Spring Time - Garden Flowers and New Easter Designs

Spring is here!  I took a few minutes away from my desk last week to photograph some flowers and enjoy the colour in my garden.  I love seeing everything starting to grow at this time of year and a bit of sunshine always makes me feel better! :)

I’ve also been designing some new things for spring.  It’s less than a week until Mother’s Day (30th March) so not long for anything to be posted, but this colour-in card I designed is also available as a printable – great for last minute buys as it’s emailed as a digital file!  I’ve been adding to my collection of Easter designs too with this egg and bunny themed printable invitation…

These printable tent cards and water bottle labels are new too…

Fabric Covered Buttons diy tutorial

Fabric covered buttons are so easy to make and great for making buttons to perfectly coordinate with your sewing project.  You can buy buttons for covering in a range of sizes, made from plastic or metal.  In this tutorial I’m using 15mm brass buttons.

This is what you will need…

* Metal self cover buttons

* fabric scraps (I’ve found thinner fabrics work best)

* template

* scissors

* pencil

* needle and thread

1. Cut out the template and use it to draw a circle onto your fabric. If you don’t have a fabric pen / pencil a soft drawing pencil works well.  Cut out your fabric circle.

The fabric circle you cut needs to be approximately 2x the size of the button you are covering.  So for a 15mm button it would be 30mm – you can download a template for the 15mm button here. (remember to print it ‘actual size’!)

2. Sew a running stitch close to the edge of the circle.
3. Pull the thread to gather the fabric around the button.
4. Press the edges of the fabric inside the button, making sure the fabric is evenly spread without folds.
5. Finally, firmly press the backing piece down.


I’ll be posting some ideas and tutorials using fabric covered buttons soon!

If you would like to have a go at making these, you can buy sets of 15mm buttons from my shop here.

March 2014 Free Printable Calendar

Sorry I’m a bit late with the calendar this month – better late than never?!  I seem to have been falling behind with some of my plans again.  With lots of non-work stuff going on it's been hard to do much more than just the basics of keeping up with emails and orders. Although I have been doing some new paintings and designs, they are for projects I can't share with you yet!  The last deadline is this week though, so I should be able to spend more time working on my shops and finally get going with some of the new things I have been planning and researching!

It has started to feel like Spring here, the daffodils are popping up in my garden and it’s lovely to see the Spring flowers everywhere – so this month’s calendar features a daffodil pattern…

You can download the PDF here and you can view and print the calendar with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The calendar is A4 in size, but you can scale it to fit different sized paper if you prefer.  You can print onto any type of paper you like, for best results I recommend using your printer's highest quality setting and a good quality paper.

Please note this calendar is for personal use only!  You can print it as many times as you like for your own use but you may not redistribute it in any form (digitally or printed).  You may not modify the calendar or claim it as your own.  If you would like to share the calendar on your blog, Pinterest, facebook etc please include a link back to this page (not the download link).  Thank you!  I hope you enjoy using it :)

P.S. if you like the daffodil pattern on this calendar you might like some of my other Spring / Easter themed designs in my shop - see them here