Burnett Lane & Brew

Much to many people's surprise Brisbane has started to get some awesome spots with good cafes and atmosphere. Today I spent the day out in the city for my aunt's birthday and we found ourselves in several of these awesome spots.

One of those was a stroll down Burnett Lane, which until only recently was a loading zone for the shops in Queen St mall. It was one of those grungy alley's that you walked past quickly and would never walk down unless you were accompanied by some burly men or ninjas and even then you might reconsider it.

Now there's a growing collection of restaurants and cafes. One of which is Brew which we ended up at today for a cider. This atmospheric cafe and wine bar is at the very end of Burnett Lane and on a drizzly Brisbane day it looked incredibly inviting. 

This lane way has a bit of a shady history, so it's great to see businesses such as Brew moving in to reclaim this part of Brisbane. My aunt and I enjoyed our cider at the back of the cafe which used to be a store room for the buildings above. There were many hipsters, a very uncomfortable looking family and two little girls that looked like they were having a play date (it was very cute, and way more sophisticated than anything I would have done at 6 years old).

I'm also looking forward to watching the street art scene progress in Brisbane. I work in West End, so see a lot of it come and go and I can see Burnett Lane becoming a primo spot for new street art.

Cheers from Brew. I heartily recommend it!

Visit Brew here

Sewing Day

I feel like I have been very neglectful of my sewing this year. Uni has completely taken over my life, but now that exams have finished it's time to get cracking on a brand new batch of hot water bottle monsters.

It does always feel odd making something for warm cuddles when it is so hot outside, but I find myself preparing for the northern hemisphere's winter as well.

Today I started with some new ideas of what I was going to make so new it was going to be a fun day (sewing days are always fun, but today was going to be more fun)

I knew I wanted to tackle a line of 'woodland' animals with a twist so was starting with some basic shapes then introduced the felt...

I love working with felt. It's like drawing with fabric, and why I always hand sew. This lets me get the details just right and continue to play around with placement so I can let my characters come to life while I make them.

A sneak peak at the 3 new hot water bottle monsters that will be hitting the store tomorrow.

There are more to come... and all are new designs, so stay tuned.

I made an orchid!

It seems a cruel twist of fate that my mother who has the greenest thumbs in all the land has created an offspring who just has to look at foliage and watch it wilt.

My garden is as dead as dead could be. I am in the process of trying to bring it back to life, but at the moment it's in the stage where I get depressed going outside. 

But apparently I am learning! Or orchids just like to be left to their own devices (I suspect its the later). 

Years ago my mum gave me an orchid she had found deposited in a tree on her footpath by a friendly neighbour. I diligently bought some orchid mix, planted it up and duly forgot about it. It was quite happy to sit in its pot staying not-dead and not-flowering and I was happy to accept this arrangement.

Then a couple of weeks ago two big green sprouts came out of it and I didn't dare to hope they were flower spikes but it turned out they were! And now I have two amazing sprays of flowers in my brown backyard.

Don't ask me what species it is - it's flowering and that's all that I care about :)

Let me know if you have any miraculous gardening stories

edit - had to look it up. I think it's Oncidium altissimum. Let me know if that's wrong

Pizza Oven Weekend

Last Christmas my dad received this book from my Aunt - which I think was a not so subtle hint that she was expecting many fresh pizzas during future visits.

But my dad and I have been steadily progressing this year with building a pizza oven in their backyard. This has required a lot of heavy lifting and has taught me that I can actually lay bricks and that my dad and I work pretty well together.

We were hoping to have the main dome finished this weekend but rain set in and put a stop to our work. So we've got about 2 rows of  bricks left before we can use it as an actual pizza oven.

Saturday morning did not start off well. It had rained all night and didn't look like it was clearing up any time soon. Still - at least the view was nice.

The pizza oven was where we left it last time we worked on it. The arch had been completed and we had done three rows of the dome. But with a giant hole in the top our oven was still more of a fire pit. Dad and I crossed our fingers that the rain would clear and had a cup of coffee in the meantime.

***

Mum's garden was enjoying the rain more than we were.

***

When the rain cleared up we managed to get another row of bricks on the oven. The next stage is a bit more fiddly. Now that the bricks are hanging over the gap, there is too much gravity working against them so the mortar won't hold it up.

We placed a slat of mdf on some buckets and used a weak mortar to make a false dome that would hold up the rest of the dome.

This would usually take about an hour to dry, but with the weather it didn't look promising.

We prepared for more rain over night and crossed our fingers again for sunny weather on Sunday.

***

Hooray! A promising sight for a days work.

The top of the dome is probably the most fiddly of all the work we've done. Each brick now needs to be cut to size in order to fit in the gap left by the last brick.

Dad working on cutting each brick to size. This process took a while and slowed us down considerably.

So this is about as far as we got by Sunday lunchtime when it started to rain again.

There is only a little hole left to fill up at the top and we will have the inside dome ready for firing. Stay tuned for the next update.

Mum's nosy chickens.

Fun With Hot Water Bottles

I love hot water bottle covers. Which is odd, because I live in the Sub-Tropics. Brisbane only get's about 2 weeks a year that you would need a hot water bottle cover. But I love to make them - I think because it's something fun that everyone can enjoy, not just kids.

Here's some of my favourites that I've made...

 

Check out my current hot water bottle covers here

So monsters have been my major love - which I guess is because they really let you go nuts on creativity. But just the other day I had someone ask me if I could make a raccoon for them.

I'm not the type of person to say no to a challenge - I actually love making new things - so here's my steps to making a raccoon hot water bottle cover.

I made this little guy out of pre loved fabric - some herringbone pants that were useless as pants, but still had heaps of fabric in the legs to work with...

Step 1 - cut off enough from one of the legs to fit the water bottle.

Step 2 - I marked up the basic shape of the ears with chalk then cut out the design.

Note - leave a little extra fabric (about 2 inches) at the bottom of the back piece (that isn't cut). That way you'll have enough fabric in the mouth so that it stays shut when there's a hot water bottle in there.

Step 3 - Hem the two edges of the open mouth. I used a zig-zag stitch for this to prevent any stray threads getting away.

Step 4 - Sew the head onto the back, then sew the bottom on - remember you should have some overlap from the head onto the bottom of the body. Now you can turn this the right way out.

Step 5 - Go to town on your design. I use felt and just add shapes as I think it needs it. This is part of the reason why I sew them on after I sew the body together. If you want to, add these features before step 4. Also, I'm an illustrator by heart so I like to play around with shapes with it all laid out in front of me, which I find hard to do early in the process.

Step 6 - Enjoy your new hot water bottle cover!

This little guy sparked off some ideas for new designs... so I'm going to share a sneak peak with you here. In about 3 weeks these new designs will be in my Etsy shop ready for Christmas - so stay tuned... 

p.s. let me know if there's a style of hot water bottle cover you'd like to see

DIY Cork Board Makeover

My desk tends to be a mess of post-it notes and scraps of paper stuck to any object that happens to be within my eye line. So I figured it was about time to get my act together and organise the mess.

I have a pile of old cork boards that I've had lying around waiting for me to put them to use, but they were looking kind of worse for wear. This tutorial is on how to fancy up your cork board so it looks great empty or full.

Materials

• Cork board - you can use an old one or buy a new one.
• Sandpaper
• Adhesive remover (if you need to clean off any blue-tak or tape) - I use tea-tree oil, smells great and works like a charm
• Acrylic paint in the colours of your choice

Step 1

Prepare the cork board. If you are using a new one, you will still need to sand down the edges to make sure the paint will adhere properly.

If you are using an old one it's time to get rid of any old staples and sticky things. I also did a light sand over the cork to smooth out any bumps that had appeared from years of thumb-tacks.

My old cork boards - definitely in need of a make-over

Step 2

Mark up your template. I used a geometric design made up of equilateral triangles (very popular at the moment). 

Don't worry about getting your trigonometry textbook out - you can download templates off the internet. And so you don't have to Google it, here's one I prepared earlier...

Step 3

Start painting! I went with a monochromatic palette - but you can use whatever colours you like. My tips here are to keep the colour scheme simple - either 2, 3 or 6 colours and work in a hexagon, keeping track of what colours sit next to the others. I created the design I wanted first in Photoshop so I knew what colours would be going where which I highly recommend - you can do this as a sketch on some paper, but having the basic pattern laid out will make things much easier in the long run, believe me.

Here's some tips on creating the design I used...

I also painted one colour at a time. This was because I was mixing the colours as I went and wanted to make sure they were all consistent. This method can make it more confusing to keep the pattern, so if you are doing this definitely have a mock-up of the pattern handy.

If you feel like you can't paint within the lines, use some masking tape. Though you will have to wait for the colours to dry before you start on the next one. A hair-dryer can come in very handy if you are feeling impatient.

Step 4

Paint the border a complimenting colour. You may have to use 2 or 3 coats to get it smooth and consistent. Allow to dry and you are finished!

Enjoy your crafting everybody.

Beating Procrastination

I'm going to admit the irony right up front with posting this while I should be doing an assignment this very minute. But my supreme lack of getting anything done this long weekend has made me put together an action plan for beating the procrastination demon.

What I should be doing, and what I am doing

1. Break it down

Things can seem pretty overwhelming if you just focus on the great big whole, and that's enough to make anyone run away and hide with 3 seasons of Buffy. If you break your task down into it's smaller components it becomes more manageable to tackle each step one at a time.

2. Make a plan 

Following on from breaking your task up the next step is list all those things you want to achieve in your time frame (I usually just do 1 day) and most importantly, make it realistic. Don't expect yourself to work for 8 hours solid, because it just isn't going to happen. But having a check-list of things to do gives yourself tangible aims and when you cross those off it feels damn fine.

3. Plan in procrastination

It's going to happen, you need to take breaks. The best way to overcome the "I just spent 4 hours watching television and I don't know how I got there," is to plan specific amounts of break time. You could give yourself one episode of a TV show, one chapter of a book, the time it takes to make a batch of biscuits. It doesn't really matter what, just as long as it's something that has a finite time attached to it so it doesn't vague into the entire day.

4. Commit your goal to someone else

There's been research that shows that if you vocalise your goals to someone else you are more likely to stick with them. Basically it's because you're not just breaking a promise to yourself (which is easy to justify) but to someone else who can hold you accountable. It's harder to back out of a commitment when there's someone else you are letting down by doing so.

There's loads of tips out there on this (but don't procrastinate by looking for procrastination tips). Here's a few that I found helpful.

Life Hacker

Pyschology Today

Mind Tools

Good luck on your goals everybody. If you have any winning procrastination tips I'd love to hear about them.