24 March 2011

A Creative Family - Mum

Hi there girls,

Hope you're all doing well this week!

Are you ready for Mum's creative prowess in photo form? We don't have photos of everything, but we rustled up a good sample of things. You know, I think she even did a project of all her crafting projects. I think she put photos of all her handmade things in a tin (like those lunch tins that were around a couple of years ago) and then decorated the tin itself.

I wonder if a photo of the tin went in the tin? ha ha


You've seen this one before, but I included it because no doubt she made our clothes.


When I was typing String and Nail Pictures on the list - I did think to myself...I'll admit it...they're kinda easy, aren't they?

Well, looking at the above I take that back.

Not easy. And that's cotton, not string. I remember this picture, it hung above the stairs in our 70s house. We pretty much lived in one house in the 70s, another in the 80s and another in the 90s. Pretty much.

Summary: String and Nail Pictures = not easy.

What if you break the string...er, cotton?

What if you bang your finger while banging the nails in?

Lots of potential for dissatisfaction and injury with ye olde string and nails craft.


This is another 70s house memory. Sue and I are 19 months apart. We didn't get dressed in the same clothes much, just similar ones like these sometimes.

Look at Sue's handbag. She had a tissue in there and 20c for the offering at Sunday School.

Mum crocheted those dresses. I wonder if they were itchy?


Oh my word, I love this photo. This is why I take photos now - because they'll turn into classic ones in the future. Makes me want to go to my mother's house and look through her albums and get some printed. Can I do that sometime, Mum?

Things Mum made in this photo:

Her dress probably. Love it. She's in blue on the side there.
My dress probably.
The cake - she definitely made the cake.

Now, what sort of cake do you think it is? I tell ya, it took us ages to figure it out, but with her memory and our detective skills, we worked out it's an orange ladybug. I used to like ladybugs and she said there was no red food colouring back then, so she used orange! Before we worked it out I wondered why she'd made me an orange creature cake...

The little boy isn't my brother, he's my cousin. Pete was asleep upstairs apparently. The rest are the four grandparents, Granny's brother and uncles and aunties.


Ah, more crochet. This is a shirt/top thing she made for Pete. He was seen in it often...

Amazing handiwork going on there. This from someone who loves crochet, but makes up everything she does because she has no idea how to read a pattern. In consultation with Mum I do the stitches right (I think there's only three), I just have different names for them.


This one's a Barbie poncho!

Did you have a poncho in the 70s/80s? I remember we did - they were knitted or crocheted, I can't remember.

The poncho should come back. They keep your shoulders/neck/arms warm with room for flapping if you need a bit of air because you're hot. Works for me!


Hobbytex.

This is one of my favourites because I remember doing a lot of it with Mum and Sue. Mum had a big container of Hobbytex paints and we used to go to town colouring in. I had favourite colours because they flowed easily. It's a fun craft except when the paint doesn't flow smoothly.

I just did a Google search for Hobbytex and found an Australian site for it. Golly, seeing the paint pens (which is essentially what they are) again took me back! I remember those plastic guards to stop us squeezing while painting. We had to take the couple we had off and on and always put them on the one we were using.

The photo above is a pillowcase Mum made for me. Debra means 'bee' thus the bees. Cute. I remember the Hobbytex bits were cold to roll onto in winter.

Mum also used the Hobbytex paints to label our socks too. D and S because we had a lot of white socks for school and they were forever getting mixed up. Good idea. Also useful for us when we went swimming at school. We could always point out the D and S socks and find them easily.

The doll house.

And that's the divan that she covered three times. And she probably made those curtains too. I say probably, because she always did that kind of stuff growing up, but I'm not completely sure if she made these exact ones. Can't half tell this is the 70s house :o)

She wallpapered and carpeted this doll house. She made tonnes and tonnes of Barbie clothes. I was lucky. She also made the bed, sheets, pillows, dressing table, dressing table seat, beanbag, lounge suite, floor rugs and the macreme planter hanger on the front there. Can you see it? Third level up, on the right pole - there's some string covering something brown. That's it. There might even be another one down the bottom too. Told ya Mum liked a challenge. She was good at this stuff and made it to see if she could make it and she enjoyed it.

Get this - she even made a Barbie clutch purse. It was crocheted and so tiny. She used a piece of one of her old necklace chains for the strap.

Wow. I mean, really, wow, Mum.


Next we move onto the ceramics phase. This phase lasted quite a while. I'd say at least 10 years.

She made us quite a few things over the years, this cup being one of them. Sadly the handle's broken, but it's still a keeper.

We made a lot of ceramics with her too. It's quite a process to have kids involved in. You choose your greenware first, take it home without breaking it, clean it up without breaking it, paint it without breaking it, take it back without breaking it and get it home again without breaking it.

I think there was some 'breaking it' with us involved.

I used to like using the scraping tools to get the rough edges off. And then the sanding tools to make it nice to paint on. We used to sit at the coffee table with a towel on the table and scrape and sand the greenware together. I know I did this, but I've no memory of what I actually made.


This is a clock Mum made Sue. We both got one, mine was more pinkish, hers was more browner pink. 

A lot of fine hand detail doing on there. And it's not 2D work, it's all 3D, and takes a bit of skill. 

Mum made a lot of ceramics over the years - salt and pepper shakers (we had those mushroom ones on the table every night for years and years), ornaments, clocks, gifts, more ornaments, a nativity set (I really like that set, always have)...


...these swans. They're ornaments.


And these knicky knacky things. The ones with lids held jewellery on her dressing table, I think. 

Aren't they so cute? They're tiny, only a couple of inches high, and the pictures are stencils you put on, they're not painted. 

One thing I've realised, Mum likes miniature. Little clothes, little handbags, little ceramics, little bears - they're coming up soon! 

She's made little mini albums too. And I mean mini, mini ones. Tiny. 

That's all from Mum's list of crafts for today. 

Be back with some more soon! 

2 comments:

  1. Ah the 70's. It was all fun. Loved making all those things.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know, I can tell. You love your crafting :o)

    ReplyDelete

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