Katy suggested we have a Tea Party for Mother's Day this year. I was thinking I could make cupcakes with fondant flowers but I wanted to experiment first and see how they turned out.

First of all I made a flower with rounded petals.

Then I used a cookie cutter to make these pointier petals. I like this one better and when Ben suggested they looked like lotus blossoms I decided to make a lotus leaf for it to sit on.

When I got sick of making flowers I rolled out the remaining pink fondant and used a heart shape cookie cutter to make these.

I have a love-hate relationship with my sewing machine and sometimes we just don't get along. Today it really tested my limits but in the end I won.

This is a $2 tea towel I found in the bargain bin at Pillow Talk. I really liked the colours and the patterns and I was determined to make it into something cool.

I made the straps from my stash of calico and even went so far as to line it. I sewed some lace around the top which was awesome because I knew where I secured the straps onto the bag would be completely covered.

In the end this turned out better than anything I thought I could have done and all without any instructions or tutorials!

Check out the tutorial for this cute leather cuff at ISLY, one of my fave blogs! It caught my eye ages ago but I didn't have any leather. When I found a leather placemat at Kmart for $2, I immediately thought of this project. Mine turned out slightly different to the original tutorial because of the materials I used. It's pretty stiff because there are 2 layers of leather and so I had to glue instead of sew the band around the middle of the bow. I also gave it a button instead of the stud because I didn't have one on hand. 

The tutorial includes a template and you can also also find on the same site a tute for making stamps from your leftover scraps of leather!

The number on the door to our apartment has been missing for a long time and when I wanted to paint something on this terracotta pot it was the perfect solution. I found a shape that I liked for the black and printed it on paper, cut out the inside so it was like a template, then taped it to the pot and carefully filled in the black. When it was dry I painted the 6 in white. It sits on the cupboard at the top of the stairs outside our apartment door.

When I was in China, I kept seeing plants grown in water. I think they look so cool. Anyway, turns out most indoor plants can live like this and they are very, very easy to look after. I even found out that my mum has had a vase of indoor plants that have been in water for about 3 years and are still growing strong. I nabbed some cuttings of them last time I visited and now I keep a stock of plants in a vase.

When you want to make a new plant, you can just cut a section off and plonk it in a vase or jar of water. After a few weeks it will sprout roots, but best of all, you only need to top up the water every month or so, and because there's no dirt it's not messy. I have them on every window sill in the house, and they also make great gifts.

So you know the plant in the pot at the beginning of this post. Guess what?  Hidden inside the pot is a jar of water! 

I forgot to take a before shot when I did this but basically it was just a brown stained wooden box. I sanded it and then gave it a few coats of the house paint we used on our walls. I tried doing the baking paper transfer method that I used on the table (see previous post) but unfortunately the ink didn't stick to the oil based paint and I could only just make out the design. I got a black pen and went over the lines - a lot of it was guesswork. Then I got the old sandpaper again and roughed it up. Voilà! What do you think?

Btw, image is from the Graphics Fairy (I love her). Oh, I also glued the gardener's twine to the candle holder that I picked up for $1!

Here's how to make a stamp. Get an old eraser, cut off the end with a craft knife, make it as flat as you can but it doesn't need to be perfect. Draw a simple shape on the flat surface. Cut into the eraser around your design and then cut in from the side to reach your first cuts. Stamp!

I like that it has a textured look. Might have to make another one for the other side of the eraser!

I'm not much of a sew-person ('sewer' doesn't read well) but as I have an addiction to buying fat quarters I need to at least try to do something with them. I've made iPhone and iPad sleeves before and have pretty much got them down pat but this time I decided to try a new challenge. I made this bunny for my tiny little niece who is gorgeous. She is just 8 months old and the arms are just the right size for her to hold on to (and chew on!).

I found the pattern and tutorial for this on Martha Stewart's site, and I even used scrap material from a pair of long pants that I decided to cut down to shorts a long time ago. Looks like I hadn't sewn up the side seam when I took the photo but it's the only one I have so it'll have to do.

I've been wanting to make macarons for a while but I always thought they'd be really hard. So when I saw a Donna Hay packet mix I knew I had to have a go! Next time I will try making them from scratch.

Recently I made something special for a special someone. I used one of the super cute spotted envelopes I found in China that I've being waiting to bust out. Then I wrapped some bakers twine around it and topped it off with a paper rose that I made from the pages of a French novel I picked up at a market in Switzerland. You can find a template and tutorial here at Elinee. I actually didn't use one of the sets of petals because I accidentally glued it the wrong way so the petals were bending in instead of out but I think it looks fine anyway! You definitely should try this and there are lots of other awesome looking templates and tutorials on the same website.

As Easter has passed and will soon be out of season, I'd like to put up these pics of my Easter Cupcakes that I made for our Easter gathering with my husband's family. Inspired by a combination of cookbooks and pics on the web, I used buttercream icing and made the decorations with fondant. My first attempt with fondant, in fact!