Charm on Wheels: Whimsical Cross Stitch Bus Pattern

When tasked with creating a design for the smalls/ biscornu issue of Down The Rabbit Hole, I found myself pondering various ideas. Should I revisit a floral motif like last year, or venture into new territory? Inspiration struck once again while I was commuting on the bus or train, my sketchbook in hand. As I mulled over ideas, I couldn't help but notice the lacklustre appearance of modern trains – just dreary grey boxes on tracks. However, our buses exuded charm with their vibrant designs. Basically they were more colourful and I could do something with that!

 

Do you find yourself frequently travelling on public transport? Like me, perhaps you rely on it daily. Here, our bus and train system utilizes cards called go cards for fare payment. I couldn't bear to leave mine in its plain plastic sleeve, so I decided to give it a makeover. Transforming it into its own miniature bus seemed fitting – mirroring the cheerful decorations adorning buses in our city.

Each major city in Australia now boasts its own mini bus, capturing the unique colouring and character of its public transportation. Though I empathise with Hobart, where the buses are simply plain white!

Ensuring accuracy in colour representation was crucial, albeit challenging. I scoured online sources for reference photos, striving to faithfully recreate each city's distinct bus design. Of course they are not perfect but they are cute :D Can you tell I'm trying to be a bit over the top right now? I tried to be accurate but it wasn't always easy. 

Now where can you find these designs?

The set of designs is available from Down The Rabbit Hole's Patreon. 

You can sign up for a subscription or just buy the individual magazines. 

I hope you enjoy this little design. 

Happy Stitching, 

Caitlin

 

 

Crochet flower fairy

I needed to do something that wasn't cross stitch for a bit when something came across my ads on Facebook. It was a sunflower fairy that was reversible. So could be both a flower and a doll. I didn't end up getting that one I ended up down an Etsy rabbit hole. And picked up a reversible tulip fairy from ChibisCraft 

I didn't end up adding the wings but using Bendigo Woollen Mills cotton 8ply I made this purple tulip. I love how it turned out and Hannah loves her 'fower'.

I also picked up two new Crochet books. These ones are to make some Crochet dolls. I'm really excited to try these out. 

I love all the little outfits. I'm looking forward to creating little dolls with changeable outfits.

These books are so cute and all the photoshoots they did are so awesome!

I'm lost as which to begin with. They both look absolutely gorgeous!

so many cute ideas

I will have to make a decision soon because she really loves looking through these two books. And I think she will love the doll when it's there to be played with. 

Happy stitching,

Caitlin

Realising how much time keeps passing

Everytime I turn around I find that so much time has passed I'm not actually sure what I have and haven't shared here anymore! Life has been very busy. I started a new job in December which is what I was doing but a little bit more but it's about learning all the new systems, which they do everything differently!!! Then my Grandpa passed away in mid December so that was On top of that my partner ended up cutting half the index finger off his left hand. That made for an interesting January and then time just kept passing really quickly. 

I have been stitching, though it seems I only have time to stitch my own designs. My grandma gave me some money for christmas so I spent it on some fancy metallic watercolours and OMG I am having sooooo much fun painting!!! I've then been turning some of those paintings into cross stitch patterns. I can't share a lot of them but I will share what I can. More about them at the end of the post!

I made this cute little Easter dragon for the autumn edition of down the rabbit hole. I called it Easter Surprise because you don't expect to find a dragon in your carefully decorated Easter egg :D

All this from a quick little sketch I did. I didn't even add colour to the sketch I just fell in love with it.

 

I also created some cute little dancing girls for the latest smalls magazine. These little cuties just make me happy. I finished them with a felt backing glued onto a magnet and they are currently on my fridge. They just make me happy looking at them each day.   

I'm also working on the winter design but of course I can't show that one yet because the magazine isn't out yet. So I also can't show the painting I did to inspire it. But there is a lot of white which you would expect in a winter design.

Hannah is growing up fast she has just turned 2 and it's like a tiny cyclone has hit our house every day! She is into everything but she also just loves to help. We have what's called a learning tower which is essentially a stool with a wooden cage area for her to stand up in so she can't fall backwards. But every night when I'm cooking dinner she will climb up there and help me to cook. She can't do much but she likes to feel like she is helping. 

Here are some of the pictures I've done while playing with my watercolours. The colours are from Chelsea Venz Art a lady on the gold coast who makes handmade watercolours. I am so in love with the effects these give a piece of art.

I think I will turn this father's day owl into a cross stitch eventually but not sure when. Let me know if you want it sooner rather than later. It won't be going to a magazine. So would go straight onto my etsy. 

This sea monster while cute as ... is too much like the character from the drawing book to be able to be used in my cross stitch but I will see if I can do a variation like I did with the dragon that I can turn into cross stitch.

Here is a photo of the lovely watercolours. I want to get more of her stuff but that will have to wait. 

So Happy Stitching Everyone, 

Caitlin

p.s. I hope it's not too long before my next update but this is me and life is busy!

Print and Play Board games

So I have been a huge board game player for years. But over the last few years it has both gotten increasingly hard to buy games and hard to find people to play with. There are some games that I love and I think are worth the price. BUT there are so many games that as soon as you take into account that I live in Australia, and shipping and exchange rates they become ridiculous! On top of that I'm a crafter... with a very strong need to make stuff for myself. 

 

I started making a game folder a few years ago with some dice and card games inside and I made some simple boards, for games like checkers and backgammon. I love it. Such a cool way to play and honestly so cute to have a mini backgammon game. I seem to be all about the mini games at the moment! 

Continuing on with the mini trend I decided to make a smaller version of sprawlopolis. I bought these files from PNParcade and printed them two to a page on A4. The cards are so cute! I also printed a few of the expansions while I was at it.

As much as I love this game I think I have only managed to win a play through once. It's always the roads that do it! I was only 2 points off with this game!

 

 

 

To continue the trend I was over at Board Game Geek when I stumbled across these files. It's a game called Deep Space D-6 and it's so much fun :D I was even able to find a mint tin version that is designed to be cut and folded into a mint tin. This one is awesome to play. The last one I'm super proud of! I bought hive a few years ago but then I lost one of the pieces. I loved playing that game but didn't want to buy a new one. So I started looking at options. I ended up buying these wooden hexagons I found on Amazon. This didn't quite turn out right because I didn't read the listing and they weren't one INCH they were one CM!!! Ooops.

 

So I went with it and after asking in my print and play group, I ended up buying some magnet sticker sheets and a mint tin style box. I used those to make a mini set of HIVE! 

 

Using paint pens that I had I could colour these in and then I coated them with a clear acrylic paint to seal them. I just love how these turned out and as normal for me they are purple :D making it even better! 

I managed to win a game against my cousin :D Though it was his first time playing so not quite as fair. This has been a fun craft to explore as they are really fun to do and I'm sure I will make a LOT more games since I've found so many good ones.

Happy Stitching, 

Caitlin

New Obsession: Artist Trading Cards

 I have found myself a new craft obsession. I am deeming this an extension of the drawing and art I have been doing so it doesn't count as a new craft. And honestly outside buying some card from kmart I haven't bought a whole lot of stuff for it. It started as being invited by one of my friends into a craft group and I accepted not really understanding what I would be walking into. I thought it was about making small craft projects which I do a lot of as that is the kind of cross stitch pattern that I do. It turned out to be a lot more specific than that. It was specifically for artist trading cards which are pretty awesome and I'm going to tell you why. 

 They are cards that are 3.5inches x 2.5inches which are the size of a trading card like pokemon. The idea is that you make these cards and then you can trade them around the world with other people. Now this group is just a local facebook group and we are separated into groups of 9 and we make cards to suit a theme. The first group that I ended up in was the white plus one theme. So I had to make 9 cards that all looked pretty much the same and then send them off to the organiser. The theme had been a vote between a few options and I picked Disney but the white plus one theme had won. So I ended up combining the two into these Cinderella cards. This was my first foray into this and I had sooo much fun making these! I became addicted.

The card backs are numbered out of 9 to show that it's part of a set of nine.

Then the package came in the mail with the 9 cards back. 

I love how each person interpreted the theme and all the different colours and ideas. These definitely show the different backgrounds of all the people. with some being very artistic like the candle and the tree in the bottom row. To the very scrapbook based coffee one. It was so cool to see them altogether like this. 

The next month the theme did end up being disney :D So I took inspiration from my newest obsession Encanto. (Though this obsession is helped by a 17mth old who is obsessed with the music!) I had lots of fun with these. I drew the little mirabel in my notebook one day and then digitised it. I then printed it out and coloured it in. Then I created the pretty banners and the butterflies. I'm really proud of how this one turned out even if all the parts took me AGES since bubs was being extra clingy anytime I was home as she wasn't well.

While I chose to make each of the cards very similar I did deliberately choose to do two different banner designs and also the butterflies are all slightly different in their placement. The slight changes make the cards unique. 

What was also awesome was that without talking to each other we all managed to pick different disney characters. We all picked entirely different movies!

 

I'm so excited to show you more as I get them. These are such fun little art projects that while I can take up to a month to finish them because there are little hands getting in the way... 

... the projects are still fun despite the size.

Happy Stitching, 

Caitlin