Completely handmade one of a kind hijab pins made in New Zealand by Nanette, from Hijab Sparkle. All proceeds now going to Syrian orphans. Purchase an elegant hijab pin to wear with your favourite outfit. Only one of each available so don't miss out. $15 each, and free shipping anywhere in New Zealand. For shipping to other countries please contact me.
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Saturday, 18 June 2016
New! Elegant Bead Embroidered Hijab Stick Pins...Handmade.
Completely handmade one of a kind hijab pins made in New Zealand by Nanette, from Hijab Sparkle. All proceeds now going to Syrian orphans. Purchase an elegant hijab pin to wear with your favourite outfit. Only one of each available so don't miss out. $15 each, and free shipping anywhere in New Zealand. For shipping to other countries please contact me.
Thursday, 20 November 2014
Cats-Eye Cabochons and Swirls for Special Occasions.
Assalamu Alaikum!
Alhamdulilah I have finished this very swirly beaded embroidery cuff, a present for a friend in Morocco. I hope she will enjoy wearing it to weddings and other special occasions. It also has a lovely silver chain tassel which finishes it off rather nicely. This is a purposely wide cuff which is meant to stand out and be noticed. I would suggest wearing it with something elegant and simple. A similar piece can be made in a different colour scheme, if anyone is interested in ordering something like this. It takes a few weeks to make, however I think it would be worth waiting for :)
I welcome orders from anywhere in the world.
Regards,
Saturday, 19 April 2014
Bead Embroidered Bracelets
Dusty Pink Bead Embroidered Cuff $110 NZD |
Thursday, 13 February 2014
Hijab Sparkle on Etsy!
For those of you who prefer to buy handmade items though 'Etsy', I have opened an Etsy shop, and will be adding more goodies as time goes by. To find my shop in future, just look over there to the left sidebar. Etsy charges some fees, so that is why some items are a tad more expensive. If you would prefer not to pay extra, you can just contact me directly and pay the price listed on my blog. Please feel free to send me a message if you have any questions. You can also message me on Facebook.
Regards,
Sunday, 2 February 2014
Learning Any Time, Anywhere - by Hijab Sparkle.
These articles are part of a collection
about Muslim Home-schooling!
For more, please go to my
Assalamu Alaikum,
You don't have to be in a classroom to learn, and you don't have to have a set time to learn, either. Classes are great if you want to learn something specific, but looking for learning opportunities everywhere and being open and flexible, helps you and your children catch knowledge from your immediate environment. This way, you don't even realise that you are 'in class'! When you first begin homeschooling, you often wonder how your children will learn everything they 'need to know', and there is a lot of pressure to copy a mainstream, mini version school in your living room, with you as the 'teacher'. However, if you take the opportunity to use everyday opportunities to learn, the world becomes a wide and fascinating place. Don't worry if the children don't spend a lot of time at the lovely table you set for them with all the activity books and perfectly organised stationary, it doesn't matter. Just be on the look out for interesting things in your everyday life, instead of on an activity worksheet (although those are handy sometimes too).
My daughter loves snails and we have had some interesting conversations about how Allah SWT designed them. She has moved on to cicadas now, after finding their discarded cases all over the trees in the backyard. |
So you may be wondering where the learning part came in. Well, as could be expected, the kids thought this was all very interesting, and I couldn't tear them away from the window. They were fascinated by all the goings on, it was much better than the telly! My 7 year old daughter suddenly asked 'Mama, I need some white paper' (she meant printer paper...the sort of paper they think is the best to draw on...it has to be perfectly white or it is not good enough). When I asked her what for, she replied that it was to 'trace the big truck outside'. A while ago I had shown her how to trace pictures, by putting her paper on the window and copying something. She thought (logically enough I guess) that she could do the same thing and trace the big truck if she put her nice white paper on the window...fair enough! I explained why this might not work, and my husband said 'Go and sit on the step outside and draw it! You can see it better that way!'. She thought that was a great idea and grabbed her sketch book and jumped out the door. Of course the other children (boys aged almost 6 and 3) followed, took out their little kiddy chairs and something to lean on, and within seconds we had an impromptu sketching session out on the front door step. It really was very interesting to watch all the work going on, the dump truck which moved along the road as the trailer tilted up and let the gravel slide out in all the right places, the grader scraping the gravel and levelling it out, then the roller which
My 7 yr old daughter sketched this drawing of the quarry we can see from our house. Alhamdulilah, the quarry is actually not as close as this one looks, though! |
As the work progressed, and the children drew the trucks, they chatted about what they saw and asked me questions about various things. We talked about where the gravel might have come from and how was made, we looked over to the quarry which we can see from our house, and saw the diggers filling trucks with dirt, and the place where they crush all the rock into gravel for the roads and other uses. This was better than Bob the Builder, any day!
The Aztec Calendar. A stone carving we saw at the exhibition, and which the children recognised in all the books we read about the subject. |
So tomorrow when the road workers arrive and the trucks begin shaking the house, I can forget about the ceiling falling on my head, and be thankful that I have a ready made 'lesson' right outside my front door!
Happy Homeschooling!
Regards,
Handmade, Homemade...and Homeschooling! by Hijab Sparkle.
These articles are part of a collection
about Muslim Home-schooling!
For more, please go to my
Assalamu Alaikum.
My mini 'studio' where I can have quiet time to myself every now and again. Now I have moved into a whole room and alhamdulilah I have more space to let my imagination go wild! |
As many of my readers may already know, I am a home-schooling Muslimah. I have chosen to stay at home
and teach my children at home, and they have never been to mainstream 'school'. Alhamdulilah his was a happily mutual decision my husband and I made just before I became pregnant with my first child. We have had our homeschooling 'moments' both good and bad, and it has not always easy doing something that many people will never understand and will not be happy until you are following the crowd. However, our positive experiences have always outweighed the negative, alhamdulilah. Difficult times are always learning experiences and we just work out how to do things better the next time, and adjust our techniques as we go.
You may be wondering what this has to do with a person who makes Muslim dolls and hijab pins. Well, the items I design and make by hand to share with you here are a way to keep the creative side of my mind alive, and the little workshop that I retreat to when I have time to myself is the place where I can go to and relax (when time permits) while designing new projects, away from the hustle and bustle of our busy household. Homeschooling is very rewarding in many ways, but like anyone, we all need quiet time to ourselves to think and get our ideas and goals back on track. Making things helps me to do that.
Can't find something appropriate for your children? Why not make it yourself! |
Also, when I converted to Islam over 9 years ago, I couldn't find any nice
hijab pins (you need a lot of hijab pins here in Windy Wellington!) so I found out where to buy the supplies from and I made them myself. Other sisters were interested, and I began making hijab pins for them as well, then people started asking me if I could make other jewellery, and it all took off from there.
Now to the point of this post. Today an interesting thing happened. A comment someone made this afternoon about our decision to home-school really made me think, and to begin putting my thoughts down here about home-schooling. So far my husband, children and I have heard a novel's worth of reactions to our insignificant little alternative family. We often discuss these comments with each other and try to work out why people react to us in certain ways. We try to be understanding and patient, even though at times we feel scrutinised and wonder why we need to justify or explain what we do and why. It is important for us to discuss these things as a family, but now I think I would enjoy discussing it with a wider audience.
Here is how the conversation started...
The owners of the house we live in came to do some redecorating outside. They are a team of husband and wife and have a small child. The wife works in health as a nurse, working with children. She is a friendly lady and we often have small chats about this and that, usually about the kids. Today she asked me if my children went to school, or if they were home-schooled. Yes, I answered. She asked how it was all going. I answered that we had our ups and downs, but overall I am very pleased with the progress my children are making so far. She then replied, sort of out of nowhere: 'I had a positive experience at school, myself'. I thought this was an interesting thing to say. Would I be correct in understanding that she thought that the reason people home-school is because they have had a bad experience at school themselves, and therefore they want to protect their own children from a bad experience too?
I can understand where she is coming from, and why she might assume this. I might have said the same thing all those years ago, before I learnt about what home-schooling (or unschooling) really is. However, I thought for a second and then answered her: 'Yes, I had an overall positive experience at school as well, in fact I became a teacher and taught for 10 years before I had children.'
Something that I also thought was interesting about her comment was an inference which I may or may not be correct about, but possibly could be going through people's minds when they think about why people home-school their children. Perhaps there is an idea out there that people who home-school were bullied at school or didn't' achieve very well in the school system, that they were somehow inadequate, loners, too sensitive, and so on. Maybe there is an idea that these 'sort' of home-schoolers are in constant fear for their children and want to protect them from the smallest of difficulties, that they want to shelter and molly-coddle their children. I have often heard comments from well-meaning people to this effect, such as 'I wouldn't home-school my kids because I want them to be able to survive in the REAL world'. To me this is an interesting thing to say. Isn't the family a very important part of the REAL world? Wouldn't it be more REAL for a child to grow up and learn in a natural setting such as their own family, learning alongside their parents and siblings, and being introduced to people and situations outside the house as part of learning of the world in its context? If you think about it, the mainstream school setting is a very unnatural, artificial and UNREAL environment. It is a human-made, constructed environment which we have been led to believe as the way it has always been, but in reality the mainstream style of education which we know today is a relatively new invention, thought up by people who thought they knew what was best for the 'general public'...that's us.
Take your chances. |
Wouldn't this be like throwing your kids into a pool full of sharks and thinking 'Oh well, let's just hope for the best, shall we?'.
Why are there eyebrows raised when a parent decides that they are not going to take any chances with their children's education, and take on the whole responsibility? Why do some people see this as over-protection, to keep children safe at home with their family, insha Allah, especially when they are very small and vulnerable, at a time when their personality is being formed? I'm not saying that people who send their children to school don't care about their kids, but I'm turning the light around and shining it on another point of view.
The owner's comment today has pushed me to begin something I have been meaning to do for a while. I'm thinking of making a special page on this blog about home-schooling Muslim children. I'm no expert by any means but my children are 3, 6 and 7 now and I have a little experience now, and feel like sharing what I have learnt so far. It is interesting that in the whole of Wellington, at the time of writing this article, we are the only Muslim family who we know of who teach their children at home. Perhaps there are more home-schooling families here that I don't know about...great! It would be nice to connect and share our ideas and experiences. This would be another good reason to develop this section of my blog.
I have been thinking about this ever since I started home-schooling 7 years ago (and researching over 8 years ago). I didn't feel confident enough to begin writing about my experiences then, but now I have found there are many Muslims I speak to, who would like to home school but have too many questions. When I talk to them about it their eyes light up with possibilities and for that moment they are keen, they think it is a great idea...but after a few weeks or months have passed, the idea of home-schooling has lost its novelty, school seems so much more convenient and organised, they worry about how they will never have any time to themselves, and no one else supports them in the idea.
I can totally understand how people feel, though. Home-schooling is a big step, and challenges a big part of the way most of us grew up. I think sharing what I have learnt so far might help people to make a decision, and even if I give someone just the inkling of the idea that they have an alternative to the mainstream and they don't HAVE to do the same as what everyone else is doing, then writing about what I know will be a good thing.
Are you a Muslim homeschooler yourself? Do you know any homeschoolers? Perhaps you have considered homeschooling your children but you are not sure about whether it will suit your family...let me know in the comments below, I would love to hear from you.
Regards,
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Shipping
I offer free shipping for orders over $50 delivered anywhere in New Zealand (excluding Muslim dolls).
Muslim Dolls - Shipping
Here is a general idea of approximately how much it might cost to post one Muslim doll from New Zealand to various locations. If your country is not listed here please contact me and I will let you know the cost. Please note that these prices are only estimates and can change depending on the New Zealand postal system.
Please note that Hijab Sparkle is not responsible for any extra customs or tax charges which may be incurred when the item reaches the country of destination.
(All prices in New Zealand Dollars)*
To send to the North Island of New Zealand
$8.50 (plus $2.80 for rural delivery)
To Send to the South Island of New Zealand
$13.20 (plus $2.80 for rural delivery)
To send one doll to Australia:
* International Economy: $7
* International Economy Courier: $26
* International Air: $8
To send one doll to the USA:
* International Economy: $12
* International Economy Courier: $47
* International Air: $13
To send one doll to Canada:
* International Economy: $12
* International Economy Courier: $47
* International Air: $13
To send one doll to China:
* International Economy: $11
* International Economy Courier: $46
* International Air: $12
To send one doll to Malaysia:
* International Economy: $11
* International Economy Courier: $46
* International Air: $12
To send one doll to the UK:
* International Economy: $12
* International Economy Courier: $47
* International Air: $13
*PLEASE NOTE: These prices are subject to change. Please contact Hijab Sparkle to confirm the shipping price.
Muslim Dolls - Shipping
Here is a general idea of approximately how much it might cost to post one Muslim doll from New Zealand to various locations. If your country is not listed here please contact me and I will let you know the cost. Please note that these prices are only estimates and can change depending on the New Zealand postal system.
Please note that Hijab Sparkle is not responsible for any extra customs or tax charges which may be incurred when the item reaches the country of destination.
(All prices in New Zealand Dollars)*
To send to the North Island of New Zealand
$8.50 (plus $2.80 for rural delivery)
To Send to the South Island of New Zealand
$13.20 (plus $2.80 for rural delivery)
To send one doll to Australia:
* International Economy: $7
* International Economy Courier: $26
* International Air: $8
To send one doll to the USA:
* International Economy: $12
* International Economy Courier: $47
* International Air: $13
To send one doll to Canada:
* International Economy: $12
* International Economy Courier: $47
* International Air: $13
* International Economy: $11
* International Economy Courier: $46
* International Air: $12
To send one doll to Malaysia:
* International Economy: $11
* International Economy Courier: $46
* International Air: $12
To send one doll to the UK:
* International Economy: $12
* International Economy Courier: $47
* International Air: $13
*PLEASE NOTE: These prices are subject to change. Please contact Hijab Sparkle to confirm the shipping price.
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