Little Baby Lavender Baskets!

Doilies!

Pay attention if you like kitsch! Here's a great idea to re-use old doilies!

You'll need a few doilies, cling wrap. fabric stiffener and some bowls.








Wrap the cling wrap around your bowl to protect them from getting dirty.







Soak the doilie in the stiffener and squeeze out excess liquid.







Drape the doilie over the back of the bowl and press it gently in shape.





And this is the result. Kitsch but cute! Great with little apples or nuts in it...












Very nice as Christmas decoration as well
with some green pine branches or
pine cones and Christmas balls!

And the winner is....

Hmmm...I always have difficulties to choose! But I picked a winner for my goodies. (Well, actually the dice decided...hihi) In this case that means that 'april1604' won my goodies! Just send me your address details to moncherry@live.com.au and I'll send it to you a.s.a.p! Sorry for you lovely ladies that didn't win. I enjoyed receiving your nice comments a lot ! Thank you so much!

And for my friends little princess I made this cute painting. Hope she likes it!

Spring is in the air!

This weekend we went camping at the Brisbane Ranges National Park and the surroundings west of Melbourne.

Arriving in the dark at Friday night the camp site looked a bit scary. We like 'back to basic' camping and let's just say that a toilet is already luxury for the campsites we pick.

As soon as we got the campfire started a huge spider paid us a visit and insisted on hanging around our camp fire.

We managed to chase it away in the end. But we all know spiders in Australia eat humans alive ;o) so it took me another hour to convince myself it (most likely) wasn't coming back.

I was finally able to relax and sit back in my chair when ones of a sudden somebody threw stones at our van. Whaaaa! Believe me, that's a scary thought if you think there is nobody around. Armed with flashlights and squeezing Sanders arm we decided to check it out. Who knew possum poo makes so much noise falling on metal?!

The next morning it was nice and sunny. We enjoyed driving and walking around the Park. In 2007 bush fires destroyed big areas of the National Park, but it was good to see that nature is slowly recovering.

Lovely to see the beginning of spring as well!

Goodies giveaway!

From this week on a few of my handmade products are for sale in the shop where I work (Artlife). How exciting is that?! My dear boss donated a little corner of the shop to my Mon Cherry crafty products.

To celebrate that I'll do a blog giveaway! It includes a little lavender bag, a sun glass cosy and a blank handmade post card!
Just leave me a little message (In English, Nederlands oder Deutsch) on my blog and you might be the new, lucky owner of these goodies! You'll have till Monday evening to respond. Yay!!!

You may have noticed that I like colors! But in our little apartment the colour madness just shows itself in my craft room.
That's because there is something that inspires me more then anything and that is Swedish design (mixed with the simplicity of country style living in Europe).
I have been in Denmark and Sweden a few times and I just love it.
My Swedish friend ones took me to the little summer house of her grand mother. Beautiful!!! Just as in the movies based on the Astrid Lindgren books (I have seen each of them hundreds of times!).
For you that also like Swedish design have a look at the blog of lillakamomilla. And look out for her kitchen! That's my dream kitchen!
Unfortunately it doesn't even come close to my kitchen. But never the less this is a corner of my tiny wanna-be kitchen. I bought the second hand mug stand in our shop. It had a very strange greenish color. But white paint is the magic word. And this is the result...





And I thought I'll end this post with a very funny story. Talking about tiny kitchens... never clean a fish in the kitchen of your caravan!
This very nice couple (I will not mention any names..hehe) that I know went on a holiday to France. One day going for a walk they were given a fresh caught fish from a fisherman. If you ever cleaned a fish before you'll might know it's a time killing job to get rid of the scales. But although it took a while, they managed to clean and prepare the fish for dinner.
The problem was the cleaning of the kitchen afterwards. The water wasn't running through the kitchen sink any more. The fish scales probably blocked the drainpipe.
But being Dutch, they were prepared for everything and the little plunger came in handy. After a bit of effort the tool helped to get the drains cleared!
They enjoyed a very nice meal, and the fish tasted excellent. It wasn't until one of them had to go to the toilet, they discovered the disaster. The tiny. little toilet/shower was covered with fish scales. Imagine hundreds of fish scales hanging on the ceiling....hahaha!

Bird bag.

This little bag used to be a storage bag that I made a couple of weeks ago. On request of my dear friend, I turned it into a little handbag. I think that was a great idea! It looks marvelous.
Have fun with it Sue!

Delfts Blue

This lovely dutch fabric is based on the Delfts Blue design that is well known all over the world.
Combined with some red and white fabric, these are a few of the ideas I came up with:

A pretty pillow...



A handy bag to store toys, socks, laundry, etc. You can write on the little chalkboard...



And last but not least this funny bunny...

Such an inspiring day!

This morning I finally took some time to flick trough the vintage, little kids books that I bought in an antique shop last week. Have a look! I think the simplicity of the images are gorgeous and I will use them as examples in future craft projects, that's for sure!







Then my friend and I went to the studio sale that I read about on threebuttons.blogspot.com. Very inspiring to see the beautiful products of some local, talented designers. I couldn't resist buying a few pieces of fabric.



And to celebrate this beautiful, sunny (it's almost spring!) day we joined a chocolate walking tour in the city. Yummy!!!
Look at the art on these delicious chocolates!

Lavender bags!

These are a few of my lavender bags. One of my bestsellers at the market. They are so easy to make. Just use a nice stamp and Versa Mark Ink (or other fabric ink). Combine a natural looking fabric with a bright and colorful one. Attach a little label and a cute ribbon and...tadaaa!

Craft Market Madness!

After a busy week and heaps of preparation stress I can now look back at my first attempts on being a stallholder at an Australian Craft Market.
Unfortunately things didn't go entirely as I wished they would have...

Arriving at the market location at 7.30 am, we were in the assumption that we would easily have our (borrowed and never used) gazebo tent unpacked and built up in half an hour. As we opened the box of the tent, about hundred separate metal poles and three hunderd screws and bolts came rolling out of their hiding place!!! Oh no...

Let's just say that we were very lucky that our neighbour stallholders didn't understand Dutch...
One and a half hour and loads of laughing spectators later we finally managed to get the tent up. That left me about ten minutes to finish and fit up the stall!

I think that I looked like a wild, aggressive and cracked up maniac the first half hour as people were running past my stall like scared little birds...hehe.

But then, when the sun was showing its kind and warm smile, I finally started to relax and enjoy the market. And I can just say: It was great! I got such a good response. Sold a fair bit of my handmade products, which was wonderful.
Friends came to visit and support me. Thanks to all of you! That was so nice.

For everyone that couldn't come (I think most of my blog readers are from overseas) here's a few pictures!