Floral Workshops

I have taken the proverbial plunge and designed a series of Floral Workshops for home floral styling!

Yes... after much deliberation and consideration, I decided to do it. I've done workshops with children for so long, and so the time has come now to give working with adults a try!

From my experience working at the Florist, I discovered that so many people actually don't know very much about flowers - they either stick to buying the same things, spend money on the wrong things, or often waste money buying things they don't know how to look after. Not knowing how to look after fresh cut flowers or plants can be quite costly, so I've designed my workshops around all the questions people often ask at the florist, and added in some extra bonus activities - like how to make a vase of metal or glass, which I thought would be fun (and very appropriate seeing that I am facilitating the workshops and I love making things!).

Maybe one day, I might write an e-book with all the info I put into my workshops.

If you are interested to book in or read more details, please click here or in the link on the side bar of my blog.


The workshops will be loads of fun and make lovely gifts for anyone who loves flowers! Contact me if you would like a gift voucher.

Personalised Recipe Binder

I just finished a beautiful personalised recipe binder - made for a client who wanted something special for a pre-wedding kitchen tea bridal gift.

I love taking ordinary stuff and giving it a WOW factor!

The client asked for whites and neutrals, and explicitly asked for it to be extra chunky and textural. So this is how the front detail looked:

As you can see, I embossed a wooden spoon as the focal point for the front, and added a beautiful big coconut shell button, which I wired up with beads to make the flower. I added the natural meshy leaves which were originally part of a big bow that I found in the millinery section of the craft store.

The divider pages have been detailed with a strip of paper which I cut to size and machine stitched onto the plastic divider sheets. I then used my label maker to make the labels for each section.

I made a cute pocket for the inside of the binder - to put magazine recipe cut outs.

I also designed a sheet that can be photocopied - to keep track of all the dinner parties/celebrations/entertaining that the couple will do. (I actually have my own book which I've kept for the last 23 years, with all the dates/visitors/afternoon teas/birthdays/entertaining etc. that we've done!! - It's a wonderful thing to look back on and see what we ate and who came over!)

Here are the instructions if you want to have a go at making one yourself.
Materials List: Binder, dividers, Fabrics, iron on interfacing, papers/buttons/embellishments, label maker, spray adhesive.
Tools: Scissors, sewing machine, iron, paper/pencil, hot glue gun, double sided tape, bull clips

Step one:  Measure your front cover fabric adding about 6cm all around.  This extra will be folded around the binder edges and glued down later.  I used 2 fabrics and sewed them together.  Iron on the interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric.

Pin the cover around the binder and press with your fingers.  Lightly press with the iron.  You can now see where the edge is - which makes it easier to decorate the front cover.

Put the cover aside, and now get to the fabric lining the inside of the binder.  Measure the inner fabric to the exact size of the binder.  Cut a piece of interfacing 2cm shorter all around and iron on to the fabric.

Fold the edges of  the lining fabric and iron down.  Stitch around the edge with your sewing machine.

Now, we come to making the template for the hole for the binder rings to fit through the lining fabric.

I used a piece of scrap paper and eyeballed the size and shape of the binder rings and drew it onto my paper.  Then I cut out the paper to check I had the right size and that it fit around the binder rings.  You need to cut the paper as you see here - with a notch and fold to the edge.  This is where the fabric will be folded and sewn around the binder rings.

To position the hole on the lining fabric, line up your lining fabric with the binder cover, and place your paper template in position.  It will be uncentered, as the binder rings are not usually centered.

Trace around your template.  Check measure before cutting, that your opening is in the right position from the top and bottom of the fabric lining - remembering that you are about 2cm away from the actual edge of the binder, as the lining is 2cm shorter all the way around.

This is how it looks on the fabric lining.

Cut out the hole and diagonal notches to the corners.

Fold the edges to the inside and pin down.  Check that it all fits over the binder rings!

Stitch around the folded edges.

Now you are up to decorating the front cover and making a pocket.  Pin everything down using the ironing lines as your guide to where the edges are.  Then stitch in place. 

Cut your pocket and iron on some interfacing to the wrong side.  Add your embellishments and sew into place.  Then stitch pocket onto fabric lining.  You won't be able to stitch anything onto the pocket or front cover once they are glued down onto the binder.  So make sure anything you want to stitch down is done now.

To make the dividers, put double sided tape at the very edge of the divider - including on the very edge of the tab.  Stick down a strip of scrapbooking paper.

Stitch the paper in place using your machine.  I used a zig zag stitch. Turn the divider over and trim around the divider tab shape.

 I made 10 divider tabs - starters, soups, salads, pasta, fish, meat, chicken, cakes & desserts, inspirations, and entertaining.  Use a label machine to make the label tabs.  I used a similar one to this.

Now, for covering the binder.  

Spray the  outer side of the BINDER with spray adhesive.  Position the cover and press into place.  

Carefully spray around the inside EDGE of the BINDER and fold over the cover fabric.  Clamp down using some bull clips.

Spray the inside of the binder carefully, and up to about 2cm AWAY from the edge.  Stick down the lining fabric making sure the edges are firmly glued down.

Lastly, add on the chunky details using your hot glue gun.

Add the dividers and plastic sleeves and voila... you have your recipe binder.

If it's all too hard... you can contact me and I'll be happy to make one for you!!

Lucky Finds

One of my favorite thrills is finding a discarded piece of junk by the side of the road, and knowing that I can give it a new lease on life!

I was recently driving with my daughter and we spotted this disgusting foot stool on the nature strip.



It even had an adjustable feature for angling the cushion.



We did an illegal U-turn and checked that it was in reasonable working order - aside from a very saggy seat cushion, so we packed it into the boot of the car.
A couple of days later, we decided to give it a makeover.

We first took out the staples and removed the seat cushion. This is how it looked inside:



It actually had CARDBOARD rather than foam!! No wonder it was so saggy.

So, our materials list was:


We popped into one of our favorite fabric stores Chee Soon & Fitzgerald where my daughter picked out a lovely floral linen fabric. Cost $50.00 - a bit of a splurge but I figured if it didn't work out I could make something else with the fabric. We then went to
The Foam Booth where we got our foam seat cushion supplied and cut to size for $13.
Then went in to Porters Paints to get a good quality paint. I bought a couple of small sample pots $5 each.

The reupholstering actually didn't take too long once we got started.
I saved the outer wooden edge and cut an extra piece of wood to add strength to the center of the cushion.


Then we covered the foam and wood frame with wadding and stapled it together with the staple gun.



Then I wrapped the wadding with a spare piece of fabric to give strength to the outer layer of fabric.



I finished the edges with some strong upholstering thread and a running stitch as there was too much thickness for the staple
gun.
Then covered the seat with the linen fabric gathering the edges again in the corners.





Cut off the excess fabric and put the cushion aside while painting the wooden frame.
We sanded the frame and then painted it - only needed one small sample pot! Rubbed back some of the paint after it dried with methylated spirits and a rough rag. The whole job took about 3 hours - including the painting!


We are thrilled with the results and love our new little quirky blue footstool!!

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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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