I feel spoiled... and loved!

At last I took some time of taking pictures from all the cards & goodies I got for my birthday & from the art exchange I took part in.
Thank you so much Jaimee, Marta, Eva (oops, forgot to add your beautiful card above), Nathalie, Veerle, Krisztina, Nathalie, Heather, Anna, Stephanie, Judit, Laura, Baahar, Ina, Kylie, Kristin, Ayperi, Estella, Colleen ,Stina, Kim and Kirsten.
I hope I have not forgotten someone 'cause my mailbox got flooded! ;)
This beautiful scarf was send to me from Heather & I love it so much. It's a fantastic color and has a very soft touch! It's handfelted from superfine & soft fibers! Thank you so much for sending me this beauty just because...
Then Anna spoiled me with some fantastic artworks. I can't wait to get them framed and give them a nice spot in my studio. The first one says on the back: 'inspired by the Barbie murders'
Haha, my collaboration partner is the funniest! :) Thank you, Anna!
My friend Stephanie send me these lovelies: a wonderful and warm beret and a fitting scarf. The cute little stripey elephant is watching me work in my studio! He makes me smile! :)
Thanks so much for adding more knitted goodies to my Stephanie-collection! :)And yesterday, the postman rang and gave me a big box with these yummy goodies!
Ohh, delish bananabread from Nathalie! NomNom! Thanks heaps, Nathalie!
I'm afraid I'll have to share otherwise I won't be able to go through the door anymore...And today I received the Poufiks I won from Evaforeva's giveaway and I am SUPERhappy with them! I knew it: I needed a Poufik in my life! :)
I'll take pictures from them next week and will make you all jealous again! ;)

And I wish you all a wonderful X-mas Eve and X-mas day, whenever you celebrate.
Let it be filled with joy, happiness and cake! :)

Challenge entry

I could not be happier with this weeks challenge theme chosen by DeerLola on the European Streetteam. It's been ages since I participated in the European Streetteam challenges. The challenges usually only last a week and sometimes that is just too short to finalize a ceramic project.
This week's challenge was called 'Ode to Anna' aka AnnaRubyKing or LilaRubyKing.
Read more about it on DeerLola's blog:
I've been admiring Anna's work from the first time I saw it and above that, Anna is just a super lovely person all around so it was such a pleasure to make something inspired by her work.

These birds make me smile and even though that they can't sing, they are still called singing birds because each and every one of them is inspired by the 2D birds of AnnaRubyKing.
And I have also made a few to use in a moss terrarium.And I have another idea in mind with these birds but they need some more fine tuning. I might have a new production line in my ceramic factory here! They are available in my Etsy shop.

Woot woot! Thank you so much everyone who casted their vote on the Etsy voter!
My ceramic set has been chosen by the Etsy community as high-end luxury item for the holidays. It has been published in the Storque, Etsy's handmade blog, today. One click on the picture below will bring you right to it! :) I'm thrilled about this - thanks for so much love! :)

New in my shop...

... in case you are more one of my blog visitors then one of my shop visitors...
I listed these last week and they make me happy because they add a touch of color to my shop. :)

Mitsy's crocheted babuschka

Another post about crocheting but this one is superspecial. A while ago, I asked Tara from Mamachee to design me a Babuschka crochet pattern so that I could crochet little, colorful feelings.
I love the pattern she made for me so I crocheted them in rainbow colors, took some fun pictures for her and now she listed the pattern in her Etsy shop. Yay! :)
Haha, she actually called the pattern 'Mitsy's crocheted babuschka'. We'll the ones in the pictures are mine but don't hesitate to make your own.
They are easy and fun to make and they are fun to play with. You can easily tweak the pattern yourself so that you can actually make 'em larger or smaller so that they would look like real nesting dolls. :)

How to make a plaster stamp?

Since I was making a few moulds today, I remembered that I planned to make a tutorial on how to make a plaster stamp. Plaster stamps are not hard to make and they are great fun to use in your modelling projects. You can use regular stamps too but they are much softer so somtimes it's hard to use them for pressing into clay.

Here is what you need: a rolling pin, a cutter, a stamp and a piece of plasticine.
Plasticine is soft clay made of plastic so when you poor the plaster in there, it will come off very easily afterwards.

Take a piece of plasticine and kneed it a little bit.
Make a flat piece with a rolling pin. Make it about 0,5cm or 0,2inch thick

Press a stamp into the flat piece or plasticine.

Make it nice and round with a cookie cutter.

Roll a flat piece of plasticine and twist it around the stamped piece.

Let the ends cross each other and cut the excess plasticine away with a knife.

Press the plasticine clay firmly together on the bottom so no plaster will be able to escape.
Make some plaster ready. Mostly it is made with 1 part of water and 3 parts of plaster but it depends on the kind of plaster you use.
I always go with the pyramid method: you poor the plaster into the water at the same place and a pyramid will form. When the pyramid doesn't suck any water anymore, it's enough plaster and you can start mixing it with the water.
If you like that the plaster will set quickly, you can use lukewarm water or add a pinch of salt.
Poor the plaster into the plasticine mould.
You can also poor liquid (porcelain) clay in there and fire the stamp.
Let it set for a while and take the plasticine away. Cut away the rough edges with a kitchen knife.
Now you can stamp your heart out in any modelling material. :)

Queen Anne Lace scarf

When I started to crochet, my friend Stephanie had good faith in me as she wondered if I could crochet this scarf for her that she has been wanting like forever. I looked at the pattern and tried a little swatch and it was really super easy.
Since she wanted a particular kind of yarn, she sent it to me. It arrived on tuesday and I finished the scarf on wednesday evening.
I loved making it and I hope she will love her scarf! :)If you want to make a scarf like this, please visit Khebin Gibbons' blog where she shares the great pattern! :)

Mini Etsy meeting

Remember I made cookies? Well, these were actually to take to the little EST (European Street Team) meeting I had with Kerrin from Sigmosaics, Myrte from Mirthquake and Vanessa who is an eager buyer on Etsy.
After the batch that failed, I made a new batch that turned out fine... I certainly learned a lesson. :)
I wrapped them up nicely to take to our little meeting & the happy girls were getting all excited.
This is Kerrin. She asked me to take a picture of her wearing Nanouke's lovely ring & bracelet.
Here you can see how much fun we had... our jaws just really hurted from laughing.Decided to be a bit more serious for a group picture...Kerrin & Myrte selftiming for a group shot.Here is the happy European Street Team bunch. Look at the beautiful pins we got from Mirthquake! :)What a funfilled day it was! :) We were all definitely happy girls... no doubt about that.

When I got home, I still had a big task ahead of me: matching all the participants for the EST Easter Bunny swap. No less then 50 people signed up and it was quite hard as they almost all love bags and we don't have that many bagmakers! LOL :)
Anyway, I get to read all the questionnaires filled out and I had to laugh so hard with StarOfThe East as she managed to change one question a little bit but it makes a huge difference in the answer...
I asked: 'Favorite stores (on line + real life):'
She managed to write this: Favorite stories (on line + real life): http://star-of-the-east.blogspot.com/2008/12/solvingor-problem.html
Hahaha, so if you don't like the question, you just change it! Fun approach! :)
She was wondering what I was going to do with her favorite story...

Crochet attempt 4: I did it!

A miracle has happened or perhaps Tara from mamachee just mentioned the magic word in crocheting world: stitch markers. As I kept getting the start of the heel on the back of my work instead of on the side, she said I might be using the slipstitches as actual stitches and told me that I couldn't do that. She suggested to put a safety pin ('cause I don't have any stitch markers yet) in the slipstitches so that I wouldn't put an actual stitch in there.
It worked! It really worked! :)
Tara has been so patient with me and promptly answered all my crocheting questions with so much detail that I just couldn't give up. I knew that we would be able to do it! :) Now I'm off to buy some more yarn as I used more then I thought because of the 4 strands crocheting... and soon I'll be wearing my Oma House Slippers with pride and joy.
Thank you Tara for all your patience and perseverance to get me through this!
You're the best! :) Oh, and the size is simply perfect!

Third attempt... right but wrong

This is getting slightly embarrassing... My third attempt at the slippers failed again but I'm SO learning from my mistakes so it's good to hang in there and give it another try. This time, Tara from Mamachee, advised me to use four strands of yarn and hook number 7. It worked on the size: it's finally an adult size and I suppose the yarn I'm using is too thin to use as a single or double strand for these slippers.It looks OK though, but it's not and I know I'm probably messing up on the sole already as the heel doesn't seem to be in the right place. And since the heel isn't in the right place, the rest of the slipper is neither. By now, I must have done the sole five times and I really don't know what I'm doing wrong there. Its quite easy to follow the pattern but somehow I don't seem to end in the right place for the heel to start so all the stitches move a little bit and I get a crooked slipper.
I think I might need Tara's advise once more. She really should be charging more for her patterns with pupils like me! :)

Second attempt failed

After I posted the picture of my first crocheting attempt, I also send Tara from Mamachee a bit more info so she could probably figure out where I went wrong. She told me that I didn't do the soles right as I didn't have enough stitches to follow the pattern.
So, I unraveled the whole thing and started again... This is the result:As for me, the first attempt looked like I crocheted too loose, I used hook number 7 for that as the pattern states but somehow it seemed too floppy to me. So this time I used hook number 5 and it's much tighter but also much smaller - LOL - this is for a four year old I think! I did follow the pattern for size 9/10 though so either my yarn is too thin and I will definately need to change the hook back to number 7.
I did mess up again somewhere on the last row but I'm really happy that now it actually looks like a slipper! :)

First attempt at the slippers...

OK, don't laugh, this is my first attempt at the slippers. I bought this lovely pattern but my slippers don't look like 'em at all. However, Tara from Mamachee, has been so helpful giving me advise and explaining more crochet abbreviations. It's a weird language, I tell you. Actually, I typed all the abbreviations out in the pattern because otherwise I wouldn't be able to read it. I messed up tremendously but I won't give up. Tommorrow is a new day and I'll try again.
It's nice to have a little change from claying for a while. I hope to finish them sometime this week though... :)Excuse me for the bad quality of the picture but it's hard to photograph at night without lightbox...