Category: Sewing & Creative Corner

Inspiration, tips and how-to guides to get you excited about creating!

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45 Excellent Experience Gift Ideas

I’m not going to pretend it’s not happening: Christmas is coming!! In less than a week folks! How organised are you? Have you already bought all of the presents you had planned to? Or are you still desperately trying to come up with some original Christmas gift ideas?

Ok, let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?

Buying gifts for Christmas, en masse (but birthdays too) can be stressful. You’re daydreaming of having a few days off work. Maybe planning what you are going to feed everybody. The shops are full. It seems that every other person in your town is out there RIGHT NOW doing the same harried shopping trip. If you’re lucky you can go shopping alone, without the kids who GUARANTEED will see more things to add to their Christmas wish list. And if it’s a successful shop, you have to lug it all home, wrap the gifts and hide them somewhere (don’t forget to remember WHERE!!!) until Christmas.

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If you are trying to be even the least bit conscious of reducing the plastic packaging and waste in your household (like we have been trying to do. Here you can read about some small steps to try to get started!), it all feels like a big, dirty contradiction.

So is there anything you can do, to still enjoy gift-giving this holiday season without the shopping mall stress and mounds of paper, packaging and plastic? Sure there is!!!

Give the gift of an experience!

Don’t know what I am talking about? Well…

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How to Make the Prettiest Paper Christmas Star Decoration

Oh my! Christmas is coming! And fast! Do you remember back when you were a kid and asking “How many more days til Christmas?” and your parents answered with something like “Still 6 weeks, kiddo!” and you thought it would just Never. Ever. Arrive.?

These days, as a big ol’ grown-up, 6 weeks goes by SO quickly, and Christmas is over before you know it and suddenly your kids are asking you “How many more days til Easter?!?”.

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This year I am feeling a bit slack with the Christmas preparations, especially on the creative and decorative side of things. But I am determined not to have Christmas arrive without me having made some effort.

As fate would have it, just the other day my son came home from kindergarten and presented his latest masterpiece- a beautiful, intricately folded paper Christmas star. If I was only going to manage one new craft project with the kids this Christmas, I knew that this would be it.

Christmas Star, DIY, Crafts, Paper Crafts

And once I had decoded the pattern, I just knew that I would have to share the secret of the Christmas star with you! (Spoiler Alert! It’s not as difficult to make as it looks!) Read on to learn how you can make your own gorgeous paper star this Christmas.

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How to Sew a Patchwork Infinity Loop Scarf

diy, diy sewing, sewing project, loop scarf, infinity scarf, patchwork infinity scarf, tutorial, how-to

Last week I was feeling fired up and feisty, what with all those totally powerful inspirational quotes! “Go get ‘em!” was the message I was pumping myself up with and bringing you along for the ride too 😉. What?!? You didn’t see it? If you feel like you need a bit of motivating to pursue your goals, then be sure to check it out here because it will really give you the kick up the butt you’re after!

And what now? Well, It’s official. The cold weather here in Germany has continued it’s march towards winter.  So while I may be energised and motivated, I am also damn cold!!! The days are getting shorter and shorter, so much so that the kids are walking to school by the light of the moon. And a flashlight. 😉 For the sunshine-y Australian girl in me lousy, grey, cold weather = time to hibernate time to find fun projects I can accomplish indoors.

If you’re into sewing like me, but also trying hard to not waste too many materials while you’re at it (Hello! #reducereuserecycle), you’ve probably got a stack of odd-shaped, leftover pieces of fabric hoarded away “for later”.

Do I have the PERFECT sewing project for you!!! (And I’m gonna show you how to do it!)

*** drumroll please… ***

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More DIY Easy Halloween Costumes Anyone Can Sew

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Hi there! Have you been psyching up for Halloween? Or rather, are your kids getting crazy for Halloween? Let’s be honest, in the end, rambling through the neighbourhood trick-or-treating is more for their benefit than ours. Right? Nevertheless, I will admit that I am also getting a little excited.

When I prowl the neighbourhood with my kids on the 31st October, it’s not as though I’m going to have a fistful of lollies thrust my way. (*Psst!!* There are however, a couple of neighbours who like to share a quick slurp of some fiery type of liquid that is definitely NOT for the little ones! Nudge nudge, wink wink)

What I do enjoy is watching the kids each year get bolder and more adventurous and confident, relishing the thrill of dressing up and dashing so free-spirited around the neighbourhood after dark. And we bump into so many of their friends also doing the rounds, so it’s practically like a street party. 😊

I know that last week I posted here a few home-sewn DIY Halloween costumes. But guess what I also enjoy?

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DIY Wicked Halloween Costumes You Can Easily Sew

I could have sworn we just enjoyed summer holidays and now all of a sudden Halloween is upon us. For most kids, Halloween means 2 things: costumes and lollies!

And when my kids think of costumes, what they really mean is “Mama’s GOTTA sew me one!!!”. 😉

halloween, halloween costumes, costume, diy costumes, sewing costumes, sewing, sewing project

Are your kids hankering for a really cool costume? That you are apparently going to make?!? If you are a #sewingnewbie perhaps you are feeling the pressure to come up with something great, while not necessarily knowing where to start. Even if Mama doesn’t think that Halloween is a really big deal, it’s a sure bet that the kids do!

Fear not! I would recommend you go grab yourself a hot beverage (coffee is my poison!), find a comfy chair because I’ve got a bunch of creative Halloween costume ideas just for you! They won’t break your budget, won’t take too long, but they will give you that satisfying feeling of a job well done.

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Password: Stoffmarkt Overload

Wow! What an experience that was! My shoulders are still aching from that heavy backpack! Seriously.

Oh! And I haven’t even said “Hi” yet. So… Hi! How are you doing? I hope you have been having a great week. Our week has been extremely busy, settling into school routines and extra-curricular activities all over again. Life with 3 certainly keeps me on my toes. If you have any kids, be it 1, 5 or 12, you can surely picture exactly what I mean!

And while this week’s *secret password* is “Stoffmarkt Overload” I am not referring to the fully loaded family schedule I have been presiding over. No, I am speaking about the (felt like) tons of goodies I brought home with me after a shopping spree this weekend.

So, what were those goodies you ask?!?

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Sewing + Upcycling = Win

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Yo, hello! I hope you have all been having a Famtastic week! Here it was the last full week of summer school holidays. Just a couple of days left and then we are thrown back into the (so very, very early, every morning) school schedule.

I truly imagined having some time to pursue my own hobbies these holidays. Yes, snigger at me, if you wish. But I really had fantasised about getting some sewing done. Leggings for the girls, a shirt for me, perhaps a shirt for Master 5. Let us take a moment to contemplate whether I did any of those things…

**3 milliseconds later**

Alas, NO. I did not. Is this how it is for you during school holidays too? Imagine squeezing in some Mama time and end up with perhaps a microscopic amount of Mama time?!?

Anyway, I did, however, repair a stack of holes in children’s clothes. “Wow!” I hear you say. Yes, I find that neither fun nor satisfying. What I DO enjoy is creating handmade clothes and other goodies. Like shirts and leggings and skirts.

What I have been experimenting with more recently though is UPCYCLING in my sewing projects.

So what is upcycling anyway? And why would anyone want to do it? Hint: Upcycling does not mean riding a bike up a steep hill 😉.

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Cool Weather, Hot Look- How to Sew a Loop Scarf

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You can learn all about how to make an Infinity Loop Scarf here!

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What’s So Great About Photos?

Halli Hallo! Here we go again, another round of Everything’s Famtastic to enthral and delight you. Last week’s post about dealing with grief was kinda heavy and not my usual thing. But then again, the passing away of so many friends and family in such a short time is also not “my usual thing”. But nobody is ever alone in their grief. I just hope that my post reached the right person at precisely the time when they needed some reassurance, comfort and strength after losing someone special.

One of my “usual things” however, is photographs. I take a LOT of photos. Just ask my Hubby. Or my kids. Or pretty much anyone who has known me for a while 😉. I take photos with my mobile phone. I take photos with my big fancy-pants SLR camera.

I not only take a lot of photos, oh no. I collect photos from my Hubby’s mobile too. And when we get together for special occasions with friends or family, I like to check out what photos anyone else took too. Which means that I have a fairly large collection of photographs.

Ahem. *clears throat* I don’t think that I have been quite clear enough. I have a REALLY LARGE collection of photos. I haven’t done a hard-core sorting and cleaning out of photos from my laptop in years. Since approximately 2014 to be precise *buries face in hands in shame*.

Ok confession time. I take a LOT of photos. I have more than 40,000 photos stored on my laptop dated from 2014 to present. I am a photography addict.

There is just so much to do with all those photos… *wails*

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Sew Yourself Cute Fabric Baskets with this Easy Tutorial

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Hello and willkommen to Everything’s Famtastic this week! How’s things looking in your part of the world? Here it’s been all a bit hectic. Mostly a typical week actually 😉. But I did squeeze in some more sewing at home. Sitting at the sewing machine is certainly a happy place for me 😊. A definite highlight of the week was Miss 7’s school music concert. It was really sweet- nearly 60 second-graders had been practising a number of song and dance moves for a few months. **so proud**

Do you remember the other week I wrote about how we have begun the mammoth task of decluttering and tidying our house with the KonMari method as inspiration, so far we have been tackling clothes. At last count, 4 out of 5 of us have decluttered and superbly (if I do say so myself) stored our clothes in a more ordered manner in the wardrobes. The billions of books in the house are still terrifying me and will definitely need an all-hands-on-deck approach.

But what I wanted to share with you today- for FREE!-  is how I made those cute fabric baskets I had also talked about in that post.Easy to sew, multi-purpose, use any leftover fabric you have lying around, look great… WINNER!

So, are you keen? Without further ado, start your sewing engines! Here’s what you’ll need to sew your own collection of handmade baskets:

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