Hi There! My name is Danie. I have an online store called BLANK and I’m thrilled the very clever Cinti has asked me to share some Fathers Day gift ideas with you on My Poppet today!
Fathers Day is just around the corner and we have put together a few of our favourite project ideas:
Oh! And there’s an awesome Giveaway too!
Chances are that if you have a Facebook page for your business you have already noticed it looks quite different now that the ‘timeline’ design has kicked in.
Love it or hate it it’s here to stay.
There are great opportunities to really showcase and re-enforce your brand by choosing some striking images for your cover photo and customising your tabs.
Read on to learn how…
Cover photos should be 851x315px and 100kbs or less. Choose something that describes your brand and compliments your logo, but make sure you abide by the Facebook cover photo rules listed here.
Another little known customisation option is Custom Tabs for apps.
If you are handy with a photo editing program like Photoshop or even a simple online version like pixlr or PicMonkey, you can create your own buttons that tie in with the whole look of your page or brand.
The buttons should be 111x74px, no bigger than 5MB (smaller is best).
Here is how to change your tab image:
If you want to reposition the order of your app buttons:
I hope this has inspired you to get creative and pretty up your business page. Remember, first impressions count.
If you want to check out the My Poppet Facebook page and it’s customisations you will find us at https://www.facebook.com/mypoppetshop
This post was originally written for and posted on Handmade Kids
Today’s tute comes from Nellie at Dabbles.com.au (where the craft inclined go to download e-patterns that teach as you make!). Nellie is currently running a ‘have-your-say giveaway’ where you could win one of four printed pattern sets, and when each set is worth $47.45(AU), you should definitely put it on your to-do list! The winners will be announced on the 30th of April so stay tuned to the Dabbles blog and facebook page.
I love embroidery but haven’t ever posted an embroidery project, so when Nellie offered this cute French Toastie bib project, I couldn’t resist. So cute! She also includes some very clear diagrams to teach you the various stitches used.
Take it away Nellie…
One of my favourite friends is having her first baby in the next couple of months, (Maud, if your reading this – Spoiler Alert!!). I love her to bits, so I wanted to hand embroider her some baby bibs as a gift. Both the parents are French, but the newbie will be a little Aussie, so I thought one bib should have a picture of French toast and the other should have a toast triangle with Vegemite!
Today, I will show you how to transfer the French Toast template to fabric, then how to fill it in using Back Stitch, French Knots and Long and Short stitch. You can then apply a similar method to the Vegemite design.
You will need:
• 1 plain bib (prewashed)
• Dressmaker’s carbon paper (if your bib is a flat fabric) or tissue paper (if your fabric is fluffy like terry toweling)
• Embroidery hoop – optional
• Embroidery needle
• Embroider floss (DMC brand) in colours: 975 (warm brown), 310 (black), Blanc (white) and 437 (camel)
• Toastie Template
1. Download and print the Toastie Template from the Dabbles website. Check that the size of the French Toast design is right for your bib, if not, resize it using a photocopier. The template has a colour and style (of stitch) guide needed for each section : )
2. Cut out the template and position it on the bib. If your bib is made from a flat material like cotton, transfer the design using dress maker’s carbon paper (just follow the manufacturers instructions here). BUT if your bib is made from terry toweling (like mine), this method just won’t work! You’ll need to trace the template onto tissue paper then tack it to the bib around the design. If your tissue paper is a little thin, use two layers.
3. Optional – Put the bib into an embroidery hoop.
4. Following the stitch guide on the template, outline the design with Back Stitch (please scroll down for Back Stitch instructions) shorten your stitch as you go around curves. Please note: Embroidery floss is formed from six floss strands, you only need three for this project. Cut a length of floss, split it in two groups of three then load your needle with one of the groups.
6. Again, following the template guide, fill in the remaining areas with Long and Short Stitch (please scroll down for Long and Short Stitch instructions).
7. Add two little French Knot pupils in the toasts eyeballs and some Back Stitch in two of the toast corners (please scroll down for French Knot instructions).
8. Neaten all loose threads at the back of the bib then…
9. Take a photo of your handy work for the archives!
Back Stitch
Insert your needle a stitch length in front of your intended start point, then working back, re-insert the needle into the designs starting point. Continue inserting your needle a stitch length in front of the last then working it back into the previous stitch.
Long and Short Stitch
Following the curve of your design, create a (close) row of alternating short and long length stitches (the ‘short’ stitch should be approx half of the ‘long’). For the following rows, use only one stitch length and start at the entry point of the stitch above (your stitches will appear long and short, but don’t be fooled!). Repeat until the area is full.
French Knots
1. Insert the needle through the point you want the knot to be. Hold the thread taut with your (left) fingers approx 3cm (1.1″) from the entry point hold to the left.
2. Holding the needle above the work, wrap the taut thread over and under the needle twice.
3. Insert the needle into the entry point, continue to hold light tension whilst passing the needle through the material.
Today’s DIY project created by the lovely Belinda of MoonmuM. Belinda makes amazing paper based products and has been kind enough to offer a fab GIVEAWAY for all you lovely readers. Details at the end of the post.
Paperwork for me is the most dull thing EVER. I truly dislike it and avoid it at all costs, which isn’t so great when running a small business. I do, however, love pretty stationery. So since I’m too cheap to pay for ‘designer stationery’ and i need to entice myself into action, i buy plain old bits’n'pieces and pretty them up myself. It’s a whole lot nicer to sit down with a colourful folder in front of you to get organised when it looks good.
This is my latest attempt at getting my act together – a paper patchwork folder.
You’ll need:
- plain brown A4 ringed binder (got mine at officeworks)
- set of white A4 dividers
- manilla folder in any colour
- colourful and patterned papers
- scissors
- Mod Podge + paintbrush
- glue stick
- sewing machine (optional)
So, take all your coloured paper and cut out a bazillion little hexagons. I used a template approx 4cm wide and needed 72 hexagons.
Working from the edges, use your paintbrush with the Mod Podge to glue the hexagons onto the front of your folder.
Place colours and patterns randomly to create a nice patchwork effect. Glue them on and coat over the top of them as you go too. Mod Podge is a glue and sealer in one, super-easy to work with, dries clear and gives a nice durable and varnished looking finish.
Allow to dry and then slap on another coat.
For my dividers i used some matching paper that i used for the hexagons to cover the tabs. Just glue the coloured paper on and cut around the tab shape for a neat finish.
I also needed a spot to shove receipts, so i made a pocket for the inside front cover by cutting down a coloured manila folder to measure 22cm x 15cm. I sewed around three sides of the pocket with a wide zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine. This is optional, you could just glue the edges together if you wanted. I like the homey feel of stitching.
Then glue your pocket to the inside front cover.
Done! Hope it brightens up the dullest of dull tasks for you 
Thanks Belinda, your Paper Patchwork folder looks amazing!
And now it’s GIVEAWAY TIME! For your chance to win your choice of Notebook & Card from the MoonmuM Etsy store, pop over to Belinda’s shop and tell us what your favourite item is, then leave a comment here.
International readers are welcome to enter.
Winners will be drawn randomly and announced in this post on the 29th of March.
One comment/entry per reader please, Entries close 10pm 28th March 2012 (Melbourne time).
We need to be able to contact you so make sure you have your e-mail link enabled or leave your email details in the comment.
GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED, THANKS YOU
Today I’m handing the blog over to Elle from Cherry and Me, who has written this festive tutorial on a fun twist to her holiday decorating. Today is the first day of Chanukah a Jewish Festival also known as the Festival of Lights. Take it away Elle…
I come from a Jewish family but this year I thought I’d celebrate my first festive season as a new mummy by decorating a tree!
I bought a “Joost” baby Christmas tree from The Design Files Open House. Joost grows all his own plants and creates the most amazing and innovative contemporary installations around Melbourne.
There’s no glitzy tinsel and not one bauble in site on my tree! Nope! I’m decorating my tree with Chanukah ornaments!
These are Chanukah ‘dradles’. They are kind of like spinning tops with Hebrew letters on each side.
My sister and I tied strings around each dradle to hang all over the tree. We even made a Star of David for the top! Keeping things a little kosher 
Ta-da! The finished product! Isn’t is cute?
I think I’ll plant the tree in a terra-cotta pot after the silly season is over and hopefully we can do it all again next year!
Thanks Elle, and Happy Chanukah to you, and to all my Jewish friends and readers!
x Cinti
This video is an impromptu conversation with Jodie from The Haby Goddess who has been a long time friend of mine. In this video we talk about how we met, our creative business styles and how the relationship we have formed has helped improve our crafty businesses. We also talk about the importance of creative collaboration and how working together can make great things happen. Essentially, How Building Creative relationships can help your business.
I hope you enjoy the video. It’s a little bit long, and thanks to Emma’s many interruptions we may have repeated ourselves once or twice.
There are lots of take away points that may benefit you in whatever field you are in:
- Get to know people in your industry
- Build relationships based on friendship and trust
- Share your knowledge and talk about your ideas
- Collaborate on projects
- Identify your skills and share workload accordingly
- Motivate and be accountable to keep the project moving along.
- Don’t try to film a vlog post with a 2 yo around!
I would like to thank Jodie for taking part in this vlog post with me, she was a really good sport.
You can check out Jodie’s blog here and her shop here.
The Haby Goddess is a sponsor of the My Poppet blog but in the interest of full disclosure I need to point out that this was NOT a sponsored post. I just thought it would be fun to share.
Do you have a friend like Jodie that you’ve worked together with to ‘get things done’?
Today’s guest blogger is the lovely Katie from We Heart Books. Take it away Katie…
We are so thrilled to be guest posting on Cinti’s My Poppet – we’ve admired her beautiful store and blog for a long time and it’s been lovely to have a chance to meet her (and the gorgeous Emma!) in person at markets over the years. It’s an honour to be here!
One of our favourite things at We Heart Books is delving behind the covers of our picture books and finding out a little bit more about their makers. Just as people love to meet the maker at craft markets and through blogs, our customers really value the stories we can share of things we have learnt over the years and from the blogosphere about our authors and illustrators.
Artist Johanna Wright learnt to peddle her wares the hard way – she set up a table on the streets of New York, near MoMA, to sell her art. It’s a story worth a picture book in its own right; she painted at her table and describes days when her paintbrush literally froze in its water dish. Like all good stories it has a wonderful climax and a happy ending – some pretty influential people bought her handmade postcards and canvas paintings along the way, and her work ended up on the Style Channel and in Japanese Elle magazine among other places. And following some classes in illustration, her first book was accepted for publication and released in 2009, which is The Secret Circus.
The Secret Circus is made of the things kids dream about – a miniature world, hidden from view, one that only the mice know. Tiny acrobats form mouse pyramids and giant house cats are tamed – all the magic of a circus of dreams. Beautiful repetition of the text makes for a soothing and quiet read, while sepia tones complimented by muddy pinks and greens portray the Parisian setting perfectly. A simple final illustration of a mouse holding its finger to its mouth, smiling a hush, says so much about the tone of the whole book – inviting the reader to share a special secret in a tone calm and quiet.
Sometimes you just KNOW that you’ve found just one of those books that will make people’s hearts sing, and the author’s story only makes you know it must be shared. The Secret Circus is one of these.
The Secret Circus is available from We Heart Books. Johanna Wright has a website and Etsy store.
Today’s guest post is written by my good friend and Op-shopping buddy, Estelle of Curbside Style, and now brand new blog Fortune Favours the Thrifty. When she isn’t toddler wrangling and scouring e-bay and her local oppies for vintage goodies, she can sometimes be found at the Camberwell market selling cool to hipsters.
Take it away Estelle…
One of my earliest childhood memories is of an old, black cardboard suitcase with a Twisties sticker on the top and ‘Pandora’s Box’ scrawled in thick marker on the hounds tooth lining. My family nicknamed me Pandora because that suitcase travelled with me everywhere and it’s contents were always a mystery to them. The collections in that case were never shared because treasure was not for sharing.
Shells, paper streamers and stamps, coloured foil and string, leaf skeletons and gumnut’s were things of beauty to me and they all had a ‘treasure factor’, some magical element that made them worth collecting.
I’m not sure if the collecting bug is something you’re born with, if it’s something you develop or perhaps both. But what I do know is that old suitcase seeded my love of collecting, gave me enormous freedom and was a constant source of inspiration for my hungry imagination. If you want to foster that bug in your kids you need to include them in your own collecting and then give them the freedom to choose their own ‘thing’, even if it is gravel, which is what my four year old likes to collect.
Have you ever noticed how your child’s play changes when they think they’re alone? It’s like an invisible thread that ties them to you snaps and within a blink of an eye they’re in some other world, doing amazing things with incredible creatures and characters. I think the key to a ‘Collecting Kid’ is giving them room to find the things that spark their own imaginations and then providing them with a place of their own to store those ‘keepsakes’. For me it was a suitcase, for Ada it’s a cardboard box the size of a small house. The container itself and even the contents are not important as long as the sense of permanence and ownership is there. It’s that sense of independence and freedom that allows their imaginations to take flight and that same sense of independence that allows them to explore the meanings and stories behind the objects they collect. A simple box can become a conduit to a whole other world.