HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE!

Doll's back in the house! Hey ho kids! Maaan it's been a while, hasn't it? I was just gonna turn up real quick and tell y'all that I'm not dead! I finished up my school year and started working. Ever since the beginning of July I have been feeling a bit down though and today was the first day in ages that I really used to calm down and refresh my thoughts a bit. I'm gonna be honest: I don't have any DIYs at hand for you right now. But I feel like focusing a bit on creating some art. We'll see. Right now I'm sleeping a lot and I'm trying to see things positive as I only have to work for another 3 weeks. And you know what's then?? Ahh! I'm soo thrilled! I'm turning 18 on August 11th! Duuude! That mean I can drive by myself - finally. I'ma be a real adult! 

Haha so this is my little update for now. I'll be back soon!
Love you! Tabea ♥ 

SEW, SEW, SEW

Ouuuhhh! Karla Lagerfeld strikes again as my dad said! Guess what friends? I'm about to become a seamstress! Haha no! But I created this little skirt from a buttin-up yesterday and I'm thrilled to show it to y'all!

Okay it all started with my old swing mashine being old and pretty beaten up ... Ten years left their marks. So yesterday this 'little' paket from Amazon arrived and now: I'm the owner of a brandnew W6! No idea whether that's a very well-known brand - as I said I'm not gonna be a seamstress ever, so I not an expert at this. But so far it's doing well and I think it'll do the simple things I want it to. 

I'm not experienced at skirt-making at all, but actually with a working sewing mashine this was a quite doable project. I might write a little tutorial on this later. I added the wooden buttons, they just looked more classy than the plastic ones. I love that litle detail. The stripes are really cute and this skirt goes with so many things!

Because I've just fixed it a few days ago myself, I can show this on a DIY blog as well. I bought this necklace at 'Accesorize' (Is that how you spell it?) in Bournemouth about three years ago now. I found it the other day - well I did was fix the lock and bam! I got a new necklace! Had forgotten all about it!

Thanks for sharing my joy with the new girl in the house!
Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

DIAL #1 - STRAWBERRIES AND QUIET TIME

Welcome to DIAL (call yourself smart, if you figure out this abbreviation) #1! After blogging here for more than 2 months, I feel this little blog of mine should become a bit more 'me'. I love to share my crafts but I think it gets really fun to read a blog when you feel connected with the blogger on a more personal level...

So I decided to create this new section called DIAL where I'll share what's happening right now in my (ever so exciting) life. So if you want to know how I roll ... come along!

It's strawberry time! Yeeeay! I've been out in the garden picking strawberries almost everyday. Sugared, with whipped cream, as jam .. ouuuh, so many ways to enjoy them! My dad made the best straberry jam this year. I'm on a stawberry diet these days - it substitutes for chocolate! 

Can you guess what this pink thing is? Dried paint. Yeah ... I should start by saying I haven't really gottten around to cleaning up my craft table.. guess there was some (quite a bit) paint left in of the glasses I use to mix paints. After soaking it in warm water, I pulled it all out in one go. 

Also I sorted my fabric and put it in neat piles. What an achievement. I was actually gonna reorganize my entire craft table. I was. I didn't take a photo of the mess I created but let me tell ya: it was epic and it took me three nights to clean it up again. I couldn't find the motivation to create a completely new workspace though. I'm a bit bummed about that ... At least I decluttered my craft supplies - the hoarder in me really comes out here. 

There can't be a personal blogpost without a blogger's face in it. So here are two pictures of my face. I think Afterlight is doing quite a bit for me. I'm having an almost-no make-up phase right now. Summer's on I guess. But also I gave up mascara for about 99% of the time right now. There are multiple make-up tools I consider myself being able to use. Not mascara. At the end of the day it is everywhere except on my lashes. Every single time.
Also can you tell I got a mosquito bite right under my eye in the second picture? No? Waaaah tricked you! Haha no, but editing is really quite amazing...

Lastly a photo of my cat Schmitti. I think he's a lot like me. His face just says too well what I think these days in school - get me out of here! I don't know, somehow I'm enjoying the last few weeks / days of school. Kinda like the last days of a year. Things are winding down a bit. Time to breath. 

Not much time though: I'll start working in just about one and half weeks and maaan this year has just rushed by!

Hope you're all doing well!
Lots of Love, Tabea ♥ 

5 WAYS TO SPICE UP YOUR JOURNAL PAGES

Hey you journal-loving people! Do you ever feel like your journal is a bit plain? I write on a daily basis and I reread my entries every so often. Lately i felt bored by how all the pages looked the same with the same handwriting over and over again. 

Sooo let's do something about it! I came up with five ways to spice up your daily journal. All these options are to be pre-made, so when you sit down at night you go right to writing and just add them whenever you feel like it.

Aren't these little arrows cute? I think they're pretty cool to highlight a passage in your writing or start an entry. As you can see I used paint swatches, so I'd have a gradient ( Ombré Arrows - we're so hipster around here...), cut and glued them together.  There are tons of ways to create these cuties: big to small triangles, light to darker shades... Get creative!

Looove these! No for real, I'm already dreading using them because I want to use them over and over! Might have to make more, woooh! I think the making is rather self-explanatory. Cut cardboard, write on a piece of white paper and glue that on there. I love the color it adds to a page though! So simple, so good!

Tags, tags, tags... I've wanted to buy a pack of these at the craft store forever. Well, how about homemaking them? They're literally a 3-minute project. Cut cardboard, glue a rectangle of paper / other cardboard on there, add the circle on the top and whole-punch it! You might also add some ribbon or lines to write on.

Did you realize there was something wrong until picture three? Haha, there are some things I ALWAYS do wrong at first try. Like mirror-writing. I got everything right ... except the 'a'. Gaaaw! Whatever, this is DIY at it's finest! 
Elsie started this series 'today is (insert adjective)' and I liked it so much, I though it'd be fun to label journal entries that way. The 'Today' an 'was' are seperated in case I just need a 'Today'. Maybe if I wanna say 'Today I won a million Dollars'. It could happen!

Okay so picture-wise this isn't number 5 'cause you've seen the exclamation-mark before. Actually you've seen it in another post before but I felt this needed to be an extra point. I think everyone should have one of these exclamation-mark stamps at hand. Sometimes you just need to make a bold statement. Also a question-mark or a dot would be fun, too, wouldn't it?

I talked about how most of these papercrafts can be used without other craft supplies at hand. Therefore I used a rather simple technique:

How smart is this, please? You can store them away as long as you want and when you crave a color-pop you remove the non-sticky part of the tape and bang: there's your sticker! 

This is what I imagine those tools to be used like. I'm so thrilled to use them overthe next weeks!
Hope you enjoyed today's post just as much as I did! I'm off now to decorate my page about this beautiful sunny day!

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥