The little man with the red and yellow car

We went to a christmas craft fair at Burghley House last weekend. Over all it was a bit rubbish but we did get a couple of nice things.

The best was this 1960's Noddy print for the bubba's nursery. We are in need of art in there but we are so picky we still hadn't found anything. I love the colours of this illustration, and the elephants! I wonder what the scene was about...

Two sites I'm loving today

I've just come across these gorgeous prints by Peagreen:

I think this owl (£45) is my favourite.

I'm also loving EVERYTHING on Lapin and Me:

Dear Father Christmas,

Can I have all of the beautiful things please?

Thanks

Love Julia

Baby Bear

I will try not to let this turn into a baby worship blog but how could I resist posting this photo? I hope she forgives us for dressing her up for our own amusement.

Lovely Clusters

I thought I would give you a break from the baby news and mention this nice site lovely clusters which currently includes a couple of my handmade toys. it has lots of lovely other things too.

Whats that? Just one more picture? oh go on then:

Oh baby

Just popping in to share a picture of Bea having her first bath - I will get back to posting properly eventually but getting myself dressed by lunchtime is enough of a challenge at the moment!

How cute is she? This was right before she realised she didn't like having a bath and started screaming.

Baby Bea

Introducing Beatrice Elizabeth Haag who suprised us by arriving 9 days early on 5th Spetember - which turned out to be a good thing as she weighed in at an impressive 9lb 3!

She is absolutely gorgeous but keeping us very busy (and awake for most of the night!)

Quilting

My latest project for the nursery is a decorative quilt for the cot. I have never made a quilt before but am enjoying the process so far. I will have to get a move on though as we only have about 2 and a half weeks to our due date!

I am keeping it quite simple with patchwork squares and some appliques. Hopefully it will be finished soon and I will reveal the whole thing!

Oh yes, oh yes

Here is a clip from an animation project I was involved with recently. I created all the artwork and the film was made by creative agency Dave.

Its basically a training video for the call centre staff of insurance company Churchill.

It was lots of fun to do - especially as I didn't have to animate it myself!

p.s. The soundtrack isn't really music with strange animal sounds - the real sound has been covered up to protect Churchill's top secret training techniques. (I know what the real script was but if I told you I'd have to kill you...)

Seeing stars

And spots!

I have just listed a boy's version of the cot decoration in my etsy shop. This one is stars in the more manly colours of red and blue. Had our bump been a boy I would have liked this colour scheme for our nursery. If they've made a mistake I will have to remove this listing and keep this for myself! I do hope not though as he would have nothing but pink clothes!

Blood, sweat and Lloyd Loom

We bought this 1931 Lloyd Loom armchair in Newmarket a few weeks ago for the nursery. It was badly painted in a light blue and had a few areas of damage to the weave but as it was just the shape we had been looking for we decided to do it up ourselves.

It was a bigger job than we thought it would be! The cleaning up and repairing of the weave wasn't too bad apart from poking out all of the old paint clogs with a palette knife and screwdriver, but when we started painting we realised it wasn't going to be as simple as we first thought. We ended up painting the entire thing with tiny water colour brushes as we found it was the only way to get the paint right into the weave without clogging it up. I don't even want to try and work out the hours of labour it took! When you're eight months pregnant you do not want to be sitting on the floor with big swollen feet at 10 o'clock at night painting a chair with a miniature brush!

Finally we got it painted just before losing the will to live and I have made a new seat pad and matching cushion and got it settled into the corner of the nursery.

We love it and hopefully baby will appreciate all our hard work!