I love photography

I adore photography. It's in my blood. One of my grandmothers had pictures plastered floor to ceiling on many walls of her home. My mum does it too. My sister does it. I have done it and am planning on doing something similar again soon.

I love that it preserves memories that would have otherwise been forgotten. I love that feeling when the memories all come rushing back because they were prompted by something that took a millisecond to accomplish - clicking the button on a camera. I love that old pictures are filled with friends I have loved but, through the course of growing up, no longer see, and all the fond feelings for them are recalled.

One of the things that I really love and appreciate about photography is that it has taught me to see beauty, to look for beauty, in my everyday surroundings. It has taught me to focus on what's important and to look for uses in things that may to other people appear useless.

I love photography.

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It's in the bag

I've been carrying around a boxy looking camera bag for the last few years that I've used when out on quick trips. My current camera is bigger than the original camera that I bought the bag for and I often throw my flash in there too, and so the the gear has outgrown the bag now.

I may have seen one too many crime shows but I feel like those camera bags are just screaming to everyone, "There's a camera in here! Come and get me!". And considering how much my camera cost me it's not something I want to be advertising.

So what better solution than to disguise my camera in an every day handbag. Granted, nice looking handbags are screaming to be stolen too but from the outside it's hit and miss about what might be stored inside a handbag. If my regular handbag is stolen then the criminal is likely to get old receipts and maybe a baby food wrapper. Score to them! After all, I'd just be heading straight to a phone to cancel my credit card so it's really not something for me to worry about too much.

And wouldn't you know it, but other women have had the idea to create handbags that hold pro gear too! Some are so beautiful!

There's just one issue: the price tag. This one below, for example, is $199 USD.

 Say what?

Ok so I know that to some people that's not a big deal, but to me, it most definitely is! Camera handbags have a thriving trade and can command over $300 USD.

Gobsmacking!

And they don't lose their value when you look at Ebay.

So I took matters into my own hands.

I cruised the internet for some ideas and realised that with a little effort I could take care of the issue myself!

First stop, St Vinnies, where I picked up this bag for a grand total of $3.

Mmm, purple lining.

Next stop was Spotlight where I found myself some polyester wadding ($6.99 for the lot) and cotton sateen fabric ($10 for one metre).

I wasn't out looking for wadding but had to improvise when Spotlight didn't have any foam I could use.

My final stop was my mother-in-law's closets where she produced some packaging cardboad that originally had brand new sheets wrapped around it. 

Spotlight failed me again with some thick board so this is what I went with instead. See, I told you I'd be improvising.

And so the work began. Out with the garish purple lining which I carefully deconstructed so that I could use the old lining as a new pattern.

I cut out pieces of wadding large enough to wrap around the three cardboard pieces and then sewed the ends together.

I slid the cardboard inside the now sewn pieces and stuffed all three pieces inside the bag. One along the bottom and two along the large sides.

Then I carefully pieced the new lining together just the way the old lining had been contructed and sewed it together. I stuffed it inside the bag, over the polyester lining, and pinned it to the zip. You can see in the picture below where the old lining had been by following the purple thread. I left the purple thread there to remind myself that this was the right place to sew the new lining.

And then I very awkwardly arranged the bag around the sewing machine to get the zip and lining to the needle.

After stabbing myself several times with the pins (I hadn't considered the direction I was pinning them until after I began sewing) I was finished! I used white thread, so you can see how my sewing went with the zip and lining.

To be perfectly honest, when I make things for myself I'm not very fussy. To me it was important to have a good bag for my camera, and I don't particularly mind about the white thread. but I did remove the purple thread afterwards as I no longer needed it as a guide.

And so there it is! A nice and soft bag interior that I am very happy to put my camera directly into for soft safekeeping. It fits so easily along with other items if I wish. I also used it today to carry my infinity pad (like an ipad). And it also stands up by itself which it didn't do before.

The bag cost me $3. I used about a third of the lining so that was about $2.50. And I used about a third of the sateen which rounds to about $3.50. So the total cost was roughly $9.00!!!

Ahhh, so satisfying knowing that I did it myself and didn't have to spend what I consider to be a ludicrous amount of money.

Sew crazy

If you asked me one year ago what I would be spending my time doing now, well, I can’t remember what my answer would have been, but what I do with my time now is certainly nowhere near what I expected! Back then, to me, the actual answer would have been akin to nude surfing on the backs of great white sharks in the Antarctic Ocean. The actual answer isn’t quite so extreme, it’s rather tame. It’s.... sewing. 

Hang my head in shame!

At least, that’s what I would have thought roughly one year ago.

I was pregnant and had begun my leave from work. Now I found that I had hours and hours to while away at my pleasure! I’d spent years dreaming of the things I would do when at last I had a child and could spend my time at home as a homemaker. The grand meals I would cook! The gleam that I would polish into all of my home’s surfaces! The perfect child that would play quietly with his toys in the exact parameters specified to him and who would come out of those parameters to smother me with his adoring love before returning to his play area – to tidy up of course while I cooked those grand meals and polished the surfaces. The creativity that had lain dormant in my bones for so many years while I took the sensible option of working a job that merely paid the bills rather than fulfilled my heart’s desires at last would have its day to shine!

I dreamed of photography and writing.

Fast forward one year. Well, it’s not quite how I expected but I find that the most wonderful things come unexpectedly. We moved from the bustling city of Brisbane to the quiet town of Clermont in country Queensland with a population of about 1900 people and 50, 000 snakes. I don’t think there’s actually been a headcount of the snakes but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Even though I haven’t seen one myself yet.

Anyway, we moved from our beautiful home that we’d had built and had only lived in for just over a year. It was large enough for our future family as we intended to fill it with little people and lots of love. But after only welcoming one little person, Little T, to our family, my husband who is a teacher accepted a teaching position in this little town. So I hadn’t quite gotten around to taking care of the home decor when we packed up and moved into an assigned dwelling that is teeny tiny. There is plenty of wall space for hanging pictures but not much space for anything else. Half of our belongings are still boxed and live underneath our house in the spare car park and will probably stay there for the duration of our stay in Clermont.

I digress.

Back to being pregnant. My sister-in-law, D, and her family were living with us at the time. She LOVES to sew! Me? Meh. I learned a little about it in my Home Ec class in grade eight but hadn’t pursued it. My mother surprised the heck out of me when I was 11 years old by sewing two outfits for me that were required costumes for a school fete and church item. Up until then I’d had no idea my mother had such a skill! So, she didn’t pass it on to me.

So that was my sewing experience. Until D moved in.

I asked D once what she would do with her time if she could do whatever she wanted. Her reply was an enthusiastic “Sew!”

She talked me into making a quilt for my firstborn. I was hesitant as I didn’t have any clue at all how to go about it but she assured me that she would be there to guide me through the process. I believed her. After all, we lived together.

And so my sewing life really began.

I found that I unexpectedly got a taste for it (although I still have trouble bringing myself to say out loud that I enjoy sewing). It turns out that I love to create things! 

So here I am one year later. My plans for grand meals? Well,  it was a nice thought. Those shining surfaces? If you count the dribble that my son trails everywhere, sure I’ve got shining surfaces! The perfect child? Well I adore him to his bones, but at 11 months old he hasn’t quite grasped the concept of parameters and tidying up after himself. But he does excel in sharing his love with his Daddy and me.

The combination of this time in my life as a new mum and being careful with money, well it just seems perfectly sensible to me to use these newfound (and still growing) skills to my advantage. I get to explore the homemaker side in me and make practical items for my family that I can be proud of, while saving a few dollars here and there.

I’m a huge fan of Pinterest and take many ideas from there and also follow many of the tutorials that I see on there. 

I’ve started with making practical things that I need for my own family and also for my many pregnant friends and family (I’m currently expecting two nieces and one nephew this year alone).

Join me on my discovery of creativity as a woman who didn’t know she could until she tried.­