Hello everyone!
The holiday season is near, Christmas coming soon. Are you still looking for a way to promote your blog or (indie business) during this time? I offer ad spots in my left sidebar where you could place your banner. Simply read my sponsoring information and feel free to write me an e-mail, I’d love to send you my media kit and price options. Don’t be shy if you are a small business or blog with a limited budget, there are even special options for those cases. :)
Can’t wait to get in touch!
Happy Wednesday!
Lu
DIY: Colorful Advent Candles
Hey everyone! Christmas is near and I’m slightly getting excited about the holidays and festive decor. This year, I didn’t want to make a classical Advent wreath, I rather decided on making a minimal one with bright colors.
Do you remember my bike restyle project with the spray paint which edding sponsored me for this project? :) I still had some bottles of their colorful spray paint left and decided on making an easy holiday DIY and to upcycle old candle holders and a bottle.
You need:
– Permanent spray paint
– Optional: primer and clear varnish
– Painter’s tarpaulin
– Old candle holders and / or bottles
– Candles
First of all, go outside to the fresh air and enfold your painter’s tarpaulin. You will need it to protect your environment from paint. :) Then you can either start pray painting with a primer or you can directly apply the first coat of permanent spray paint to your candle holders (and bottles). Wait for some time (according to the instructions on your spray paint’s bottle) and then add a second layer. While spraying, make sure to keep some distance between your objects so that you don’t accidentally paint the wrong one.
So easy! Then you only need to add some candles and maybe some other pretty decor elements and that’s it! :)
For decorating this table, I brought some branches from the woods and painted them white (not with spray paint, but just with a brush) and added some pretty ornaments. I thought that this is a perfect contrast to our turquoise kitchen table. :)
Have lots of fun making your own Advent candle holders! :)
Lu
P.S.: In case you are wondering, this blogpost isn’t sponsored, I’m just using up my leftover supplies from my recent cooperation with edding. :)
My Life in Instagram Photos – Happy Fall Days.
Hello everyone! The past weeks have been passing incredibly fast. I wrote my last ‘My life in Instagram photos‘ post at the end of summer and now it’s nearly winter, Christmas coming soon, wow! Here you can see what I’ve been doing recently and take part in my colorful everyday life! ;)
Beautiful kitchen cabinet. // Pretty fall leaf. // A precious gift, a handmade mini origami parrot by navucko. :* // Rainy day outfit.
Fall walk. // Coloful closet. // Crocheting on the train. // Kitchen decor. // Fall outfit with moccassins. // Primary colors.
Cozy fall outfit for picking mushrooms. Love my new thrifted poncho. // On my wall. // Happy kitchen and fridge. // Pretty fall table decor.
Thrifting day with my friends Sibylle of funkytime and Albertine of nahili. :) // At home for filming an Advent calendar DIY video with DaWanda. // Happy feet. // Fall outfit for a fun afternoon with Sibylle and Albertine. :)
Above my desk with my cat postcard, my fox postcard and PhotoLove prints of my Instagram photos.
Yayyy, new spray paint from edding. // Cozy outfit. // Freshly restyled bike, yayy! // New colors for my candle holders and coat holder.
Thrifternoon with Sibylle and Albertine, looking classy wearing vintage (bridal) dresses. :) ;* // Daily outfit. // Preparing my weekly DIY workshop at DaWanda.
Blue, black and white. // Beautiful blue fall sky. // Happy feet. // Hello Berlin. // Still harvesting some tomatoes. // Yayyyyy, happy Mogli! ;)
My desk.
Weekend walk with my two loved ones. ;* // Delicious brunch and a greedy dalmatian. // Rubber boot weather. // Colorful dinner.
In my workspace area, my favorite place.
Colors on the market in Berlin. // Date with Sibylle and Albertine. :) // Perfect Sunday: long forest walk and then brunch in bed while watching Game of Thrones, awww! :) // On the campus. // Paper collection at home. // Eeeeks, a chimney sweeper on the rooftop opposite the DaWanda office. Lucky day!
Colors. // Train ride in Berlin. // Lovely afternoon date with waffles at Albertine’s home. I love girl’s dates! :)
Perfect weekend at the Blogst conference for DaWanda, taking care of the photobooth and mini DIY area and meeting blogger friends (again). // Lovely view over Essen from my hotel room.
Home sweet home, there’s no better place. :)
Make your life happy and colorful!
Lu :*
Blogst Conference 2013
Hello everyone! Wow, this was an amazing weekend! I’ve been to the Blogst conference for DaWanda and had an absolutely fantastic time!
Have you ever heard of Blogst? It’s a conference for bloggers who want to get to know more about topics like photo editing, SEO, social media, DIY, cooperations, etc., but most importantly, it’s an amazing networking opportunity.
The conference was again lovingly planned and organized by Ricarda of 23qm² Stil and Clara of tastesheriff who carefully chose clever, charming and interesting speakers and acquired great sponsors who help financing the conference and provided awesome goodies for everyone.
DaWanda was one of the sponsors and since I was super sad about having missed buying a ticket before the conference was immediately sold out, I was even happier when my team leader asked me about coming with her for DaWanda, yayy!
The conference took place in Essen at the Unperfekthaus where we had a whole floor for all the laughing and chatting ladies (and few gents), it sounded like in a huge bee hive. :D
So funny, I felt a bit schizophrenic, like a double agent on a mission: I was mainly there because of my job at DaWanda, but of course I also met many Luloveshandmade blogger friends and am rather known for my blog than for my job at DaWanda. :) It was funny to try finding a good balance and connect both sides. :)
During the last few weeks, I have been planning our booth for this event and my job during the conference was taking care of it and providing the visitors with information about DaWanda, giving them funny sticky tattoos with DaWanda-icons for a competition and taking photos of all the lovely bloggers in our photo corner. :) Do I still have to make clear that I love my job? :)
The hall was filled with inspiring people and on the right photo you can see the two founders and organizers of the conference. Thank you again, it was such a pleasure and I enormously appreciate the work you did! :*
Aren’t our DaWanda photobooth props the prettiest?
It was so nice meeting all those great people, here you can for example see Johanna of Pinkepank and Julia of mint lametta. :) // Among all those great lectures and presentations there were some people which especially touched me and Juli of heimatPOTTential and VOLL TOLL was one of them. She talked about the relevance of blogging and how much it is an emeotional matter and that you should only blog about what you love in order to be relevant! She made a little video which includes what blogging means to some of her fellow bloggers, I’m also part of it. :) You can see the video at the end of this blog post. :)
In between, I took a little break to walk around. Being with nearly 200 chatting ladies is awesome, but can also be a bit exhausting. ;)
Lucky me, my hotel room was on the sixth floor and I had a breathtaking view! Too bad I didn’t have more time, I’d have loved to explore the Pott a little!
Right photo stolen from Anna (Anna Sterntaler). :)
After nearly one year, it was super lovely meeting my sweet blogger pal Katha of kathastrophal again. :)
Moreover, I also hadn’t seen my lovely pal Vivi of Piepmatz for nearly one year and I was so happy about seeing her again! :) // Do you like Igor of Happy Interior Blog‘s sticky tattoo as much as I do?
Grrrrr with Fee (Fee ist mein Name) & Stef (Magnoliaelectric). :) // Vivi, Sarah (Erdbeerwald), Anna (Anna Sterntaler & DaWanda), Katja (Mädchen mit Herz), Stef & Nadine (dreierlei Liebelei).
The Backbube (= Baking Guy ;)) won our Instagram sticky tattoo challenge and I was sooo happy seeing Stef again. :*
These are our super pretty goody bags.
Lovely Bine (was eigenes) & Andrea (jolijou). :)
Such a flattering moment: I felt so extremely honoured when Bine and Andrea showed my social media channels as example for a good virtual indie business identity. :) Yayyy!
Aren’t they great, those DaWanda sticky tattoos?
The ladies from IKEA also had a booth were you could print out your Instagram photos of the conference and embellish stationery from their paper shop.
Photo stolen from Juli. :) :* // It was a super long weekend filled with laughter, chatting and tears (of joy and emotion) and a lack of sleep. :) On Saturday evening, there was a great party with lots of dancing and jerking around and on Sunday in the the afternoon it was really hard to say good bye!
Wow, Christmas in the middle of November! After I came home, I unpacked all the great goodies (and my shopping scores from HEMA) and it was nearly overwhelming. :)
Even two days later, I still feel Blogst-sick and miss all the people so much! It’s unbelievable that most of those 180 people only know each other because of the Internet and because of their blogs and that so many real friendships have developed out of those networking connections. Breathtaking! I still get gooseflesh when thinking about this!
I’m as happy as one could be and so excited about and thankful for all the opportunities that blogging has given me!
Thanks for this wonderful weekend, can’t wait for Blogst 2014!
Lu
P.S.: What has really touched me to tears is the following video by Juli! Visit her blog to read her blog post for the story behind it! By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy.
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DIY: Textile Printing Techniques and Inspiration
Hello, hello! :) Some of you might know that I’m a huuuge fan of easy (textile) printing techniques and this blog post is dedicated to this obsession of mine and is meant to provide you with a few ideas, tricks and inspiration.
Some of the projects shown here are brand new, some others are from my DIY-archives, but will hopefully also be interesting to new and old readers. :)
I love printing on textiles, making stamps out of potatoes or rubbers stamps, this is so nice to make boring surfaces and fabric prettiers. Here we go!
For printing with natural supplies, you will need an apple, a potato and a thin branch with leaves. Moreover, a sponge is also a great tool for printing on textiles.
As you might know, I love making rubber stamps to print on paper, but you can also use them to print on textiles. You need a normal eraser, an ink pad with textile color and a cutter set.
This apple tote is one of my faves:
You simply need to cut an apple into two halves, dry its surface, color it and print onto fabric.
This tote is so bright and makes me happy, I used a potato to create this pattern:
Like you did it with the apple, cut the potato into halves, dry its surface and use a sharp knife to cut it into shape. Paint it with textile color and use it as a stamp.
All following prints were also made using this simple and yet so effective technique:
The black and white arrow tote bag has been made just recently. :)
This baby onesize was a present for a friend who just got a baby daughter.
Aww, I love buntings! This is a rather old design.
Again, using the same shape for painting the tote, just in another color.
Here I also used a potato as a stamp and carved an anchor into it.
Apart from potatoes and apples, you could also use rubber stamps to print on textiles.
Therefore, you only need a normal eraser and cut your favorite motif into it (full rubber stamp DIY here). Then use an ink pad with textile color instead of a normal ink pad. Using a rubber stamp for textile printing is nice for small, detailed and tiny patterns.
This is my collection of handmade rubber stamps, perfect to print on envelopes, gift tags or fabric for a cute pattern. :)
Another idea would be to use a sponge: this is perfect for huge patterns without too many small details, nice for large-scale prints. Simply cover the sponge in paint and start printing.
In addition to all the stamps, you could simply use textile pens when you are lazy and only need one item to be stamped. :) This is a fast method, but not suitable for making many copies. Then, a stamp would be more effective and save time and effort. :)
One technique I came across about three years ago was using leaves and branches as a stamp.
Therefore, you need to color the surface of the leaves with textile paint, then put it into the fabric, facing it, put a sheet of paper on top and carefully use a paint roll to transfer the color.
Last but not least, a great method for textile printing is using a stencil. Therefore, you need to cut your motif out of cardboard, your motif will then be the negative space. Then you can put the cardboard onto your piece of fabric and paint the space which is left open.
So happy weekend (I’m off to the Blogst conference in Essen, working there for DaWanda and meeting many awesome people (again)) and hopefully you are inspired for some printing session. :)
Lu
