Free printable! 2026 calendar

December is here!  Nutcracker season is starting.  I cannot wait!

Now that I have enroled on adult ballet classes, I am so over the Moon with ballet things, I am spending a lot of time reading and watching ballet content.

And since I am on vacation, here is the freebie that every year I release around this date: a printable ballet calendar!

This image is my favorite one, but it is not available in this year's calendar.  If you want it, you can get it HERE

 

Made with the Print a Calendar website, and featuring beautiful ballet pictures found on Google.   

As always, please feel free to print as many as you like, make gifts for friends and family, and pass the file along to anyone; links back are nice too.  Just please do not sell the file or your creations.  Thank you very much, and enjoy! ♥

New furniture for the bedroom, and free printables!

This weekend Kassandra and I have been busy getting ready her new shelves for the refurbished bedroom.  We had a great time assembling them - she said this was her first time assembling furniture, and she thought it was a lot of fun.

She has decided to go for an Scandi look, and this was the first one we did:

Can you see the assembly guide on the floor?

"Thank goodness for illustrated instructions!", she said.  "I thought we would be having to go through technical names, and I am terrible at that."

"Yes, it is true that this furniture is very easy to put together.  Are you going to use it as is?"

"Oh no, I got some storage boxes for it.  What do you think about them?"

 

"Always black with you, my dear!  But I really like the dotted one!  It gives a pinch of informality to the set."

"Yes, I think so too.  Let's start with the second one!"

And said and done, this was the second shelf:

"Very nice!", she said.  "I like the simplicity."

"Let's put it in place."

"I love it!  I'm so happy with my new bedroom!"

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Fantasy apart, I love that these pieces are so similar to a real life ones from a very well known Swedish  shop.  I am very happy that we can find modern looking furniture for modern settings.  You can find them already painted (I have seen them only in white), or in untreated wood (like mine).  I painted them white, obviously.  I have another set in my Japanese room.  In that case I painted them black.  You can find these kind of shelves at Beautifully Handmade.  

Also, the storage boxes I designed myself specifically for these shelves,  inspired by the real counterparts.  So, if you have these same shelves, I am happy to share with you the free printable to make them.  Also, if you are a devil for the details as I am, here is also the assembly guides printable.

As always, feel free to print as many as you like, make gifts for friends and pass the file along to anyone; links back are nice too.  Just please do not sell the file or your creations.  Thank you very much, and enjoy! ♥

MojoWorld has a free printable for you

My friend Nikolai, from Mojo World Company, has a great freebie for you.  

What is better than an afternoon home watching movies or series, in the company of friends, and with some pizzas?

And of course, here is the tutorial to follow along while you craft.  Show Nikolai some love and visit his store!

Kassandra's DVDs collection

Today Kassandra and I starting unpacking some DVDs and Blu-Rays that just arrived.  Now that she had delivered a home-cinema setup, she wanted to have some entertainment for the children when they visit, and so we started organizing her collection.

"I have always assumed that vampires enjoy movies", I said.  "After all, they can be enjoyed anywhere; and these days of streaming, no need to even go out of the house to watch them".

"You are quite right, it is something thay we all in the family enjoy.  As you can imagine, I like to watch every vampire movie that comes out; some are sillier than others, but many are quite interesting.  Some of them even get a couple of things right about us.  We just watched yesterday "The Old Guard", which I thoroughly enjoyed.  They were not vampires in the strict sense of the word, but they managed to portray the vampire point of view regarding many things quite correctly.  I particularly liked Andy.  She reminded me of me.  Well, I was never a warrior like her, even though I have had my share of battles.  And the relationship between Joe and Nicky is one of the most beautiful I have seen in movies in a long time.  I hope we get to see a sequel."

"You know what a sequel is?"

"Ha!  I am educating myself in modern cinema.  I recently watched the Star Wars saga.  How fun!"

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Since we all have our favorite movies, I thought it would be fun to include some titles in Kassandra's new home.  So yesterday I spent a good portion of the afternoon making DVDs and Blu-Rays for her collection.  They are very easy, fun and cheap to do!  Here is a tutorial for you to build up your own collection:

Materials you will need:

internet access o scanner

a piece of scrap paper

white regular paper

color printer

cello tape

scissors

Eva foam (blue for Blu-Rays and/or black for DVDs)

white craft glue

Optional: tweezers and toothpick

1- Gather up your covers.  You can scan the ones you have at home, or you can search for them on the internet.  The more modern they are, the more chances you will have to find them.

2- Use a photo program to reduce them in size.  For DVDs, you need a 1,5 x 2,2 cm image; for Blu-Ray, you need a 1,4 x 2,5 cm image.  If it is easier for you, I am happy to provide you with templates to use.  DVD and Blu-Ray.  Your image has to fit inside the black lines.  Also, make them 600 dpi.  That way you won't lose resolution.

3- If you feel lazy to find your own, here is my collection; you can see I favor fantasy movies and mermaids.  The Blu-Rays are on top, and the DVDs on the bottom.

4- Print them out.  

5- Cover them with a strip of cello tape, before you do any cutting.

6- Now you can cut them up.

7- Take the Eva foam of your preferred style and cut a strip the size of your film cover:

8- Take the cover and wrap it around the Eva foam, making sure to align the spine of the movie with the foam:

9- Cut to measure:

10- Make sure there is no foam sticking out of the cover.  If so, trim the excess:

11- Put a small amount of white glue on your scrap paper and use the toothpick to extend it on the back of the cover.  You can use the tweezers to hold it so your fingers will not get covered in glue:

12- Glue the cover around the piece of Eva foam:

13- Make sure all the corners are glued.  Hold it with your fingers for some moments while the glue sets.  You have you new Blu-Ray!  Congrats!!

Now get crazy!  The more you make, the easier to do they become:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and have lots of fun making your collection!

New project in the making...

It was a sudden idea that entered my head when I was browsing printables for dollhouses on Etsy.

Long ago I projected a market stall - only I wasn't very sure what to do with it.  I wanted it to be an organic products shop, but somehow the project was put in the back burner, and I never got around to even start it.  I reasoned it was because I was actually not convinced of my idea, so I let the matter go.  But some days ago, after buying some seed packets to put in my conservatory, I saw something in the listing that caught my attention immediately, and I decided it was going to be my next small project: a newsstand, or magazine kiosk.

So, yesterday I ordered a small (and very cheap!) market stall, and so I started planning in my head my new project.  While it arrived, I collected every sort of magazine that I could think of (thank you, Google Images!) and started composing mini-magazines on Photoshop to put on the kiosk; it was not the first time I was doing this, so I already had a template to make the whole process faster.

Today I got the package.  I was surprised when I got it to see it was going to be bigger than I expected:

I opened it eagerly, and found something peculiar.  As you can see, it says "Wood glue included".  Silly me, I thought it was going to be a small white glue bottle, and this is what I found:

Obviously, the glue was absolutely dry, and I tossed it out.  Not that I was going to use it, but who could have thought that including glue like that was a good idea?  In any case, it did not look difficult at all:

So, armed with paper clamps and my Tacky Glue bottle, I started the construction.  It was only a matter of gluing the supporting arms to the canopy, and then the whole thing to the sides of the counter:

It barely took 20 minutes!  Now I have started printing magazine convers and blank inside pages.  They all have backs; an ad related to the thing the magazine is about:

7 done,  about 40 to go!

If you want to craft some magazines for your mini-scene, here are a couple of free printables for you to play with:

Ballet magazines

Belly dance magazines

More pictures of the progress soon!

One-hour project and free printable

Sometimes one just wants a simple and quick project that will give one a much faster gratification, instead of having to spend hours crafting with different media and then putting everything together.  I am happy to provide you with one of such projects!

Here is something fun that will look awesome in any modern setting, and that you can even customize if you wish: miniature notepads!  I have put these in my soap shop as home accessories.

They are very easy to do, and I am sharing with you the file with the sheets I used to create mine. I added some empty pages, so you can customize them to your heart's content - with your pet, your kids, a family photograph, pics of nature... The possibilities are endless!  And it can be an easy to do mini gift for a miniature collector friend, or family member :)

Here are the very simple instructions:

Download and print the free template.

Cut the little pages out.

Line them up and use a couple of clamps to hold them together.

Apply tiny amounts of PVC glue, or white glue, to the top of the pages.  This will make them hold together neatly.  Let them dry, and then apply a couple of more layers of glue, letting each one to get dry before applying the next one.

Close a ribbon clamp on the top as ornament - or you can skip this step, and they will look equally great!

As promised, here is the template with the pages.  As always, feel free to share it and pass along to anyone (link backs are nice too!), but do not sell the download or your finished creation.

Enjoy your crafting!

Crafting journals

Long time no writing!

My absence is only due to a lot of crafting.  As many of you know, I am a follower of Vectoria Designs, and of course I have been doing many of the tutorials Tinne posts on YouTube.  The last one is one I am particularly proud of.

I have zero knowledge of scrapbooking, and most of the time I reproduce what Tinne does as faithfully as possible.  Not only to learn, but to see if my imaginations sparks a bit and I can create some pretty designs of my own.

The last tutorial she made was something that I just HAD to do.  Here is the video:

Since the student year has finished, I wanted to make this planner for my husband for next year.  It is something so simple and nice looking!  So, I took the freebie, printed about 27 sheets of paper (double sided) so it would last a whole year, and started crafting, following the instructions closely.  I so enjoyed it!  And here is the final result:

Front

Back

Weekly planner

My husband loved it!  And then I wanted to make one for myself.

Since I do not have a need for a planner, I decided to make a blank journal.  I chose a marine theme, with some of Tinne's gorgeous nautical papers, and this is what I finally made:

Front

I was bold enough to add liner pages in this one :)

Back

The little inside pocket holds a mermaid tag, that I will use as bookmark, when needed. 

I will probably make more of these as Christmas presents.  They are addictive, and there so many themes one can choose!

So, stop reading this and go make one for yourself! 

Belly dance magazines and free printable

As Kassandra was so busy with her ballet magazines the other day, I forgot to tell her I had at home some belly dancing magazines - I am a belly dancer as well - and I thought maybe she would like to have them, as I had already read them.  So, I put them in a bag and took them to her.

"I brought you something".

"Did you?  What is it?"

"It's a collection of belly dance magazines I had around.  Maybe your daugther can have some use for them.  They are a gift for her."

"Oh, are you not delightful? Thank you very much!  I am sure Jean will appreciate them.  I will give them to her on your behalf."

"You are welcome.  I hope she enjoys them."

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Fantasy apart, it was so much fun doing the ballet magazines that I wanted to have some of belly dance.  I did not know if I would be able to find any, but apparently there are (or used to be) some.  These were more difficult to find, so there are not so many.  Also, I had to be content with putting some DVD covers in the backs, as there were even less adverts of belly dance events or vendors, although I found a couple of them.  The bag is new as well.

If you belly dance I am sure you will recognize some of the people in the covers...

Except for the Dahlal ad on the left, the rest are quite famous dancers

As with the ballet magazines, I am happy to pass on the file to you, in case you want to make some for yourself.  Here are the belly dance magazines.  Feel free to use them and pass them around, but please do not sell them.  Have fun!  

A miniature lantern for Kassandra

I bought a miniature lantern kit from We Love Miniatures a long time ago, and I finally had the time this weekend to make it for Kassandra.  It was challenging, but so much fun to make:

I left it in black color to mimick one that I have in real life made of cast iron.  I figured since Kassandra loves black she would like it that way.

Annie has a wonderful YouTube channel full of miniature tutorials that you should definitely check.  She also offers some freebies in her website to make those tutorials, including the lantern that I finished (she doesn't sell the kit anymore, instead you can download it for free).

Here is the video tutorial for the lantern:

Kassandra was very happy when I presented it to her.  She is going to use it in her study, for those long hours of work during the night.  She says she is always afraid that the candle wax from a loose candle will drip onto her papers and books.  That won't be happening anymore!

I will be doing very soon another one of Annie's tutorials: a boxwood for Kassandra to put by her doorstep.  Waiting on the delivery of some urns to begin the work...

A couple of printable freebies for you

I have been organizing my miniature files this week, and I found a couple of things that I used to sell in my shop, which I was asked several times if I could make accesible as download for a printable.  Since the shop is no more, here is a gift for you all.  The Apothecary boxes printable and the Apothecary labels collection printable:

Both the boxes and the labels were made using real, unmodified vintage pharmacy and apothecary labels.  Some of them have been restored a bit, but that is all.  No letters were changed and nothing extra was added.  They are all authentic as they are (were).

I hope you guys have fun playing with them.  I just love making dozens of tiny bottles and filling them up!  As always, feel free to share and pass them around (links are welcome too).  Just do not sell the files or any creations you make with them.