Making the stuff in your home your own style

Sometimes you don't want the stuff for children (or other products) they sell in the stores because it has A LOT OF strange prints that you don't like :)
My quick tip for today is: Unpick the seams, save ribbons with buckles, elastic ribbons etc cut out new fabric from the pieces and sew it all back together again in a fabric that you like.
Maybe you have a nice fabric -- make a remake.

A pram for the dolls and a bouncy seat that I've made new fabric for that suits better with our style & taste.

Exhibition - A state of content

If you are in the Stockholm area please come by and visit this exhibition at Gallery Operatingplace at PUB floor 3. I'm Carina Bergholm Sundén (alias Inger Carina) :-)

Gallery Operatingplace
New Exhibition fr 29 maj - 23 juli

A STATE OF CONTENT
- A SELECTION OF EXTRA ORDINARY SCANDINAVIAN ART

Marianne Lindberg De Geer
Carina Bergholm Sundén
Lukas Göthman
Vanna Bowles
Helena Mutanen
Peter Svedberg
Heinrich Müllner
Filippa Barkman
Marcus Bjernerup
Hanna Beling
Lars Hammarström
Kjartan Slettemark
LOD
Tanja Malo

Opening Thursday May 29, 17-20 GalleriyOperatingplace, PUBs floor 3, Hötorget, Stockholm. Other days open Mon-Fri 10-19, Sat 10-17, Sun 11-17.
Gallery Operatingplace
PUB Floor 03
Hötorget
Stockholm

Moly project - Now with beaded sushi rice

My moly has two parts; one part with the normal paper to drew on and one part with a long piece of fabric to make something textile on. I have started with a comic type drawing of my "not so glamorous week" with title: "En diskbänksrealistisk vecka". If I translate this Swedish expression to English it would be close to: "A kitchen-sink-realistic week" :)
I scanned the images rather big so you can click on them to read the text. This one here has an English translation:

Here is my embroidered image on the fabric part of my moly.

now with beaded sushi rice...

It turned out fat... I'm super curious what it's going to look like when it comes back to me after my four other Moly_x_16 group friends has contributed their art in it!
More detail images on my flickr

Sunday afternoon in the studio

The view from my studio window.

It's not often these days that I'm entirely on my own. I'm on maternity leave (most days of the week) with our second girl now 10 months. She is with me in the studio but she is the impatient type and doesn't let me work much :)
Yesterday I went to the studio by myself for a couple of hours. Brought a bag of goodies (old colorful vintage finds that has been hanging in the wardrobe for a while) - maybe I could make something with it...
Have a lot of Copic markers that I love to use all the time while sketching - I needed something to bring them in, going back and forth from home to my studio. Cut up one of the blouses and made a pouch out of it. My small digital camera also got a cozy from a nuno-fabric.
I used a super good tutorial from Three bears for the pouches!Colorful goodie bag

Copic marker & digital camera Cozys

All of them actually fit inside . I love my Copics!

I'm a ribbon junkie

LOVE ribbons! - especially vintage. Want to put ribbons on everything.
Tried to come up with new things to make with ribbon.............but only the same-old-same-old came to mind :)
Flowers, like they had on the rococo-dresses in the 1700's. I want to make a copy of a dress like that sometime - and one for my 5 year old daughter too.
( :-D I saw a picture in my head of my chubby 10 months girl in one of thouse frilly dresses!)

Velvet ribbon makes great leaves!

Roses on a stem...

Crocheted moon landscape bag

Maybe you remember this post from November about my playing with 3D crochet. I did 24 squares and they have been lying here in a basket. Now I put them together and made a bag out of them, because I found these handles at a flea market. Put a Japanese cotton fabric in as lining.

Crocheted moon landscape

Finished bag. Approx 30 x 25 cm (12" x 10").
It's based on a standard (a bit "tweaked" & changed) granny square.

Japanese printed cotton fabric lining.

Not my colors though.... I need something extra colorful for spring. This is more suitable for the fall/winter collection.

Got some questions how I made this.
So this i my attempt to explain in English - bear with me:)
First & second row is crocheted with what we call velvet yarn. Third row some kind of Angora mega hairy yarn and the last row ordinary wool yarn.
To achieve the bulky effect and keep the work square I did as follows:
With velvet yarn I crocheted 5 double crochet in a group and took the hook out of the last chain. Then put the hook trough the top-chain of the groups first double crochet and put the last chain on the hook again. Pulled the yarn through it all to bind the top of all 5 of the double crochet's tight together.
Hope it made some sense :)
Kind regards Inger Carina

A little domestic DIY for some spring feeling

Went to Dalarna and fetched Michael's granma's kitchen sofa - I put new fabric on it and painted it sometime in the early 90's, which resulted in a blue sofa with checked blue/gray fabric. Nothing I like nowadays :)
With a stapelgun and a super cute pink floral oilcloth from Mingla design it took me 4 minutes to make our kitchen ready for spring.

Voilà - Spring kitchen!

Mmmmm thats more like it! Brilliant colors!

More my range of colors

Colorful grannies

My house is filled with this 4 to 6 piece patches - any suggestions what to make out of all the test-patches you produce during a crafting lifetime? :)

Experimenting with surfaces

Working with crocheted surfaces. Trying to make fun and interesting textures. Here is a test that I kind of like so I made a little bag out of it. The colors are, as you know by now, a little bit to subtle for my taste :) I continue to experiment

At last, I'm done moving in to my new studio! I've decided - Wednesdays is textile craft day! Hopefully this will result in MUCH more postings with new craftprojects here. See you soon.

I know --- to many images of material and no crafting :) But just a few more photos today because it's like a candy shop here :-) mmmmm.

International Moleskine exchange

Hope you have seen the link on the right to my moly-exchange group. This is a wonderful project started by Marty Harris.
20 groups of 3-8 artists are sending Moleskine Japanese foldout sketch books to each other around the world. Read all about it on http://www.flickr.com/groups/moly_x/

My group is moly_x_16
Was doodling about it in my sketch book and came to the conclusion that I will sew in a long piece of fabric in my book. This way my "moly_x_16-friends" can work and sketch with tread or another textile technique.

I'm as always very excited :)

Wizard of Oz-fabric & Print-on-demand textile

Fabric shopping on the net at a break from my BIG studio swap. Everything took SOO much more time than I expected. Off course - things like this does.
The movers are coming on Tuesday and my new desk and other things are deliverd to the new studio, from IKEA, on Monday. Now all my craft supplies are in boxes so I did som inspiration-surfing in the webshops:
The Wizard of Oz photo fabrics!
Dorothyprints from Karen's shop Anna Lena's , Long Beach USA. This print is so lovely and superfun! Bought one more Oz-pattern. You can see that one by clicking on the image below with all the fabrics on.

Found a bunch of SUPER CUTE small-printed fabric from Japan at Nuno. I couldn't stop myself. Prints like this gives me inspiration to stay up at night makeing my own patterns with Illustrator :-)

Click on this image for a larger view. Enjoy all these marvelous prints!

I have been looking for a company that makes print-on-demand fabric printing. Found one (First2Print) but when I calculated on the price it turned out to be REALLY expensive, like $800 for 5meters or something like that. Found another one in Spain (DigitalTextile). Haven't contacted them about their prices yet. I will continue looking. Have done a lot of handprinting but now I would like to order my prints from somebody.

I would love to hear if you have any tips on this subject ! :-)
Kind Regards /Inger Carina

Moving my studio. It's Craft Chaos!

I'm moving to a new studio this week. It's very exciting, but it's also A LOT of work cleaning up and putting everything in boxes. Right now it's a total chaos here.
I am a big collector - fabric, beads, patterns from the 50's-80's etc. I Love to pat my piles of fabric like pets :) this is one of my favorite shelfs with vintage colorful prints (and some new with the same "graphic feel" from for example IKEA)
When you clean up and go through all the stuff it's like an archeological (is that a word?) field survey. You make finds - like my collection of vintage aprons! Hadn't seen them in a while and I got really inspired from their cuteness. I will make a photo presentation of them later for you all, so you also kan enjoy them :)

I miss Paris

Working with a big web-project today. Took a break and visited my blog-roll favorites. Found this tip to add borders to your images (online service) at How about orange's delicious blog.

It's a sketch I made in Paris of me & Birgitta as hedgehogs again :), also taking a break, at a café in Marait where we lived. I wish I was there now.....
Back with some more crafting without the computer soon! Se you later.. /Inger Carina