Disneyland T-Shirts

The big day is here!

We're going to Disneyland!!!

And if that wasn't exciting enough, we're meeting up with my little sister who's visiting from Australia and she's coming with us. Yay! 

You may recall that when my parents visited from Australia back in May Ava and I made special "commemorative" t-shirts for their visit. You can see them here. I promised my sister that there just might be something special in store for her visit too so Ava and I got to work.

Ava drew the most gorgeous picture of herself, Lola and Aunty Kylie wearing Mickey Mouse ears on the tea cup ride. Ok, so it was actually two of Ava's pictures that I morphed together in photoshop. Either way, the end result was perfect for our commemorative t-shirts.

Now, when my parents came to visit it was just Ava and Lola who got to wear a special t-shirt. This time around there's a third t-shirt for Aunty Kylie.

Here's a sneak peek...

Lola and Mickey

T-shirt design

Lola, Ava and Aunty Kylie ride the teacups

Welcome Mamma & Papa

A few days ago my parents arrived in America to spend a week with us on their way home from Europe.

Ava and Lola have been so excited about seeing Mamma and Papa in real life. For the past 7 months Mamma and Papa have lived in the Skype app in our laptop - or at least that's how it seems to the kids :)

I thought it would be a nice surprise to have a few decorations ready to welcome Mamma and Papa when they arrived at our apartment in Berkeley. Ok, so I might have gone a little overboard but it was fun making the decorations and Mamma and Papa were certainly surprised!

Here's a little look at what greeted Mamma and Papa on their arrival...

Ava and Lola with their special t-shirts, flags and bunting

T-shirts, flags and bunting... yep, we went a little overboard!

Ava and I made the bunting together. As usual I did all the boring stuff (printing out the flags, cutting them out and assembling them into bunting) and Ava did the fun stuff (colouring the flags and drawing pictures). Lola helped out a little with the colouring too. She loves to copy whatever her big sister is doing and is really getting into colouring and drawing. 

Once Ava had decorated all of the flags and I'd cut them all out I set about assembling them. I used cotton twine and colourful Japanese washi masking tape for this. Nice and simple.

Ava decorated bunting in beautiful patterns to welcome Mamma and Papa

The bunting even included pictures of Mamma and Papa

Lola coloured in a few pieces of the bunting too

The finished bunting

Ava also drew a welcome picture of us all to hang on our front door. I like how Mamma and Papa have switched heights!

Ava, Lola, Mummy, Daddy, Mamma and Papa

Ava and Lola get ready to head out to find Mamma and Papa

My favourite part of the welcome was the t-shirts that I made for the girls to wear. I took Ava's drawings of Mamma and Papa from the bunting flags and printed them on t-shirts with Ava's handwritten text: Mamma and Papa USA 2012.

The girls love wearing their special t-shirts and they'll be wearing them as much as possible while we play tourist with Mamma and Papa.

   

The official "Mamma and Papa USA 2012" tour t-shirt - available at all good souvenir stores!

A little one for Lola and a big one for Ava

And last of all we made flags. Once again I printed, cut out and assembled the flags while Ava decorated them. Ava held a "Mamma" flag and Lola waved a "Papa" flag.

A warm welcome

Welcome Mamma and Papa!

Father's Day is coming up

Father's Day is almost here again. Just under a week to go.

This year Kim is on the opposite side of the world to us so no breakfast in bed for Daddy - unless he orders room service in his hotel :)

I thought I'd share some pictures from previous Father's Days.

For Kim's first Father's Day I printed a special t-shirt for Ava to wear.

Daddy's Little Girl and I took Daddy for a picnic in the Botanic Gardens.

Ava and Daddy picnicking in the Botanic Gardens

Colour Me In

Inspired by the Stella's Little Project contest I recently decided to print t-shirts for Ava featuring some of her  drawings.

After going through what seemed like a tonne of Ava's drawings I decided to merge a few aspects of several drawings together rather than using just one. The fairy, heart and flower in the final design below have been taken from three different drawings.

Rather than messing around with printing in full colour I decided to print simple black outlines of Ava's drawings ready for her to colour in herself with fabric crayons (Pentel Fabric Fun Pastel Dye Sticks).

I printed the t-shirt design using my amazing Print Gocco machine. I love that thing! It turns even the finest print (1mm I believe) into a template ready for silk screening onto fabric, paper etc. If I had to make the template using traditional silk screening techniques I'd still be at it. Ok, let's be honest... I'm far too lazy for that so I never would have even started!

The design printed onto a t-shirt ready for colouring