Christmas Craft

Oskah may have seemed quite quiet recently...thats because I've been very busy crafting Christmas Presents for friends and family and I couldnt possibly have ruined their surprises! But now it is Christmas, the crafty cat is out the bag!

Me and my husband, Matt, have been doing pyrography onto chopping boards and wooden spoons, typography onto mugs (thanks design mom for that one!), making our own chai tea bags and spiced hot choc, painting perpetual calendars, knitting hats, sewing cushion covers, cutting hearts out of maps, putting brownie mix into jars and burning mix CDs...and now, we can relax!
Happy Christmas to you all!

Frame the Place you Love

I saw this done somewhere before but using a map of the whole of europe. I decided to do it for our friends Tim and Jane but using a map of their local area (of which they are very passionate about). They loved it...I have plans to do more for other friends!

Rabbit Cushion

A rabbit cushion for my friend Anna!

Perpetual Calendar

I have come across a few versions of this before and decided it ought to be simple enough to make. We got some wood, cut it into 3 cubes. One cube is used for the months of the year and the other two for the dates of the month (hint: the six doubles up as the nine!). We painted the blocks white and then using a black POSCA pen, we added the typography. A great 'look at my cool office' sort of gift.

Pyrography Wooden Spoons

Since discovering a pyrography pen, we have literally been pyro-ing all wood in sight! Having done chopping boards, my husband, Matt, moved onto wooden spoons to go with my Aunty B's Brownie-in-a-jar! We did these for some little people that we know...they will need some adult assisstance but I think it will be fun for everyone involved. We attached the customised wooden spoon, along with an illustrated version of the recipe, to a clip jar full of the dry ingredients for the recipe.

Chai tea and Spiced hot choc

For some of our Christmas gifts this year we made our own chai tea bags and spiced hot chocolate mix. For the tea bags we used strips of organza, a sewing machine, de-caf black tea leaves, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and chilli. It tastes delicious and is such a refreshing winter beverage. I did two spiced chocolate recipes; white chocolate and ginger and dark chocolate and mixed spice. You melt the mixes into hot milk for a hot chocolate drink that is simply divine. We packaged some of these teas/hot chocs along with monogram mugs to complete a very home made, affordable, fun-to-do, great to recieve (hopefully), christmas gift.

Knitted Hats

I have been churning out baby/toddler hats on my size 4s, mostly in the style of these two below. Other colours include green and white stripe with either red or pink ribbing and pom pom. I also did one that had orange ribbing, a yellow pom pom and a block of purple inbetween (inspired by the bold colours of Annie Larson).

Monogram Mugs

I came across a great idea for customising mugs from design mom; monogram mugs.
I used a slightly different porcelain pen and I just scribbled all over the back of my print out in pencil instead of using graphite paper. I didnt do the bake in an oven bit either. I used the same principle for a plate for my niece too.

Customised Chopping boards

Having discovered a pyrography pen in our office, I couldnt resist having a go. As I was wandering around a very large, blue and yellow Swedish home store recently, I noticed some very cheap plain wooden chopping boards for sale...perfect for my experimentations! Here are the results:

Shoe Rack

Recently I have become a member of Pinterest which is essentially online scrapbooking...brilliant! Anyway, I was facing a shoe storage problem here at Bethanie so I typed in 'shoe rack' on Pinterest and found a great idea using a pallet. As pallets are a personal passion of mine, it just had to be done.
I attached some shelving brackets to prevent it from falling forward.

Measuring Stick!

It was always a tradition growing up in my family that when a child has a birthday their height would be recorded. As my family have moved around quite a bit, we have always used a wooden stick to record these measurements upon, so as we have moved, the stick has moved with us. Obviously, as we all grew up and left home, this tradition faded. However, my family has now grown considerably with the addition of many grandchildren and my mum and dad have re-instated this family tradition for them. As my parents are very settled where they live and its unlikely that they will move, the stick has now turned to a thin section of wall in their kitchen.
When I was over recently, I decided to re-vamp the measuring 'stick' to make it more of a feature.

Diamond Wedding Celebration

I recently got back from a trip to the UK where I was able to gather with lots of family members to celebrate my Grandparent's Diamond Wedding Anniversary (60 years)!
To contribute to the occassion I made some personalised bunting and a commemorative plate. The logo I designed consists of a diamond ring with the letters g+g in the centre (G&G is what all the grandchildren call my grandparents). Below the ring are two leaves from an oak tree and 1951 is when they got married. Around the edge of the plate are 23 acorns which represent their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Ashers Ice Cream Factory

I currently have some of my family visiting me in France, including my gorgeous nephew, Asher, who turned 2 yesterday.
We decided to throw an Ice Cream party to celebrate the occasion and spent the last week making and preparing decorations, ice cream, aprons, hats, games and a cake of course.
The weather, unfortunately, didnt hold out and so we ended up having to move the party indoors...but we still had lots of fun!

Ice cream flavours: Confiture de Lait (home made), Rhubarbe et Gingembre (home made), Chocolat, Pistache and Café.
The birthday cake; Chocolat Orange Beetroot cake...mmmmm! (here's the recipe)
The factory workers, ready to go!
The birthday boy!

More photos here!

for baby

Recently 2 of our best friends had their second child, Eponine. We love her name so much that we decided we should make her this to go up on her bedroom wall. We cut it out of MDF and painted it white. It measures roughly 100x30 cm.

Family Portrait

A while ago I blogged about my embroidered portraits of myself and my husband. I mentioned in the post that my plan was to frame the portriats in embroidery hoops and to also do one of our daughter, Pixie...well, here they are!

Annie Larson

Came across the wonderful Annie Larson recently and her fabulous knitwear...I actually cannot put into words how much I love this stuff!

Evian Bottle Lights

I was given these trendy little evian water bottles (designed by Paul Smith) about 18 months ago and straight away I knew I wanted to hang them in a cluster over lights in our hallway. Finally, I have done it! The reason for the delay was because in order to hang them, I needed to cut the bottoms off and the only tool I had for this task (Ephrem's Bottle Cutter) didn't seem to be cutting them so well. So there began the epic search for a tool/facility that would achieve the desired slick cut. The only tools my research led me too were far too expensive, I also went to several glass cutting studios, tile cutters and heavy duty machinary-hire places...all to no avail. I even tried the old tie-string-round-the-bottle-and-set-fire-to-it method which some people assured me would work, but it didnt. Eventually I decided to give my Ephrem's Bottle Cutter one last go. I managed to get 3 good, but not quite perfect, cuts, which I am very happy with.

More Plates

Having been inspired by my post about Jimbob Arts, my friends Jon White and Anna Kelly produced these plates as a wedding gift for Anna's brother Aaron and his wife Holly.
I absolutely love them and am ever so slightly jealous, firstly of Jon and Anna's skills and secondly of Aaron and Holly as they are now the proud owners of these little beauties!

oskah. shop

Pleased to present to you my new shop! You can also get to it by clicking on the green 'shop.' logo at the top of the page.

Currently selling Bandana bibs and Oskimos.

Crapper Tap!

The other day I went to my sister's house, and discovered the most genius invention I've seen for a while...and she made it all by herself (with a touch of assistance from the hubby)!

My sister has been wanting to create some more space in the downstairs utility area of her house. She figured that if she were to remove the sink out of the downstairs toilet then she would have enough room to fit her washing machine and tumble dryer in there. But where then would one wash one's hands?!

Her research into the solution led her to an Instructables project that creates a wash basin in the top of your toilet. Inspired, she went and got all the pieces she needed and a short time later...

...Da-Daaa!

So clever and so economical! When you flush the toilet, the water that re-fills your cistern, comes through the copper tap, giving you plenty of time to wash your hands. The water then drains into the cistern, re-filling it for the next flush. Perfect for any downstairs WC.

oskah. sells

So today was oskah.'s first 'market'. I was unable to track down enough cable drums to display the products as I'd originally planned, so with the assist of my trusty suitcase (€10 bargain from Amsterdam earlier this year) and a couple of good solid pallets, I came up with a new display which was equally as awesome.

The bandana bibs and oskimos (yes I finally came up with a name for those little people things) went down a treat and people loved them. I had some great responses and lots and lots of interest and made a nice tidy bit of money. So in all, a successful days work!

oskah. to go!

This week I have been slaving away trying to get some products together for a sales opportunity this Saturday in Stafford, England.
I will be selling bandana dribble bibs and my little people...still working on a name for them!

I have been playing around with the idea of pop-up-shop and I'm thinking of displaying my products on some customised cable drums! I have to be able to source these in the UK on Friday, as I'm travelling as a foot passenger and wont be able to take mine from home.
I'm all packed and ready to roll!

Jimbob Art

Loving the work of James Ward, the artist behind Jimbob Art.
Especially his hand-painted plates...beaut!!

Love Long Life

Love Long life has always been mine and Matthew's moto (a play on our family name). For our anniversary this year, I wanted to create a gift that encaptured this phrase and what we're about. Taking inspiration from Pedlars, I produced (with the help of my good friend Aaron) this poster.


I think its definately our best anniversary gift to date!

Stitched Up

Recently I created these embroided portraits of myself and my husband Matthew. I rummaged through some fairly recent profile shots of us both, traced over them onto accetates (simplifying the image), then traced the image onto fabric and stitched in the lines using red embroidery thread!


Currently I am using the image as our profile picture but my plan is to frame our portraits individually in embroidery hoops and hang them in our home. I also plan to do one of our daughter Pixie...watch this space!