Moroccan Beading & Henna Party

I recently facilitated a Morrocan Beading Bar for a pre wedding Henna Party. The Henna Party is a Middle Eastern custom where the bride and groom to be, are blessed through prayer and song, and is a beautiful ceremony including Henna Tattoos for all the guests and the bridal families.

My Beading Bar was a huge hit with all the guests including the adults young and old, male and female, and the few kids who were there. I supplied a beautiful range of crystal, silver, pearl, stone, bronze beads which meant that the bracelets and anklets that everyone made looked so good!



I restored an old printers tray I had lying under my studio table to hold all the beads. I also sourced some wooden and silver bowls at some local vintage markets to hold assorted beads. I made a tree from wire and paper mâché to display all the sample bracelets that I'd made. And I painted some terracotta dishes for the guests to use as their bead trays.






Some of the guests were surprised to find that they were able to make something so pretty with a few beads and a bit of patience.

All in all, a big hit.





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A Christening with a Difference

I've never been asked to work at a Christening before... but there's always a first, and this was it.

A very classy event, with a stylist, a beautiful venue, a band, catering and me!

I had a young crowd to please so we did some wet/dry pastel painting on canvas, beading, colouring in (on a custom designed personalised placemat by me especially for the event), photo frame and treasure box making. The brief was to keep things as 'clean' as possible, and I'm happy to say that the white starched table cloths had more stains from the tomato sauce and chips than they did from the art making!

It was a challenge doing the art at the lunch table, and I also had to set up a display on the lunch table to fit in with the room decor, but the event went beautifully and we managed to keep the kids happy and busy between 11am and 4pm! So the client was thrilled and so were the kids.

89 Kids on a Rainy Day

I was booked to facilitate and design some activities at a large party at Nielsen Park Kiosk recently, with many families invited. The kids had lunch and then had the option of coming to my 'art studio' which I'd set up in a gorgeous hall or going to the beach for a swim. Problem was, the rain started. So all the kids came in to the studio at once! My well thought out plan went into meltdown and it was all hands on deck for the first 15 minutes of chaos! After that, it settled down and the event went really well. Luckily, there was a microphone, so I was able to be heard above the mayhem, and explain to the kids how the afternoon would pan out! There were 89 kids from ages 4-17. I had 3 activities organised including tie dying singlets - for all of them, painting and decorating a shadow box for the 4-6 yr olds, and making a "family boat" canvas for the 6+ kids. The brief was to create things with an earthy Hamptons Design feel... so I used lots of neutral colours, driftwood, metals, twine, and natural elements including shells, and starfish. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that the kids have a ball - and they did.

This is the Family Boat Canvas - the kids painted a background, and a wooden word, then made a boat using tin, driftwood, wire, metal mesh, and various tools. You can't see so well in the picture, but the family name was embossed onto the tin sail using metal punches. It looked really good I must say!.






















My studio display corner!

Cable Reel Table

A couple of weeks ago I picked up these cable reels from an old building site and thought they'd make great coffee tables. We have an oddly shaped room which has been waiting for a coffee table for months but I just haven't found anything suitable in the stores.

We went to the hardware store and bought ourselves an orbital sander - now my favorite tool! It's amazing what this little thing does and I can't wait for more council pickups to get my hands on some more old furniture that I can now sand and restore or repurpose!


We needed quite a lot of tools for the job.



Sanding all over the reel was easy with this orbital sander by Ozito - $30 from the hardware store.




We measured 70mm from the outside edge of the reel and drilled 25mm holes through the top with a spade bit.


We pushed 25mm dowel through the holes and then notched out another hole in the bottom of the reel for the dowel to fit into straight and tight.





The finished table is really cool - still may get some castors, but for now we love it!



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