A collection of craft

Christmas wreath

Here's a collection of Christmas craft you might like to try over the holidays. First up is my latest post for the Boden blog on how to make a Christmas wreath. This was great fun, I made it using Lotta Jansdotter fabric and some felt flowers.

paper garland

I also want to make a festive version of this paper garland (again from Boden) to hang around our tree using some plain silver card.

cut and and colour nativity figures

I found these brilliant cut and and colour nativity figures via Jessica Jones' How About Orange blog. You may recognise the name, Jessica is the designer behind the popular Outside Oslo collection. Her blog is a great resource for craft, design, all sorts of brilliant stuff, well worth following. You can print up a colour version or a black and white one for colouring in, which is what I did. Both my kids loved playing with these and did raise a few smiles from me when they were re-inacting the story. Made trickier by the fact my perfectionist daughter decided her first Mary wasn't coloured in well enough, leaving her with 2 Marys in her nativity scene.

woven paper ball garland

Another paper garland, and again from How About Orange, how cool are these woven balls? I really want to make these.

how to make paper snowflakes

Last Christmas (and I feel a little sad to think that this time last year we were stuck in because of the snow) we were gripped by making paper snowflakes. If you want templates for normal snowflakes, have a look at here.

Fimo Christmas decorations

I've been meaning to make these decorations from the Poppy Talk blog since before last Christmas and we finally got round to it a few weeks back. 

Fimo (a modelling clay that you can harden in the oven) is pretty expensive, but as you roll it quite thin, you can a lot of decorations from a block. We used pearlised and glitter Fimo and then pushed stamps into them before baking them. Very easy and fun.

 from Anna Maria Horner

And finally, how amazing are these decorations made from old lightbulbs from Anna Maria Horner's blog?

Clay, pixel blocks and bandages

 cool bandage huh? I did egg the nurse on a bit...

Whilst I wouldn't say that we had grand plans for this bank holiday weekend, there is so much going on in Brighton this weekend, I felt sure we could find something fun to do. But one ill-fated trip to the park, a foot vs slide mishap and a couple of hours in the wonderful Brighton A&E  finds me house bound with my beloved and bandaged girl.

a master craftsman at work

So, this would seem like and excellent excuse to get a bit of crafting done. I saw somewhere on the interweb a tutorial involving clay, cookie cutters and shells. And seeing as we have a lot of shells from our holiday and clay is brilliant fun I made a mental note to try it out. I picked up some no fire clay today and got out the cookie cutters which have definitely been used more for craft than cookies. Anyway, I don't need cookie cutters now that I have the best ever cookie recipe.

a doorbell maybe, she is a very creative crafter

This activity didn't pass as much time as I would have hoped. Maybe I should have tied one hand behind their backs to slow them down a bit. That seems a bit cruel for a child already bandaged though. I'm sure they looked rather more spectacular on that lost tutorial, but it was fun, and when they have air dried in 4 years time, we'll paint them.

somewhere under those shells is a star

Another thing I have been meaning to blog about for ages is Pixel Blocks. My husband brought some back from a trip to the US, I've struggled to find a link for the UK but they did have them on Firebox at one point. They are amazing, like 3D Lego blocks that you can connect in all directions, have a look at the link for an explanation. The kids love them as do I. They come with a book of ideas, but my daughter is old enough to make up her own stuff now.

This is not modelled on me, 
I have short hair and 4 fingers on each hand

Apparently they are popular amongst geeky designer types, and you can create amazing stuff out of them, 2D or 3D. Take a look at the Flickr group.

a dog, obviously

I'd recommend them for 4 years + my (4 year old) son loves them, great for fine motor skills and general concentration. When it rained last week we made zoo animals. (Don't get me wrong, we also watched telly and bickered).

 a panda, and next, a honey badger (this is a joke)

Here's a close up...

you want them don't you?

So, my bank holiday weekend so far, I'm hoping the remainder is less eventful.

Make a Corsage

Been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently - sorry about that. Half term and family life has rather taken over. But a while back I wrote this blog post for Boden about making a corsage, so if you fancy giving one a go, then head over there...

I have 3 different fabric collections on their way to me as I type, so in the coming weeks there will be lots of lovely new fabric to show you. Some I already mentioned, some my lovely Twitter followers offered me advise on, and another that only Florence knows about.

Exciting eh? I am very excited and it feels like a good time to think about give-aways, so do check back.

In the meantime, go and get your corsage on.

The second rule of snow club...

Day 2 of snow and I suspect the last day. This my second post in the informative series regarding snow (find part 1 here) with more insightful advice about how to survive it.

Faced with a long day stuck in the house with 2 delightful children, it's time to crack open the craft supplies.

I had hoped that making the felted Christmas baubles that I showed you before from Vicky's blog would be a wholesome craft project for me and the kids to enjoy. But really, it's a grown up one that I thoroughly recommend. The kids absolutely loved the wool tops, I think here they were mocking their dad who grew a moustache (not quite as magnificent as these) for Movember.

I do have quite a lot of these lovely wool tops leftover - any suggestions on what to do with them?

So, needing something a little more kid friendly, I recently stocked up at Wilkinsons who have a brilliant supply of branded and own brand cheapo crafting supplies.

This is the second rule of snow club.

2. Do not run out of craft supplies

Other things I try never to run out of in our house are (in no particular order);

1. Red wine
2. Biscuits
3. Earl Grey tea
4. Wi-Fi
5. Washing powder
6. Red pesto
7. *new entry!* craft supplies

I will come back to this list, it doesn't feel complete yet.

I can tell you now that the third rule of snow club is;

3. Snow club should last no longer than 2 days

The novelty will have run out by roughly 5pm day 2. I can see into the future.

A is for apple

It's half term, it's raining, it's time to craft. Martha Stewart style. There is so much to do with kids on the Martha Stewart website, and grown ups too. Check out this felty goodness and these amazing Halloween decorations and cakes. Ok - the site is a little slow and heavy to navigate, groaning as it is under the weight of all the advertising, but there is so much cool free stuff, it's worth it.

I've have a load of gorgeous fabric paints for ages and they are all in shades of green with different finishes, glitter, pearl, gloss and apparently some flock when you iron them.

It's the first time we've used them and I like the effect of all the different shades together. Some of the paints were a little watery, mostly the glitter ones, you could get a lovely sharp stamp with a more solid colour. Because of this, it worked out better to paint it onto the apple rather than dip it, which didn't give a very good coverage.

We had a variety of different sized apples and different pots and brushes for each colour. Though by the end my daughter enjoyed mixing them all up.

It was great fun for both of us, I have been flicking through Lena Corwin's book a lot lately, wistfully hoping to do some printing, so this has filled a creative space for me. Afterwards my daughter seemed to enjoy the washing up almost as much as the printing, I'm sure that will wear off though.