Little Pink Studio

Ornament swap

Hello! When Cassandra asked me to join her Christmas ornament swap, I was happy to. I love swaps. Were were paired into groups of three, and we were to each make 3 ornaments for each of our three partners! I was happily paired with Terri, Kris, and Heather, all lovely and talented ladies. Our group had a creamy white/neutral theme, but it appears we also had an unspoken bird theme going on. :) 

The nest above was from Terri, as well as the following two ornaments. 

All, beautiful, right? I was already lucky with this package, but there was more to come! 

The ornaments above were all from Kris. The last one, the little girl on the snowflake was an original illustration by Kris, and it looks just like my niece, so I think it might just go to her. The next lovely ornaments were what Heather sent. 

Thank you ladies!

To see the ornaments I created, please click here. 

Check back with me tomorrow afternoon for a new ornament tutorial. 

Cerri xoxo

Kris, Terri, and Heather, don't look! :)

Hello! A little while ago I joined Cassandra's ornament swap, and this is what I sent to my partners. (they should be receiving them any day now) We were to each create three ornaments for each of the three partners. (I missed that little detail, so was running a tad behind)

This little snow pixie in her sleigh started out as a really ugly sleigh ornament I found at Michaels last year. I totally deconstructed and recreated the sleigh with vintage lace and bits and then added the little pixie and trees. 

I also made them a little variation on my bird waltz ornament. 

And this snowflake ornament I showed you on Tuesday. 

And here they are all packaged up. I really hope they love everything! And wait until you see what the ladies sent me! I received beautiful ornaments from all of them, and I'll show you those in the next day or so. 

Speaking of packages, I'm not sure if I ever showed you the packaging for my wrap it up kit? 

More burlap bags and sweet images printed on tea stained muslin. 

And a couple more packages that left here recently. I love the simplicity of the brown paper bag and silver tinsel. 

See you soon! Cerri xoxo

A winner and my swap photos

Hello! I hope you had a lovely spring weekend! First up, we have a winner of the spring basket giveaway. The winner is Cassii! Cassii, please send me your address and I'll get this little basket in the mail to you!

Love the basket peeks and look forward to more photos from your weekend!

After Easter services, we carried chairs out to the shade of the fruit trees and watched 'chicken tv' (baby chicks on their first visit to the great outdoors). That was about as productive as we got for Easter, lol.

Posted by: Casii | April 26, 2011 at 09:45 AM

Ok, so now that we have that important business out of the way, I wanted to share with you the basket I made for Cassandra( http://anartfuladventure.typepad.com/ )for the Easter basket swap. I used a vintage bicycle basket and embellished it with some vintage laces and pale blue silk ribbon. 

I filled it up with lots of vintage goodies, some lacy paper mache eggs that I showed you in my previous post, and other things. 

Cassandra mentioned that she loves vintage wallpaper, but is never able to find any where she lives so I sent her quite a few different designs from my own stash. (this is Cassandra's photo)

I filled the paper mache eggs with various vintage trinkets. This one had sewing notions, the larger egg had lots of vintage millinery, and one other egg had vintage jewelry parts.  (also Cassandra's photo)

I also included a bunch of vintage lace and an embellished burlap pouch.  

I put together this jar full of Easter treats for her as well. I really hope she loved everything!

Here is the lovely basket Cassandra sent me! (all of the photos of her basket were taken by her, I haven't been able to take photos yet and didn't want to wait to share this any longer) Cassandra painted a little wooden crate a soft blue color and embellished it with lots of millinery flowers and petals. And obviously, she filled it full!

She included a lots of gourmet chocolates, hand stamped tags, some lovely vintage lace and trims.

And lots of other goodies! Thank you so much Cassandra! I loved it all!

Thank you to everyone that entered the Easter basket giveaway! I'll do another one in June when I celebrate my shop's anniversary. :) 

xoxo, Cerri

Lacey eggs

Hello! I hope you're having a lovely week! I wanted to share with you what I have been obsessively making the past couple of weeks, lacey, and ruffled eggs!

But first, don't forget to enter the spring basket giveaway on the post below. 

http://littlepinkstudio.typepad.com/little_pink_studio/2011/04/spring-basket-giveaway-.html

I made the first couple of eggs for Cassandra's Easter basket as she was my swap partner, but then I was just hooked and made lots more. Of course, Mom had to have some too. :) I pulled out the good stuff for these eggs. I used antique lace and ruffles, and gorgeous vintage millinery. Some are glittered, and some are not. 

I took lots of photos of my eggs, hope you don't  mind. 

Some of my eggs have a little vintage millinery, and they all have lace. I'm not sure when the last time I created something without vintage lace was?  It's been a while. I just can't seem to stop using old lace. 

 
For Cassandra's basket I filled her eggs with vintage millinery, vintage jewels, and vintage notions. I also put some special trinkets in my Mom's eggs. 

(I'm still having trouble posting links, so here is a link to Cassandra's blog: http://anartfuladventure.typepad.com/ --is anyone else having trouble with this? Every time I try to add a link it inserts it randomly in the post. Very frustrating) 

Anyway, I actually made several more eggs (told you I was obsessed) and I'll share them with you soon as well. 

Cerri xoxo

(don't forget to enter the giveway!) 

Distracted

The spring basket giveaway is postponed until tomorrow. (Thursday afternoon) As I was working on the basket last night I was distracted by a little garden fairy. Something to do with a paper mache egg, a cheap frame, and a little vintage pixie. They grabbed my attention and I couldn't focus on much else. 

You understand, don't you? I dressed her in a ruffled, vintage lace skirt and has the sweetest little mesh wings. She's holding a twig staph and is overlooking her gardens. 

So, please forgive me. I'll finish up that basket and have it ready to show you tomorrow afternoon/evening. 

In the meantime, here is a peek at another basket that hopefully arrived to my swap partner today. 

I'll share that with you soon, too. 

Until tomorrow, Cerri xoxo

Bunny nails and a flickr group

Hello, just popping in for a moment today to say hello. These darling bunny nails are my daughter's. She had them done for Easter. Aren't they cute?

For those of you that joined in on the Easter Basket swap, I created a flickr group to show off your baskets. I hope you'll take a moment to join and add your photos. It's a great way for everyone to be able to see what you created and what you received. Here is the link to the group. 

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1636800@N24/

Ok, for some reason I can't get the links to work on here today, but hopefully you can just click on that or copy and paste into your browser. 

I can't wait to see what everyone came up with. I'll share peeks of mine hopefully tomorrow. 

I hope your weekend has been lovely!

Cerri xo

Easter Basket Swap

Hello! It seems there are several of you that would like to participate in an Easter basket swap, so this is the official sign up. 

Details:

Please sign up on this post, and email and send me an email to cerri at thelittlepinkstudio dot com. Please include your email in the comments here and in your email, please include all of your information including blog (or some link to an online presence be it flickr, etsy, or any other place that shows who you are) I will also need your address, whether you're willing to swap internationally, and a brief description about your likes and interests. --Email me that information, you do not need to put all of that right here on my blog. The reason I am asking you to both post and to email me is to make sure that I get the information. The description of your likes and interests is VERY important as that is how I will put together partners. If you prefer all whites I need to know that, or if you're a pastel lover, I need to know that too. If you're allergic to certain candies, let us know..you get the idea. 

Sign ups will end on Friday, April 1st. I will then assign partners over the weekend and send them out right away. You will need to mail your baskets to your partners by April 14th, allowing plenty of time for your partners to receive their basket. International participants will need to ship sooner than the 14th. 

Please embellish your baskets and make them lovely for your partner. All baskets MUST contain at least one handmade item. (think bunnies, decorated eggs, etc...) Then fill your baskets with little trinkets that you think your partner will love. Please make sure anything you send out are items you would like to receive yourself. (NO junk!)  

If at any time during the swap you feel you can't keep your commitment, don't panic, just email both myself and your partner and we'll work something out. I totally understand things happen in life. 

You're more than welcome to use the above image for your blogs, etc. 

Here is a little flickr inspiration to get you inspired for filling and making your baskets.

For the life of me, I could not figure out how to include the links to all of the lovely photos I used in this mosaic, so PLEASE click on this link to see the owners of these lovely photos. 

And here is a little mosaic of pretty baskets I found on flickr as well. 

Again, please click on the link to be taken to the flickr mosaic where credit is given for each of these photos. 

The lovely white basket created by Carola in the upper right hand corner shows how beautiful Easter/Spring items can be in white.  

A few tips or ideas on putting together a lovely basket:

Traditional packaging is usually boring. Think about taking things out of the package and repackage them in pretty cello bags, boxes, or jars to make a common item a little more special. Even a chocolate bunny removed from the box it came in and packaged in a polka dotted cello bag suddenly makes that bunny so much more charming. 

Your basket doesn't have to be a traditional wicker basket, it could be a vintage purse like the photo above, or a paper mache basket covered with vintage wallpaper,an old hat box, etc,  the ideas are endless. Think outside the basket. :)

This swap is to have some fun and be creative, I hope you'll join us! 

Cerri xo

 

 

Lessons learned and creations with lace

Whew! That whole preorder, hand dyed lace applique thing was a little crazy. I honestly never expected those to be quite so popular. I sold out w/in a day of what I originally had dyed and packaged and had ready to go. Then, so many people were emailing and upset that they had missed them I decided to restock them on a preorder basis and order a whole bunch of lace hearts and such. What I totally didn't expect was that those would sell out as well, nor did I expect it to take as long to get them back in stock and to dye 100's of little lace hearts. I felt bad about how long that actually took, but I have apologized to my wonderful customers that were waiting on them. I'm so thankful everyone was gracious and many have emailed me to let me know they were worth the wait. But, I just don't think I will be doing a preorder type situation again anytime soon. :) Now, if you're still wanting some, I have them on order. I'll get them dyed and listed just as soon as I can! (along with lots of other wonderful lace things!)

So today, among other things, I wanted to share with you what I made and sent waaay back in December to Tina. (for the Joli Paquet Stocking swap) And yes, I do realize today is the last day of February, but I never shared the things I made her or the wonderfu things she sent me so before too many more months pass by I thought I would do just that. Humor me, ok?

To refresh your memory, the purpose of the swap was to create a handmade stocking and fill it with all sorts of lovely things you thought your partner would like. Since my partner lives on the other side of the world, I decided to make her stocking smaller than usual. Since she loves old lace as much as I do, I decided to concentrate on just that. So really, other than the fact that you're currently looking at a stocking, there isn't too much Christmass-y about this post after all. Remember, you're humoring me.:) I made the stocking of old lace and natural batting and just kind of crazy quilted it together. At least my version of crazy quilting.

 
I included lots of artsy supplies and a very old wooden bobbin (seen above) wrapped with tons of old lace remnants. (do you like that? I was thinking of addding some lace remnant wrapped wooden bobbins to the shop...)

I made Tina a lace pendant and cuff bracelet too. In fact, I made all of the ladies in my family a lace cuff bracelet for Christmas, but didn't get a single photo of those to show you. The pendant was made of an old crocheted thing a bob, a pretty image, and lots of vintage pearls. I've been meaning to make another one of those for myself as I really like how it turned out.

I posed the pendant on my mannequin before I shipped it out, but the photo didn't turn out too great. You get the idea though, right?

And, here is the lace cuff bracelet. I love how easy those are to make. They're the perfect last minute gift for anytime.

What I'm currently working on is this:

Hand dyeing lots of new lace items to add to the shop...think spring and bows. Lovely little bows.

Photographing and getting ready to list all sorts of new items to the shop.

Planning our spring break vacation (as a WHOLE family-even the college student!) to San Francisco. --Speaking of, any places we should not miss? I've been there 3 times before, but I know there is stuff I haven't seen....Food? Sights? SHOPPING?

Working on a new schedule for the blog. I want to blog more and scheduling is something I am working on in every aspect of my life, so why not the blog as well? I want to get back to sharing pretty, old things, and I have a few other ideas in mind I'll share soon.

So, that's it with me. What are you up to?

Be back soon.

xoxo, Cerri

 

 

 

A little valentine package

Hello! So, it's Valentines week, and I thought I would share with you parts of a little package I sent off to one of my dear friends. Every year we do a little private Valentine's swap, it has become a tradition with us and since we like the same types of things, it's always fun. Here are a few of the things I sent her.

I really love that mini pompom trim, I think it adds just the right amount of sweetness to a project. The stamped image on the tag is from Red Lead Paper Works. Love them!

I also made her a tiny little Valentine scrapbook w/ photos of her little sweetheart inside. The book is only about 2.5" tall. 

I made the book from a bitty envelope, so there are pockets w/ tags for writing notes and such. Hope she loves it. 

I have more handmade Valentine's to share this week, but for now here are some sweet images for you. 

Have you been busy making Valentines? Or boxes to hold Valentines? I miss doing that, making the boxes to hold the girl's Valentines at their school parties. It used to be a full on family tradition here and believe me, we came up with some very clever boxes. I had thought of hosting an old school Valentine swap, but just didn't think of it soon enough to get it going. Maybe next year? Wouldn't it be fun to make a container to hold your Valentines and receive handmade Valentines from all over blog land? Kind of like our own little classroom party. LOL

Ok, I'll be back w/ more Valentine love tomorrow. 

xo, Cerri

Pretty postcards for you

Hello, and happy Wednesday! Here's a couple more vintage postcards for you. I hope you will enjoy them.

Please remember these are from my personal collection, and while I welcome you to use them in any way that you wish, I do ask that you do not sell the images themselves in any manner.

To save them to your computer, double click on the image to make it larger, then right click and save to your computer. You can then print them out and use them in all of your creative endeavors.

This sweet image is was not originally a postcard, but rather an advertisement, but someone, many, many years ago made it into a homemade postcard by gluing paper to the back. Love that.

If you're reading my blog, you probably adore vintage ephemera, right? Sweet Cristina of Sweet Pea Ink is hosting a lovely vintage Christmas ephemera swap. If you're interested, check out her blog for the details, but hurry, I think she is only taking 20 participants.

See you soon with some new things!

Cerri xoxo