In progress

A few more miniature portraits in progress! I'm not completely satisfied with all of them, I need to tweak them a bit before I move on to making the entire matchbox. They are Simone de Beauvoir and Edith Piaf, I;m happy with the first but even though I love how Piaf looks my sister confused her for Lucille Ball... So I'm thinking of maybe doing a portrait where her hair is longer? The other two are Agatha Christie and Louise Brooks, I like Brooks but I need to work on her lips a bit and unfortunately I'm not completely happy with Christie so I'll need to work on it more.

Wishing you a lovely day,
Aleka

Rainbows

Working with rainbow felt results in pretty rainbow scraps :-)

Wishing you a lovely weekend,
Aleka

New project

It's always great to get custom requests, they challenge me and most of the time lead to even more new ideas and new creations! This time I'm hand embroidering this custom text for a banner, it's the cutest thing I've seen! So far it has turned out just as good as I imagine it would :-)
Hope you have a lovely week,
Aleka

Early Christmas

My work space suddenly got very Christmassy :-)
Working on personalized trees and a garland! It's the perfect time for me as I can take things slow and not stress like I do when the holiday rush begins.

Wishing you a lovely new month,
Aleka

On my working table

Finally the ideas are flowing! I am working on some new matchbox designs and I have some ideas about cute things from felt too.
Hopefully I'll have some new additions for the shop soon :-)
Hope you have a great Friday,
Aleka

Work in progress

A small break turned out into a bigger one but that's life I guess :-)
The steps of making my All You Need matchboxes in green, now they are traveling to meet their new owner!

Hope you are having a lovely week,
Aleka

Soft colors palette

Rainy and then sunny, it's a bit like spring in the summer but I like it :-)
Georgia is working on a cross stitch project, I'm loving the muted, soft colors she picked!
Hope you have a lovely weekend,
Aleka

Decisions

After spending the weekend and the beginning of this week ill, I started feeling better and got a bit creative. The love matchboxes are finished, one of them is in the shop the other will follow soon! And I have this unfinished ice cream cone, can't decide between the two backgrounds: big polka dots or small polka dots? Decisions, decisions...

Hope you are having a lovely weekend,
Aleka

It's summer

Well summer is officially here, walking out of the house feels a lot like walking into an oven. So I stayed in and worked a bit. I'm finishing a couple of clay houses, they'll be in a set of two houses and a tree, I have two houses and two trees that need varnishing and I remade the mermaid earrings.
On the left is the pair that was ruined during varnishing, you can see the white color appearing from under the blue and honestly it looks a lot worse than the photo, like it's whitewashed. On the right the pair that I made yesterday and started varnishing today, the color stayed where it should, yay :-)
Remember the paper rockets we made? The nephew loved that project and we made some more when we came back from our Easter holiday. And now I found this fantastic tutorial on flying carp fish, it's going on my "must try it" list!
Wishing you a great Sunday and a productive week to come,
Aleka

Recycled packaging

While waiting for some clay pieces to dry, we made a few boxes. For our packaging we use the standard craft boxes that we buy but we also make them ourselves from recycling other packaging boxes. That way we recycle something that we would normally throw away and at the same time have boxes in different shape and sizes from the ones we buy.
It's pretty simple packaging, we glue craft paper on the surface and a doily with a hand drawn colorful pattern on the inside but I think it looks pretty cute :-)
I love botanical illustrations, these you can download and frame!
Wishing you a great weekend,
Aleka
ps. See more creative people right here!

Cupcake Flags

Like I said I'm working with turtle speed so these small flags took more than a week to be finished, after deciding on the shape, a couple of trial and errors, cutting and sewing they are finally done! Yay!
Now I just need some cupcakes to decide on the height of the skewer, so that they don't topple over, next I'll glue the flags on the skewers and photograph them on the cupcakes. Really I need the cupcakes for scientific purposes alone :-)
And after that a rainbow set of flags is waiting to be finished too.
xoxo
Aleka
ps. See more creative peeps right here!

Progress

Working with what seems to be the speed of a turtle... still I won't complain because I'm at least doing something after all this time :-) The fronts and backs of clay heart tiles in progress, I still need to varnish them before they are done.
Watched "winter's bone" last night, liked it a lot, especially the music.
Oh and don't forget you can see more creative people right here!
Aleka

A moodboard

From yesterday's sunny day to a rainy one today, I occupied myself with a project that I had been putting off for a long time. 
There is a cork board on the wall, a bit to the side of my computer screen. It's been pretty much empty ever since I put it up, I just didn't bother filling it and just pinned a few random papers now and then. So today I gathered some of my favorite images and photos and put them up there, it's quite funny all I have to do is turn my head a bit and there are the two Leonards' (Cohen & Bernstein ) staring at me :-)
Aleka
ps. Linking to other creative people right here!

Fishes

Yep it's fishes :-)
I have this great (well in my mind it looks great) idea on what to do with these fishes. I'm trying to figure out the details as I slowly progress and finish them. Hoping to get everything sorted by the weekend :-)
See more creative people right here!
Aleka

Love doves

I wanted to make more birds from clay, so doves was an easy pick. But when it came time to paint them I came to a stop, I didn't want to use the color blocking method I've used in my other birds. Instead I wanted them to have text and in particular the part in "Pride & prejudice" where Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth.
A lot of testing was done, I figured out how to do it and now I have two doves ready, each a bit different from the other but exactly how I imagined them to be. I photographed the first one, sorry for the dark images, it's been clouds and rain for two days in a row.

Wishing you a great day,
Aleka
ps. You can see more creative spaces right here!

Today

I'm actually quite determined to make use of my new work space, it's been finished for almost two weeks now and after the big move I haven't been in the mood to use it at all. But this will be the day!! I'm going to finish this brooch that's been left half made for a few months now.

Today is the last day for the raffle, over 50 prizes to be won and the money will go to a good cause, it would be wonderful if you could help!
Wishing you a great day,
Aleka
ps You can see more creative spaces right here!

Rainbows and hearts

It's only been a few days of 2013 and I'm happy to say I've been feeling very productive lately. After I posted the coin tags I got a lot of positive feedback, so a new project came to my mind! I finished a set of rainbow tags and I must say they look absolutely fantastic, just like colorful candies :-)
And I also finished a set of puffy hearts for Valentine's day! I know it's only been a few days of the new year and too soon to think about Valentine's but I got the idea and simply had to see it thought!
Wishing you all a very happy and productive new year :-)
Aleka
ps. you can see more creative spaces right here!

Our Christmas tree

So we finally put up our Christmas tree. It's not the one we usually decorate each year, we were feeling a bit too lazy to bring it down from storage, bring the decorations, ornaments, open boxes and in general spend a couple of hours on it. I know it's not the Christmas spirit at all at all but our emergency, made in under 20 minutes tree is just fine.
I used a canson paper in brown, a left over from another craft project first I tied it to a bunch of decorative "twigs" having the white bows in the front, that way the paper stayed up and didn't fold over. We filled a big vase with lights, pine cones and a few ornaments securing that the base of the "tree" wouldn't move around.
Then we used the paper mache ornaments my nephew painted, there's a smiling boot and a smiling bauble if you can spot them which are my favorites. I've only painted two of them the rest are all by him! We put a double sticky tape to their back so they could easily stick to our paper tree. He then decided where he wanted them to go and started sticking them on the tree. As you can see he picked the edges of the "branches" and then put the rest right in the middle and since he is quite a perfectionist he wants to paint 3 more to put in between so he can fill the gaps.
Oh and our nativity scene is a giraffe and a crocodile from toilet paper rolls (very christmassy I know) and a present from Maro :-)
Wishing you a lovely day,
Aleka
ps you can see more creative spaces right here!

The super heroes

My friend Maro is doing something very lovely this Christmas, she is collecting gifts to give to children whose families are having a hard time and buying presents is going to be difficult for them. She has been in touch with a school teacher of an elementary school and after figuring out which kids would need a present from Santa she called others to contribute too. The gifts will be for little boys and girls and although the girls are fairly easy to please making something for boys is not an easy task.
I thought of making super hero brooches from felt so with a few in mind I made these, they are almost done by now! The spider man one is really cool and I have to say my 5 year old nephew was very impressed with it! The only one I haven't finished is Mike (from Monsters Inc) I like the first version better so a change might happen there.
I want to pack them in cute paper boxes, I'm thinking of finding paper from comics to make them. I'm hoping to finish them until tomorrow and I'm hoping they'll be liked by the kids :-)
Have a great weekend,
Aleka
ps See more creative spaces right here!

Recycling and Christmas

We thought it would be a great idea to make some Christmas ornaments from paper mache and then give them to our nephew's kindergarten. Using cookie cutters and pulp made from newspaper and envelopes from bills we made ornaments shaped like a boot, a star and a round bauble. Because of the envelopes they have a bluish hue and not the typical grey that you get from newspapers, there are also bits of other colors popping here and there which gives them a great texture.

We figure each kid will take a set of two ornaments so they can paint them themselves and put them on their Christmas tree. We are still in the process of making them while the first batch dries, we've been using the oven to speed up the drying as it's been a cloudy day today. Once they have dried we'll make a hole and tie a string so they can be hang on the Christmas tree.

Wishing you all a great day, 

Aleka

ps. You can see more creative spaces here!