1. Matryoshka Kimono Dolls, 2. Colour palette: Green, 3. Tamarillo chutney, 4. Cutest of cute hats!, 5. West Coast adventure, 6. Hands-on dog food!, 7. Pirates treasure bag PART TWO, 8. Autumn, 9. My new crafting space, 10. Friendly cat toys, 11. Birthday pancakes, 12. Magical toadstools, 13. Bush bath bliss, 14. Coral, shell and bone, 15. Autumn Blues, 16. Big skies, 17. Garden meditation, 18. The joy of wood, 19. Gratitude, 20. Birthday bunny

1. My shop is now open!, 2. Cosy Friday evening, 3. Kimono paper tape PREVIEW!, 4. Happy weekend papercut, 5. Colour palette: Red, 6. Tin can lanterns, 7. Shop update: Tom Cats, 8. Spring love: magnolia blossoms, 9. Poultry PS, 10. …and the winner is…, 11. Display jars for treasures, 12. Pin board inspiration, 13. Monday’s inspiration: Honour, 14. Happy Equinox!, 15. Fresh start and a GIVEAWAY!, 16. Paper Fan Inspiration Cards, 17. Morocco on my mind, 18. Midwinter mandarin lanterns, 19. Rainbow eggs and a basket of flowers, 20. Vintage kimono palette

1. London by night, 2. Travelling feet, 3. Poultry Show, 4. Kimono paper tape PREVIEW!, 5. New things, 6. A new season…, 7. Hand carved stamps: lanterns and blossoms, 8. Monday’s Inspiration: Creativity, 9. Rob Ryan’s shop on Columbia Road, 10. Happy Christmas!, 11. Happy New Year!, 12. Plant skeletons, 13. Header artwork, 14. Paper Fan Inspiration Cards, 15. Earth Hour 2010, 16. Contact me, 17. Monday’s inspiration: Communication, 18. Pirate’s treasure bag, 19. More gratitude, 20. Olive Harvesting

Old red stamps: cherries and ping pong; Christmas prayers and Communist workers; a dragon, a lion, a horse and an ox.

Red toy vehicles from our childhood: Toy trains powered by steam, electricity and small hands; a double decker London bus with most of its paint worn off; a digger, with dirt still in its caterpillar treads; and a battered, repainted truck.

Origami paper, a Chinese paper cut, vintage kimono badges and a geisha coaster.

Games pieces: Various counters and dice, a Rummy number 7, a Mastermind peg, a tiddlywinks wink, a carrom puck, a battleship and a biplane.

Red heads.  Royalty, politics and history.

Vintage buttons, a crochet hook, a 1950s (or maybe ’80s?) buckle, and a spool of thread.

A handmade book from Udaipur, Rajasthan which my mother kept as a diary in 1990 during the 8 months my family and I spent in India; an old book about the artist Albrecht Dürer, a small Japanese notebook covered in washi paper, coloured pencils and a letter A.

Red odds and ends: a ball of cotton; a plastic bangle that looks like carved coral at a glance; an old pendant made from coins and beads that my father picked up in Morocco in the early ’70s; a small German glass jar with roses painted on its lid and old glass buttons inside; a vintage brooch bought at Spitalfields market in London; a paper mache toadstool and a vintage buckle.

The tape is perfect for all sorts of creative projects – scrapbooking, gift wrapping, collages etc. Here are some little ideas I’ve been experimenting with today, using some of just one set of the hot colours to complete all the projects.

The first thing I made with the tape was mini bunting. I got the idea from a great tutorial that Lisa Tilse gave over on her blog the red thread.

I made my bunting by sticking pieces of tape at even intervals along the edge of a sheet of paper, leaving a little bit of each piece of tape sticking up at the edge. I then placed thin string (you could use embroidery thread, cotton, dental floss etc) along the edge of the paper and folded down all the ends of the tape over the string to hold it in place. Finally, I simply trimmed each piece of tape into a little flag (being careful not to cut through the string).

Isn’t the finished result so pretty? It makes me happy every time I look at it! The card in the background is one of a set of kimono cards I’ve designed which will also be for sale in my shop.

Other uses for the kimono tape I played around with today: collage artworks made from cutting out shapes and letters. My sweetheart’s on the other side of the world at the moment, so this is a little shout out to him. Hey, baby!

…and of course gift wrapping. Simple brown paper, ribbon off-cuts, a cute little Japanese decoration… The cards in the background are two more of my kimono postcards.

More fun with kimono paper tape coming soon! …and of course it will be available to buy online very shortly.

Hope you’ve been having a good weekend.

I thought I’d show you some pictures from the very first bundle of vintage kimono fabrics that I ever bought over the internet, direct from a seller in Japan. 

It was a mixed lot of about 30 pieces, each cut neatly into a rectangle not much bigger than a post card. Many of those pieces are now long gone, made into purses or lavender wheat pillows and sold at markets in London or at Reiki events that I went to, but I took photos of each of those pieces and still use them as inspiration or the basis of designs and prints that I’m working on now. Such a beautiful range of pattern and style and colour.

Later I also bought many whole kimonos. Each time a new one arrived in the post I’d lovingly hang it up in our home for awhile so I could admire it whole, before painstakingly unpicking all the hand-sewn seams and sewing the fabric into new creations.

I don’t know about you, but I’m always bringing home shells and pebbles and bits of polished glass or broken pottery, beads and vintage buttons, a patterned feather… and then I never quite know what to do with them.

Well, my lovely friend Amy has come up with a great solution.

On the windowsill of her bathroom she has a collection of large, vintage jars filled with found treasures. Once the jars are full, the lids are screwed back on, the jars turned upside down, and voila! simple, beautiful glass display cases. 

There are shells and bits of coral, a smooth pebble, mint coloured kina shell (sea urchin), and the wings of a monarch butterfly. 

Don’t you love how the lettering on the jar looks against the shells inside? She’s also used a jar to create a terrarium with a succulent plant inside.

Simple, beautiful ideas using recycled jars to preserve found objects. Perfect!

This afternoon I grabbed some time to make a present for a little boy whose 5th birthday party we’re going to tomorrow. Mum had the idea of making him some kind of treasure bag that he could put small, precious things into. I developed the idea further into a pirate’s treasure bag. We’ll put some old, foreign coins into it -”pieces of eight” if you like – and he can add his own treasures after that.

I started by creating a skull and crossbones pattern from a piece of scrap paper, which I then cut out of dark blue felt. I then gathered together various fabric scraps: denim, vintage kimono silk, indigo Japanese print, some red and white linen upholstery fabric… The idea was for the bag to look like it was made out of various bits of old flags. I then sorted through my metal buttons and mother of pearl buttons for added embellishments.

I wanted it all to look like it had been roughly patched together so I sewed everything a bit wonkily with stitches showing in contrasting colours. I sewed a little hidden patch pocket inside. The skull and crossbones I sewed on by hand with small red backstitches. I then added little brass beads from India, vintage mother of pearl buttons, and three old metal buttons. The bag closes with a blue zip, and has a long strap so he can wear in slung diagonally across his body.

Here’s the (almost) finished bag, front and back. The strap is actually only held on by pins but the light was fading and I wanted to photograph it in natural light! I’m still undecided whether the skull needs eyes or not. I’m thinking of maybe embroidering them on in red. What do you think?

I just wanted to post a little thank you note to all of you who have found my blog and are taking the time to read it, and especially, to those of you who have been kind enough to tell me that you’ve found something inspiring or informative that I’ve posted about. You don’t know how much it means to me! All this is still really new to me, and I kind of hold my breath each time I hit the ‘publish’ button, and hope and wonder if people are actually out there reading what I’m posting. 

I love creating my blog (ok, I’m actually obsessed by it and dream about it all the time!), and it fills my heart with joy each time I receive a sweet little comment from someone in response to a post I’ve made. It truly makes my day.

I’ve made you some electronic vintage kimono bunting to express my gratitude to you all for sharing this ride with me, and below are pictures of the original pieces of kimono from my collection. 

Have a happy weekend!
Lucy

Bamboo bangles, calligraphy brush and clothes pegs. Gourds intricately etched with fabulous tales: Monkey flying through the clouds with his sword, and an ethereal lady poised in front of a mountain.

Practical kitchen items. Some, sadly not so common any more. A butter pat (one of a pair), bamboo tongs, a salt spoon, large multi-purpose wooden spoon, an Indian pastry brush, a Japanese polished spoon, one of a pair of salad servers bought in a flea market, and my child-sized rolling pin from when I was little. 

Wooden buttons and toggles. So many colours, textures, shapes and uses. And a wooden thimble to save fingers from getting pricked.

Wooden animals from my childhood. Some of them given to us as hand-ons from other families. Many made in Camphill Communities by intellectually disabled people, others bought in a Steiner shop in Germany when I was five. Foxes sitting and on the move, a hippo, a chicken, a donkey, two bear cubs, a camel, a rhino, horses, leaping squirrels, pigs and a curly horned ram.

Wooden pencils for colouring and sketching, bamboo paint brushes, an elephant bookmark and a giraffe that belonged to my grandfather that lives on my desk.

Pattern makers. A block for printing Tibetan prayer flags. Smaller block prints from Rajasthan. A rolling pin and square, both carved with birds, flowers, fruit and animals, used for making German Springerle cookies. Two bamboos pierced with a pattern of holes, used for making the elaborate kolam designs outside of South Indian homes (although in reality they’re mostly done precisely by hand). And an old Tibetan press, perhaps for decorating butter torma sculptures.

Prayer beads from India. Carved sandalwood separated with orange knots, rudraksha malas, and polished rosewood-coloured beads.

I also love vintage kimono fabrics (as you may have gathered!), and had the idea a while ago to combine these two loves of mine together into Matryoshka doll cushions. 

The dolls below are ones I made for Christmas presents a year ago for my closest friends. The faces were simply hand drawn, then scanned into Photoshop and finished there. They’re then printed onto transfer paper and ironed onto white cotton fabric.

Most of the kimono pieces are from the 1930s. Probably the most time consuming part of making these dolls is choosing the fabrics and cutting them out. The kimono is then appliqued onto a cotton background.

Small mother-of-pearl buttons sewn onto a card of silver foil. Large carved buttons from someone else’s elderly German aunts. A delicately detailed brooch set in Bethlehem silver. Two broken pieces of jewellery, both from my Grandmother’s youth: a string of beads and an elephant brooch, brought together fifty years later into a treasured necklace.

Tropical fish swim over vintage coral on Australian and Singaporean stamps.

Coral toenails on a floor of timber off-cuts.

Vintage buckles of bone and old plastic, Tibetan skull beads, antique orphaned domino, a Fijian cowrie shell found on an island once owned by the Mafia, a small cowrie shell from a piece of Rajasthani embroidery, and shell beads from Afghanistan.

Tiny sunset-shaded scallop shells from a New Zealand beach.