dutch creative homes. I was asked to design a special cover for the book. At the expo they have a special pack you could buy that included the book ( + my cover) a zine about dutch life with a very nice feature and interview about the girls birthday parties, bookmark with my cute Mila in Babushka costume or dressed as Alice and a dutch cookie Stroopwafel. I saw the zine already online but it was great to recieve it saturday by mail with the books marks and little extras.

Inspiration from Japan

Our first week of summer holiday is almost over and we enjoyed it very much, sorry for being off line for a few days but there was just not so much to blog about ;-) Today was a fun day after a nice visit from Diana and her very cute daughters we went to the Kunsthal to visit the exposition Colour in my Hand by Japanese artist Ayako Rokkaku. We loved the expo, so much colour and cute paintings and the cardboard house ...... my fingers started to itch (kriebelen) and I wanted to get some paint and make my own. Luckily for me and the girls they made a studio where you can see Ayako paint her paintings (she paints with her hands, no brushes involved) and get your own hands dirty (or you can wear plastic gloves) and make your own fantasy world. We left with our wet paintings and a head full ideas...

Petit Pan goodies

Each time we come to Paris I try to visit one of the stores of Petit Pan, my favourite one is the Mercerie, here you can buy colourful fabrics, little metal bells in all colours and shapes, fabric remants, fabric string, pretty paper, fabric buttons and so much more. It's just like a candy store!! I'm very happy with my goodies I bought and the cute bag the use to wrap it. On my Paris blog you can see some pictures of the shop and later this week I will share a small tutorial with the fabric string and bells. You can buy the peit pan fabrics here and here

Give away winners

I was supposed to pick the winner yesterday but just could not find the time, these last few days have been filled withcatching up with mail and a very long to-do-list. Thanks for all the comments, so great to hear you enjoy my blog, also very intresting to hear what your favourites are. I printed out all the comments and put them in a bowl and picked not one but two winners who will recieve a Mikodesign suprise package.

the winners are 1. Isa and 2. With Love

please send me a mail with your adres