allsorts

Ho ho ho!

Tada!  The blog has its new look for the Christmas season!  I also dusted off the Gingerbread House and Zoe Holiday Dress-up buttons over there on the right sidebar.

So.... let the festivities begin!

Cheers,

Jenny

Trick or Treat!

If you stopped by Allsorts sometime yesterday or earlier today, you were given an unintended sneak peek at some behind the scenes experimenting with my blog design.

So,have a Jolly Halloween indeed! wink wink

Cheers,

Jenny

Poor neglected Allsorts

All the action is over at Owlsorts!

Cheers,

Jenny

A little owl told me...

Some freakishly fun things have been happening over on my Halloween blog Owlsorts!  Just yesterday the Wise Old Owl shared The Tale of the Family Cursed, my contribution to a celebration enjoyed by over 200 Halloween blogs.  And also....

A covey of Spooky Pinspinners have been spotted!  If you'd like to make these for your own haunted mansion, apparate over to Owlsorts for patterns and a tutorial.  But don't delay, because when Halloween is over, they'll evaporate with the rest of the dreadful decor to make way for Christmas!

Oooooooo scary!

Jenny

Whoooooooo-sorts?

Hey guess what... a couple of weeks ago, I was just hanging around, minding my own business, when ouch!   I got bit by the Halloween bug!  In a big way.  SO big in fact that I didn't think it would fit into my cute little Allsorts world, it needed its own little world!

So... please allow me to introduce my new blog... Owlsorts!  It's kind of the odd second cousin of Allsorts, only with a quirky Halloween-y vibe!  Since I'm just getting started, there are only a few posts up yet, but there will soon be more because I can't stop thinking up stuff I want to tell you about, ideas for crafts, decorations and general mischief to get into over there.  And it's only the middle of September!

Do me a favor and take a peep, and let me know what you think!  Just click here.

Cheers!

Jenny

They're back

So the dollhouse has been rather quiet lately, sitting there in a sunny corner of the bedroom. But now...

those cheeky bunnies are back. They've been redecorating...

dying Easter eggs...

and inviting all their relatives to visit.

Well, there goes the neighborhood... again.

Cheers,

Jenny

ps - Hope you have a hoppy happy Easter!

Lula... the fashionable paper bunny

So, you have probably been wondered if I'd fallen off the planet. Nope, I've been playing with paper dolls!  I'm very pleased to introduce my first paper doll, Miss Lula Bunny.She was inspired by the dress-up activity on my web site, and has evolved from digital to a fabric design, to paper, to magnetic and back again to paper. I suppose you'd say I've been working on this one way or the other for years. So I am pretty excited to put this out there.

Miss Lula is four years old, four inches high, and has a very full schedule of social activities. She comes with four outfits that you can mix and match for a multitude of looks: party princess, play date, dance recital and swim time.

I used 60 lb. premium glossy photo paper, and archival inks, which gives a very colorful and vivid result. Also, I wanted to solve the issue paper dolls typically have with being floppy and not standing up properly. So I put on my engineering hat and designed a nifty card stock brace that allows her to stand up straight and not droop. Here is the complete set...

... which is now available in my etsy shop!  I really hope you like it, because I loved creating this and wouldn't mind designing a few more!

Cheers,

Jenny

Bounding Bunnypins - a Freebie for Friday!

Happy Friday! Wow, you guys outdid yourselves on the comments about my cleaned-up studio! I don't think I've ever had that many comments on one post before. Thanks!!! All those warm fuzzies made the effort seem a lot more worthwhile.

So here is a little something in return! I made up this little "bunnypin" and thought it would make a nice freebie pattern to share. It is really teensy, less than 3" across, but it looks very cute pinned to a sweater or a lapel.

They stitch up really quickly, so you could end up with a whole herd (flock?) of bunnies bounding across your Easter outfit. Or maybe tuck one into an Easter basket, very sweet.

Click here to download the Bounding Bunnypin pdf pattern*.

How to make your Bunnypin: (sorry about the wordiness, I'm not great at this part)

Out of felt, cut two of the bunny shape and one of the flower. With matching thread, whip stitch the edges of the bunny pieces together, starting where the front leg meets the head. Stitch around the front legs, then stop and push a tiny bit if polyfluff into each leg with a skewer. Then continue around the back legs and then stuff those and also the body. Then stitch around the ears, stuff those, and then finally around the nose, adding fluff before tying off where you started. Don't overstuff, just enough to be slightly poofy. Tie some thin ribbon around the bunny's neck, knotting at the back. Then using embroidery floss, bring your needle from the back of the bunny, coming up through the ribbon and the center of the flower, keeping a couple of inches of floss hanging out the back. Loop the floss around the needle and poke it back into the flower at the same spot, making a french knot. Draw the needle out the back, tie the ends of the floss together, pulling tight, and snip the excess. If you like, you can add a pin-back, but its really not necessary since you can just safety-pin it easily fom the back of whatever you are going to pin it to.

Enjoy making your bunnypins!

Cheers,

Jenny

*note - I am doing something a little different this time. Because I'm seeing more examples of people lifting and adapting copyrighted images, this is a password-protected file. So it can be opened and printed only with Adobe Reader or Acrobat, it cannot be opened with a graphics program like Photoshop. If you don't have Reader you can download it for free here.

Hope your Valentines Day was lovely

Hey, something else I can put in my Ikea frame! A couple of vintage Valentines cards.

However they are not yet up on the wall as you see. Soon, I hope.

Today my sweetheart and I spent the afternoon picking out the perfect Valentines gift for each other... a new grill for the courtyard! The old one was on its last leg... er... post.  Hey, nothing says I love you like barbecue!

Love and hugs to my bloggy Valentines!

Cheers,

Jenny

This is absolutely my last post relating to Christmas, I promise

I realized that I forgot to show you this fun vintage cookbook! Here are a few photos I snapped whilst my tea was steeping.

After seeing Sarah's pics of her copy of Holiday Punches, I couldn't google Peter Pauper Press fast enough. Happily, I found another one of theirs, Holiday Goodies, from an online bookseller. It came in its original box which is probably why its in such great shape. There are fun graphics all through the little book...

Dancing around the butter churn. Love the birds on the sugar bowl...

I do believe that's Santa and a couple of his reindeer on the facing page. Now we know what he does after Christmas...

I haven't even read the recipes, I keep getting sidetracked drooling over Vee Guthrie's artwork!

Okay I absolutely positively swear that's it for Christmas... possibly.

Cheers,

Jenny