Giveaways, freebies and DIY printables! Soon to come?

The bread and butter of blogging. If you want to guarantee a high pageview on your blog, one of the strategies to lure people in is to offer them free things!

At least, that is how I find many of the blogs I ended up loving. To begin with I stumbled over my all-time favourite blog, www.howaboutorange.blogspot.com. I can't remember how I found Jessica Jones' blog, but I have not stopped loving it ever since.
I know that it was in 2011, because it was while I was doing research for starting up my own blog. She is such an inspiration to me! Her graphic illustrations on her fabric, wallpaper and custom cases for iPhone and iPad are just amazing. I love the colour schemes, I love the patterns and the shapes. She finds the most exciting projects and new DIY things to make online and as a good blogger, she shares them with her readers. I want to be her! I want to be able to do all the stuff she does. She creates her own things, and I am just a mere copier and follower.

Right now I do not possess the originality to dream up something cool or try to change methods for doing one thing that then leads to a whole different result. One of the things I am very impressed with right now is her latest fabric-dye project using self-made photo negatives of printed photos. She used Inkodye and started using regular objects like safety pins, and cut out forms like clouds and doilies. Then she moved on to using photo negatives and even made the coolest little pouch - which I am very good at making, so this project is screaming my name! How amazing is that?! I am so trying this when I have the money to buy all the supplies and once we get settled in our new apartment. Oh, and I just realised I now have the most perfect little balcony where I can put the fabric out in the sun! I am so trying this!

Anyway, this was so not the point I was trying to make! Where was I? Freebies, right! Maybe I should try that. It would mean that I would have to get a bit more organised when it comes to seasons, events, holidays and special days. Not to mention I would have to spend a lot of time just surfing the web for cool websites that offer their stuff for free - while being cool and awesome!

I will start finding cool free printables, DIY stuff for you to get inspiration from and for you to use. But please pay attention to any disclaimer the original producers of what ever I will post have written and respect that! I will post to their sites for you to download from there. Most of them normally say that the printables are for personal use only, so please respect that :)

Decorating a new place - the real reason for moving!

We are moving. Up until now we have lived in my aunt's house while she has been working in Norway as a nurse. Now she has announced her "home-coming" and we have to find a new place to stay.

Luckily, we found a lovely little flat not far from both of our parents and some of our friends. The only reason I say "luckily" is because we have sold our car (!). If we live close to either of our parents we have easy access to a car whenever we feel too bound down and bored of things within "walking distance". Of course, it is not the only reason!! It also means that my mum won't have to walk that far to come and do the cleaning and general house keeping while we are out driving in her car... haha, I only write this because I know my mum isn't reading this :) :)

One of the absolute pleasures of moving into a new place is the chance to decorate completely empty rooms! Over the past few months we have changed our interior decorating style. We have always had second-hand furniture, mix-matched tree sorts, all kinds of colours and it has all been a bit messy and old-fashioned. Now we are streamlining the style to being more of the same basic colours which I can then spruce up by adding cool, homemade pillows or hanging colourful posters in my black frames.

I can't wait to get a more classic look in my home. Lots of white furniture, preferably old, quirky drawers or cabinets with cool designer items on top with magnificent colours. This also means that I get to go antiquing so I can look for a new cabinet for my dinnerware and Royal Copenhagen collection. Yes!

One of my ideas is also to get some vintage looking art on the walls. I found these free printables via howaboutorange.blogspot.com - originally from designeditor.typepad.com, and I just love them!

Cool, vintage cameras put in a classic, black frame. It doesn't get much better than that! All you have to do is download the files, take them to your local copy-store and they can make it any size you want. I still need to get my copies printed, but it will be done! I'll be sure to post pictures of the finished results in the new flat.


I have also been on the look-out for pillows, so I have an actual excuse/reason to make new pillows cases. I have so much cool fabric tucked away in my craft boxes and it need to be used! Well, I might forget about the fabric I already have and then pay fabricrehab.co.uk another visit to order some of their cool, vintage fabrics. There are some of the retro fabrics they stock that I find it hard to live without - especially the Geekly Chic line. They got me hooked and I am a true fabric addict. Oh my goodness, I am getting extra excited about the prospect of all this work!

It is going to be so great to live a place, where we are not living there on borrowed time. Don't get me wrong, it has been absolutely lovely living in my aunt's house, but there has always been a deadline over our heads. It will be great to not have that. Even if Lady Luck blesses us with a child at some point we can still stay in the flat if we need to. It is big enough for that. So we are set for the next couple of years!

I'll post pictures of the sewing projects I will embark on when we move. And most likely, I'll also post updates on the interior decoration, because I am getting oddly excited by that prospect right now. Maybe because we have been living in someone else's furniture for a 1½, and it is going to be so great to see our own stuff again outside of a storage box!

July 1st, please come now!