Valentine DIY projects

Oh yes, Valentine's Day is coming up! I love valentine's cards, any opportunity to send a card is good! But... it's also fun, great and have that extra special thing do to something handmade for your (secret) love. A short list of some great Valentine's DIY's:

 

Geometric heart by Minieco 

Origami hearts by Youaremyfav

 

Valentine arrows by Sugar and Cloth

DIY giftwrap by Sugar and Cloth

Cut out hearts gift wrap by the house that Lars built

Have fun!

New item: DIY paper houses

And another new item! Or actually two. A great set of paper houses that you need to build yourself. There are two sets: a black and white one and an olive green, light aqua blue and beige one.

Build your own cute street of paper houses! You'll find them right here.

Summer holiday time

It's finally here! The big summer schoolholiday time! And that means that half the country is clocking out to enjoy some much deserved down time.

And us? We've already been. Just got back less than a week ago from 3 lovely and relaxing weeks in France and Spain. And oh, did we enjoy ourselves. I took the luxury to go (almost) completely offline. Put my Etsy shop in vacation mode and try to focus on myself and my family. It worked out great and I am 100% recharged and ready for the last busy weeks leading up to Lowlands festival. More about that another time (there's lots of new goodies coming!).

Have you got your holiday still ahead of you? Than I've got something that will definitely entertain you and everyone in your family for an afternoon or two. Just make sure you bring a few permanent markers or sharpie pens with you. Find yourself some nice stones (and leaves, feathers, driftwood and anything else that you come across) and decorate them with the pens (or paint if you feel more adventurous). And finding these items are half the fun!

So easy, anyone can do it! The possibilities are endless: graphic patterns, flowers, funny faces, abstract scribbling. Just have fun with it.

Here's part of our lot that we ended up giving to my mum as a souvenir (and a thank you for looking after the cats and watering the garden):

For some more inspiration:

Have a look a my pinterest board for even more ideas and links to the pictures above.

Have fun!

Balloon printing test

Okay, so for Lowlands festival a good friend of mine (the one that will be helping me on the festival) suggested selling balloons. Not just any balloons but ones with lights in and printed with my own designs. Can you imagine how cool they would look when it's getting dark!?!

So, getting my hands on the light up balloons is not an issue. The printing on the other hand is proving to be a bit of a challenge. It's too expensive to get a company to do it so I'm trying to find a way of printing them myself. I would like to do them all before hand so really I want to print them when they're still deflated. I've searched around the web to look for ideas and ways of printing them. It's going to be tricky!

My first idea was to do a screenprint on them but that means I have to half inflate them and that's a nono. It won't work with the light in the balloon. Let alone trying to get the screenprint smoothly onto a flexible curved shape... So I've tested some other things last night. With paint and permanent markers and even stamps and ink (they really didn't work!). Here are the results of a trial and error evening. None of it really works (or at least not to my little miss perfectionist standards ;-). So I've come to the conclusion that we've got to decorate them when they're completely inflated, there and then on the spot. That would be much fun to! I do still need to figure out how we can do it with minimum effort and materials... I'm thinking of making stamps of my designs and use paint to stamp them on the balloon. Anyone any other suggestions?

The orange one looks quite good, I kind of like it but it's just not what I had in mind...

Interested in some more balloon decorating inspiration? Have a look at my Pinterest board.

DIY packs in the making

It's time for lots of new Heedopter goodies! I've been working really hard and I'm so excited about it all! I can finally show you some first sneakpeeks and I can reveal they will turn into DIY packs. Yay!

 I'm restyling these little houses as we speak but from listening to you, my dear readers, I've decided I will do a black and white set as above too.

 And these cute robots? You've got to wait a little bit longer to find out what they're are turning into...

Egg-cellent Easter DIY's

Oh dear, it's almost Easter again! And guess what!?! It's extremely cold here in the Netherlands. It's actually snowing as I'm writing this (and we were so hoping for some warm sun..). So this means a lot of time to spend indoors and hopefully equal amounts of time to do some Easter DIY's. I've picked out my favourite Easter eggy ones for you to enjoy!

Lovable pastelled coloured eggs by The Sweetest Occasion.

 Leaf imprinted eggs by Ty Pennington

 

Gorgeous washi tape eggs by Lovely Indeed

Naturally dyed eggs using blueberries, onion skins, spinach and much more by Design Sponge

Handpainted eggs and easter decoration party by See Jane 

Sharpie doodled eggs by Caroline Johansson

And the very cutest of them all: Mister moustache egg by A bit of Pilli Pilli

Have fun this weekend and enjoy!