Handmade gift idea - tea fortunes

Recently I came up with the idea to make these handmade "tea fortunes." They are simple to put together and make pretty, thoughtful gifts. They are really a mixture between a tea-bag and a fortune cookie, and you can tailor them to be as personal as you like. I think they would be great as party favours, in a hamper, or as something lightweight but lovely to send in the mail.

Step 1: Choose some loose-leaf tea. I used the Crimson Blend from the Travelling Samovar, because it's my absolute favourite and I drink it all the time

Step 2: Spoon the tea into a giant tea-bag. You can simply use a sheet of muslin cloth, tied with baking string, or stitch it into a little pouch if you're handy with a sewing machine. I used the oversized bags you see in these pictures because the lovely ladies at Travelling Samovar had some on hand and gave them to me. If you want to do the same, they can be found in Asian grocery stores

Step 3: Write your "fortunes." On thin strips of paper, write out anything you like. I used a mixture of positive affirmations, switching out the "I" for "You," as well as some inspiring quotes on creativity. Roll up your fortunes into tiny scrolls, and tie them with pieces of string.

Step 4: Personalise a giant paper pocket for the tea-bag. To do this, decorate the middle of an A4-sized sheet of paper, roughly the same size as your handmade tea-bag. Decorated it any way that takes your fancy, I painted the little tea cup you see here. Just make sure the paper is horizontal.

Step 5: Turn the sheet over so that your picture is face-down. Fold the top and bottom in, at about two centimetres. Place your tea-bag in the middle, and tuck the fortune-scrolls in behind it. Now fold the paper in at either side of your tea-bag to create the pocket. Secure it with a piece of washi tape, and you're done!

The foretelling

If I close my eyes I am instantly back there, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our family room underneath the IKEA shelves and fold-out "architect's desk," scribbling on scraps of paper. Sunlight slants sideways from a big wall of windows, the curtains decorated with lime concentric circles. There are lime-and-red cushions on the chairs.

The family room is dominated by a gigantic, yellow, vinyl, double-sized beanbag. On days that I am sick and stay home from school, I lie lengthwise in this beanbag and Mum lets me watch daytime TV. On one particular afternoon, one that has gone down in family folklore, Mum lets the dog inside to "comfort" me. He races through the kitchen and leaps onto the beanbag, not realising I am already in it until it is too late. He lands on my head. From that day until the day he dies, that dog will never leap into that beanbag again.

I'm not in the beanbag when I close my eyes. I'm on the floor, under the furniture. I'm writing a book. Scraps of paper surround me and on each of them is a new page of my story, thick with misspellings and childlike illustrations. Later, Mum will staple all the pages together to create my book. I am rewriting Black Beauty. "Black is my favourite colour," I tell Mum, "because I love black horses."

That is the first time I can remember thinking I want to be a writer.

In the years that follow, I swell with pride when my story is printed in my primary school newsletter, the Panorama (because my school's name is Wideview, get it?). I pen self-conscious and intensely melodramatic dramas during my hippie stage in high school, inspired by a blood moon rising beyond the horizon. Once, I create a mythology for "the birth of the sun." In my description of the "raw power and force," I believe I have tapped something deeply inspired. My English teacher tells me she feels as though she is reading a motorcycle advertisement.

Later, I write a fable about time. A travel memoir about growing up in the country. Poems about broken hearts. I subconsciously turn every job I have into a writing job, until I stumble into a commodity analyst/journalism role and my editor becomes my mentor. Writing is now my profession, but the words I create are a long way from those motorcycle-advertisement dramas. Now, I write about wool futures and cattle markets. About business leaders and political decisions. The subject matter is less than inspiring, but my editor teaches me about plain English, the elegance of minimalism, the value of self editing.

Hunched over my desk under a flickering flourescent light on a contract writing-job for a client, I write a novella in between memos and reports. At home, insomnia turns my brain into the rabbit hole to Wonderland. My novella spirals with it, and transforms into something unintentionally tainted with magic. When the editors at Curtin University's Black Swan Press approach me to publish my book, I am as proud as I was the day the Panorama sent out photocopies of my Nancy Drew-inspired adventure. Possibly more.

The day I get the letter to say cutbacks in funding mean Black Swan will be closing, and my contract is void, I am devastated. I take it personally, and it is months before I write again. But then I do write, and I burden my next character with more humiliation than I have ever known. It is cathartic.

I am writing this on the floor of my lounge room, cross legged, wrapped up in my dressing gown with my lap top on my knees. My two children are upstairs asleep. Madeleine is two and two months, and she loves to create stories in her little notebook. "One day..." she will promise out loud, while scribbling across a page. Then she will mutter for a little while over more pages and more scribbles, before closing the book with a loud clap and announcing, "The End!"

My fingers on the keyboard are my livelihood but, more than that, they are the outlet for my deepest emotions. The telling of my story, and of theirs. The retelling, the rewriting, the foretelling.

Party printable: ice-cream + circus elephant

When I was planning the invitations for my friend Pip's ice-cream baby-shower last weekend, I asked her for some ideas as to what she would like me to use as a theme. One of the thoughts she had was something to do with elephants. Trying to mix elephants with ice-cream wasn't what I'd call a natural visual pairing, but I am nothing if not ambitious. In the end, I decided to paint a cute circus elephant balancing on a big, round scoop of ice-cream. A couple of people have asked me if they could use this picture, which is super flattering as I don't imagine there is a LOT of demand for blue-and-purple circus elephants balancing on top of blue ice-cream. But yes of course I'm happy for the picture to be used!

If this is you, you can download the invitation here, or download just the picture here. I hope your party is super fun!

Why do you write?

The following four questions about writing are part of a "blog-hop" that's doing the rounds at the moment. If you've never heard of this term, a blog-hop is like a never-ending relay (if the baton could be divided an infinite number of times). I received the baton from straight-talking fellow Melbournian Annette of I Give You the Verbs. Annette is one of the friendliest, most encouraging, most connected bloggers I've met, and you can read about her own writing process here. Leave Annette a comment because she always responds, and she's wonderfully chatty and supportive across social media.

1. What are you working on right now?

This blog! I'm always trying to improve it because I want it to be more useful, more interesting, and more reliable for you*. Straight after this I'm going to write you a post on an amazing Australian artist, who was kind enough to answer some questions for us about where she finds inspiration (and time) to create. That'll go live tomorrow so stay tuned!

And also...

* An e-book - possibly a series of e-books - about Melbourne and parenting and parenting in Melbourne, and stuff like that

* Letters - lots and lots of snail mail letters to you guys. And on the back of that, I'm thinking perhaps I'll form a mail-art pen-pal network, and/or a stationery swap. Would anyone be interested if I did that?

* A novel - it's about a sommelier who does dastardly things to get hold of the ultimate wine. I have been working on this novel FOREVER (or so it seems), because it's hard to get and keep your head inside a novel with little distractions running around the house

* My job! - part time, I write feature articles for magazines, and write copy and communications strategies for companies and charities

Phew that's a lot of writing. No wonder the carpal tunnel has been acting up.

2. How does your writing differ from others in your genre?

One of the great things about personal blogs is that they are free from the constraints of house styles, or any formulaic kinds of writing. So really this question is moot. What you read here differs from others because it is my voice, writing about my life and my ideas and the things that I love and the things that I think (I hope) will bring you joy.

3. Why do you write what you do?

Being born into a literate culture brings with it many advantages. But one of the disadvantages is that many of us have lost the ability to retain things - facts, stories, ideas - without writing them down. I definitely fall into this category. In fact the way I'm not sleeping these days, I'd be in danger of forgetting my own name if it wasn't in my blog title! So I write this blog to document the things that are important. Precious moments, shared with those I love. Places I've visited that I really want to visit again. The process of building a home. At the same time, I keep discovering wonderful things that I want to share with you. Creative projects that I admire (and sometimes try). Food stories. Food trucks! Snail mail! Documenting and discovering. That's why I write this blog.

4. How does your writing process work?

My top tip - as an author, a journalist, a blogger, a copywriter and an all-round storyteller - is to break everything down into manageable portions. If you don't know where to start, just write one paragraph. Then another, and another. When I was at university I'd break a standard 3000 word essay down into portions: 200-300 word introduction, 200 word conclusion. Three key arguments, of 800 words each. Four core elements / points to each argument, of 200 words each. That's not much. Just start writing! Before I knew it I'd have my 3000-word essay written, and all I needed then was to give it a "big picture" finesse. That is still my writing process today, in everything I do. Just break it down and anything - even a novel - becomes achievable.

Another trick that my first editor taught me was this: you don't have to be the expert, you just have to find the expert and ask them the right questions. Whether I'm sharing craft or recipes on this blog, writing a feature story about business, writing a novel about wine or anything else, that advice has come in handy almost every day of my writing life.

Now, what about the other writers?

Passing the baton, I want you to first meet Belgium-based Turkish blogger Gulin Senol-Dreesen. Her blog Hyper Real Details is a beautiful reflection of the fleeting moments that make life so precious. Gulin reached out to me when I had just given birth to Madeleine, and she was pregnant with her own beautiful daughter. She is such a lovely, artistic soul. Sometimes she lets her images tell the story, in others, her words shine (despite English not being her first language - can you imagine how hard that must be?). I can't wait to read what she has to share about why she writes.

Next, I want to introduce you to Katherine Mackenzie-Smith of The Beauty of Life. Katherine is one of those people who acts on her dreams. You know how when the rest of us are sitting around thinking "I wish I had that" or "I wish I did that for a job" or "I wish that was my life"...? When Katherine thinks those things, she makes them happen. Recently Katherine switched careers from TV production to life coaching, and I can't think of anyone more qualified to help people make their own dreams come true. I met her through her personal blog, and have followed her progress with pleasure.

Take it away ladies!

And in the meantime, tell me in the comments. Why do YOU write?

* (On that, is there anything you'd like to see more of on here? Anything you're not so keen on? Anything you'd like to hear from me that I haven't covered?)

How to create a winter woodland picnic party

When I carried Madeleine into her playroom at 6.30 on the morning of her second birthday party she breathed "The park!" in wide-eyed wonder. I put her little sock-feet down on the grass where she was used to feeling floor-boards and she slowly spun around, taking in my dodgily-drawn toadstools, wonky painted fir trees and floppy crepe-paper grass. "Wowwww. The park!" she whispered. And just like that I felt like Picasso.

Winter in Melbourne means Madeleine will probably always have her birthday parties indoors. But she loves - she really loves - the park. So we created the a picnic-in-the-park party for her in our home. It wasn't that difficult, or that expensive, and I imagine you could make this bringing-the-outside-in scheme work for all kinds of woodsy party themes, like a teddy-bears' picnic, a fairy kingdom, or a woodland creatures party.

1. On a budget

Most of our decorations were home-made for just the cost of cardboard, paint and some masking tape; or found around the house:

* A back-drop of fir-trees painted onto butchers' paper

* A green trim of crepe-paper grass around the skirting boards

* Red and white toadstools painted onto cardboard and stuck around the room

* Cardboard cut-outs of bees, butterflies and ladybirds, also stuck around the room

* Blue and white cardboard clouds, strung from door frames and other high places

* Red and white polka dot paper cups and plates

* Red and white paper bunting, on loan from the lovely lady at Mint Jelly

* Autumn leaves, collected from the park with Madeleine several weeks earlier

* A picnic rug

* Two fibre-glass toadstool stools, on loan from my Mum

2. A little bit more

If you can spend just a little more, helium balloons will always be well appreciated by little ones. We (and by we I mean my generous parents who wouldn't let me pay them back) purchased a helium kit from Spotlight. I chose to use only yellow balloons as I wanted to create a "sunny sky" effect and blue would have made the room too dark (that's why the clouds were partly blue instead). I dangled some of the bees, butterflies and ladybirds I had made from the balloons, to make it look as though they were flying around the room. As you can imagine, these were very popular.

3. Your one extravagance

Our one big splurge was three sheets of 1m x 3m synthetic grass, and we went back and forth in the lead-up to the party as to whether or not we would go there. Originally, I thought my idea to use the synthetic grass was genius. I figured that off-cuts would be a super-cheap, easy way to create a "wow factor" in the room (I REALLY wanted to earn that soft "Wow" from Madeleine), and make it a snatch to clean up. I was right about the wow-factor, and the easy clean-up. But this grass is surprisingly expensive. At one point, we were thinking it would be cheaper to just lay real turf in the playroom!

In the end we decided to go ahead and get the grass because we would use it afterwards in our courtyard, to create a bit of a softer, 'garden' area for the children to play until we could afford to pull up the tiles out there and landscape (that could be years).

So there you have it. Madeleine's "winter woodland picnic" themed birthday party. Games were mostly parallel play (because have you ever tried to get a bunch of two-year-olds to do the same thing when you want them to?), with a bit of stop-start dancing and a mini treasure hunt thrown in. Add some cake and chocolate and surprisingly-popular healthy snacks into the mix, and your party is done and dusted, right there.

Easy gift to make: tea stamps

How have these early days of winter been treating you? I have been getting out of the house as much as I can, because I know that when things get really cold and wet we will all be trapped indoors. The other day I pushed the pram more than seven kilometres in the rain to go along to a little blogger meet-up in Collingwood. The meet-up was great and it was lovely to meet so many kind, talented people who I'd been admiring online. On the other hand, pushing a double pram in the rain is somewhat uncomfortable, because it requires two hands just to keep it on the footpath (or else it will swing around into the traffic), and that doesn't leave any hand free for holding an umbrella. The rain wasn't heavy, but let's just say my winter coat now needs a dry-clean. Walking around town, I smell like wet dog.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and think, I walk for hours every day, pushing two heavy children in a pram, and I am breastfeeding a hungry baby day and night. Why haven't I shed the last of those baby kilos? And then I look at my diet, and think about the hours of sleep I'm not getting, and there's my answer. There's nothing I can do about the sleepless nights at the moment but I could improve my diet, with just a smidgeon of self-discipline. And I know I should. But when you are coming off the back of yet another broken night of sleep that cumulatively added up to three and a half hours, that coffee and brownie may be the only thing standing between you and total meltdown. So then I say to myself "Self, today I will cut you some slack. We'll work on our tummy and thighs some other day."

Other than work, which I never really talk about on this blog but which happens with monotonous regularity, our days have been marked by gentle adventures. Trips to the zoo. Visits to our favourite cafes and parks. We joined a new play group, so that Harry could make some little friends his own age. The babies are all about two months younger than him which in the scheme of things won't make a difference but right now, when they all lie down together on a mat, he looks like he has been steadily eating his way through their friends.

I have been decorating some mail to send to you guys, and just popped another five parcels in the mail. And recently I made these little "tea stamp" books to send in the mail to some readers and friends. I can't claim credit for the idea, it came from a dear pen pal of mine who goes by the name of Flora Likes Soap on Etsy. I covered the 'books' with used stamps and then just attached three different flavours of organic tea bags (green tea, peppermint tea and chai). They make lovely little handmade presents because they are quite compact, and very lightweight to send in the post.

How have you been filling your days?

Easy "woodland picnic" party invitations

I always think it's nice at a party, even a little one, to give your guests one "wow factor" to make them feel special. It doesn't need to be difficult or expensive, just something that looks a bit extravagant, so they think "Wow, I'm excited to be here." It might be a rainbow curtain of coloured streamers at the front door, or a confetti-strewn hallway (if you can stand the clean-up later), or simply a fancy table-setting.

Same goes for the invitations. They set the scene and build anticipation for the party. And because I'm all about the snail mail, I LOVE to make interesting, unexpected invitations and send them by post. These days it's so nice to receive ANYTHING other than bills in the mailbox at all, let alone a little present, inviting you along to a shin-dig.

Madeleine loves a good picnic so we are hosting a "Winter Woodland Picnic" party for her second birthday. Recently I saw these woodland party invitations by Michaela Egger on Oh Happy Day and I thought they'd be perfect for this theme. Michaela gives you a full tutorial for making the invitations, even down to templates to make the boxes yourself. If you have the time, they look pretty easy and then you're talking about almost no cost to make something really pretty!

As it was, I bought my boxes for $3 each from a local cafe, because I couldn't find the type I wanted in craft stores, and was too lazy/time-poor to make them myself. Other than that, the florist moss was $5 and I had ridiculous amounts left over, and I covered the envelopes in old stamps we already had around the house to cover postage, so all in all it was a pretty cheap exercise. From start to finish, these invitations took about three hours to make (I made 14).

These are the steps:

1. Decorate the outside of the boxes, any way you like. I chose to paint little toadstools on mine (Madeleine helped me pick images from the Internet to copy), but you could do anything: make a collage, create a potato-stamp, cover it with confetti... go to town!

2. Print out your invitations, roll them into a scroll, and tie them with string.

3. Fill the boxes. In this case, I filled mine with florist moss to create a woodland/grassy theme, following the Oh Happy Day tutorial. I also sacrificed an old tea-towel and cut up tiny squares to look like picnic rugs. Maybe you could add little doll-house picnic items, or some tiny forest animals...

4. Pop your invitation into the box, stick it in an envelope, and post it to your friends. Done!

Madeleine posted the invitations herself. Later the same afternoon, we saw the post van driving past us ("Red car!" Madeleine alerted me). I explained that her party invitations were in that very car, and the driver was taking them to all her friends. The wonder in her eyes. Oh, to be almost two again!

ps. It seems almost unbelievable to me that we are gearing up for Madeleine's second birthday already. You name the cliche, I'm feeling it. The years are short but the days are long. It feels like just yesterday that she was born, and yet I can barely remember or imagine life without her in it. She is my own little baby. She is growing into such a big girl so fast. And so on.

I once read that cliches only become cliches because they are the best way of expressing something. So there. I am embracing my inner cliches AND my inner conflict. Every day I am so proud of the way she is growing. She is so clever (says her mother), and I can't wait to see what she will do next. Yet, I want her to stay little forever. I'm not ready to lose that baby-sweetness!

The swing

This is Madeleine, flying. The swing is her favourite thing in the world to do right now. She can stay on there for hours. Sometimes in silence. At other times, the park echoes to her jubilant shouts of joy: "Weeeeee!" she yells, mimicking Peppa Pig, as her funny little baby-mullet lifts in the wind and her knuckles turn white to my "Hold on tight!"

"More high? More high?" she begs, and I really  put my back into pushing her. "Do you feel like you're flying?" I ask. She grins. "YES!"

I am swinging, too. Up: I am trying new things and I am taking the Blog With Pip course from Pip Lincoln and I am mapping out the beginnings of a new book... I am high and I am flying. Down: Harry is waking and staying awake throughout the night, I'm getting less than three hours of sleep in every 24 hours, and I ache with weariness. Sometimes my eyes can't focus. Sometimes it physically hurts to sit up. But still I have to care and play and nurture and manage tantrums and comfort fevers and meet those pesky work deadlines... I am low and I am motion-sick. I am probably just one more sleepless night away from administering tea intravenously.

The swing is why things have gone a little quiet around here of late. I'm giving myself permission to focus on other things. Like survival! Yes, survival, but also very exciting changes to happen on this blog. I can't wait to share them with you when I get them finished. Oh and that new book. Not the I've-been-working-on-it-forever novel, which will still happen ONE DAY, but something a little closer to the contents of this blog and I really hope you like it!

Way to be all circumspect, Naomi. I think on Facebook they call this "vaguebooking," don't they? I'm sorry, I just have to clarify everything in my mind and plot everything down on paper (I'm old-fashioned like that) before I will know how to share it with you. I can't wait!

In the meantime, I hope you are well. Tell me what you have been doing! What have you been dreaming / planning / wishing for? Fill this space with your lovely words while mine take a back seat!

Yours truly, Naomi xo

She loves winter

I have been doing little illustrations and fancy typography of cute quotes from books that I love. This was the first one, featuring (of course), that cheeky Mademoiselle Madeline (you know the one: she lives in an old house in Paris, covered in vines...) ps. Don't forget there is one day left to enter to win family passes to both IMAX and the Museum, worth $75. Details and entry are the bottom of this post.

Snail mail: yours truly

I managed to carve out some time during the past couple of weeks to write some mail and draw pictures on the envelopes, to send to blog readers. I hope these letters find them well, and that they enjoy their little parcels.

I really love sending pretty mail, so if you'd like some just let me know! At the moment, I'm posting copies of my book Airmail to people who subscribe to this blog. It doesn't cost you anything or commit you to anything, it's just my way of saying thanks for reading. 

Yours truly (and all that), Naomi xo

UPDATE 5 July 2014: as of today I have run out of copies of Airmail to send you. If you're still keen to read Airmail, there's a list of stockists here.

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ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course? 

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here.