Shabby Chic Bunting

For ages, I have been meaning to make some shabby chic bunting for my little cottage. It's not hard to DO it, just hard to find time, unfortunately.

I printed out some pretty Cath Kidston patterns on printable cotton fabric (which I managed to find in NEW ZEALAND!!) and spent a happy little while cutting out little triangles and messing around with glue. I am really happy with my bunting - it looks so pretty hanging over the living room mirror. Now I have to figure out how to make some tiny fairy lights

I want to make some fairy lights to drape over the ladder in the living room - they have to actually light up of course.

I found this photo of some beautiful fairy lights shaped like roses - these are full sized ones but I would love something like this in miniature for the shabby cottage.

I have had one try at this already but only succeeded in detaching a very important and very thin wire from the string of tiny lights I had bought. I couldn't fix them so that was the end of that attempt. Maybe it's time I tried again!

Too many plates

I am so grateful to my Etsy customers for buying my little plates, because then I get to make more, which I really enjoy. I love finding new images to use and learning more about vintage china. That's why miniatures are so great - you get a chance to learn a lot about the full-sized thing you are trying to miniaturise. So now I know more about china than I used to. Unfortunately it has meant that I have spent too much of my very small amount of free time wandering round antique shops and I now I have fallen in love with some vintage patterns I didn't know existed before! The two above are so pretty - both Royal Doulton patterns. The one on the left is Wild Pansy and the other is Violets.



I don't have very much vintage china but here is one of my pretty plates, with the passionfruit biscuits I made this week. I'll show you some of my other china some time when I can get a nice photograph of it. I would quite like to put a plate display on the wall, like I have in the dollshouse. Not sure what hubby would think of that, though.

I have been very busy filling orders lately, and have been wondering why it has been getting more and more difficult. Anyway, the other day after we had done a time-and-motion study at work, I decided it was about time I was more organised at home....I waste so much time looking for things. So I FINALLY sorted out all my little plate decals and NO WONDER I was feeling disorganised....I have more than 200 different patterns for plates at the moment! It took me quite a few hours to sort them all out, label them, record them on the computer and file them away tidily. Now it all runs like clockwork and I don't know why I didn't do it ages ago! I'm not naturally a very organised person.

The strangest thing that has happened lately is that I now get to blog at work!!! The seed company where I work has started a gardening blog and they have given the job to me. It feels like a big responsiblity....a bit different from just doing a personal one and writing whatever comes to mind. I'm enjoying it though.

Thank you so much for your kind emails and comments after my last post. Here in New Zealand we are all having to come to terms with the Christchurch earthquake and just try to help our people as much as we can. This is becoming an iconic photo in New Zealand - the moment the earthquake struck - captured in time.

Thank you for continuing to stop buy and visit my blog. I haven't commented much on anyone else's blog for absolutely ages, and feel quite guilty about that, but time is so short....I can squeeze the reading in though, and it is wonderful to be inspired by all the wonderful miniaturists out there in blogland.