Snow Filled Baubles

The 99p shop is becoming my favourite craft shop. I bought some transparent baubles there last week (99p for 6, surely you can't go wrong with that!?!)  not knowing exactly what to make with them.

In the end I decided to fill them with magic snow.

Magic snow comes in powder so you need to put the powder in the bauble first, add water, shake and close.

I covered the top of the bauble with ribbon to hide the very cheap looking top and that's it.

You could obviously fill them with whatever you want, beads, glitters, sand or anything else that takes your fancy.

Homemade Santa Sack

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make a Santa sack for my little one and this is the one I initially wanted to copy (you can buy it here).

I bought a burlap (hessian) sack from Ebay for £4 and some stencils but changed my mind and decided to go for something more colourful instead.

That's when I came across my collection of buttons... Don't ask me why, but I LOVE buttons and I buy them for absolutely no reason. So I decided to finally use them.

I drew a Christmas tree shape on the sack and filled it with buttons using my glue gun. I also stuck a couple of sequins for good measure. To make the snowflake which is on top of the tree, use this tutorial.

To write Chloé's name, I cut out letters in felt, cut smaller ones out of fabric and hand stitched the fabric ones on the felt. I glued the lot to the sack.

And because I had some pretty cardboard lying around (I think it's time for me to stop buying materials...), I cut a couple of hearts in them and glued them to the letters. 

Finally I cut two pieces of ribbon and hand stitched one on each side of the sack to close it (though I suspect we'll never be able to do so considering how many presents we've already bought her...). 

I can't wait to start decorating my house for Christmas!

DIY Button Projects

It's been over a week since my last post, but between looking for a job, working at my current one, looking after a child and desperately trying to stay sane, I have a few things on my plate to say the least...

I've been looking at projects to use the impressive amount of crafty bits I have collected along the years and I've decided to start working with buttons.

I LOVE buttons! And if you're not convinced yet, here are a few ideas of what you could be using them for...

(Button) Elephant in the Room-Tutorial

DIY Button Embellished Bag

DIY Christmas Ball

Button Bowl

Button Lamp

Button Bouquet

Chloé's New Top

Another day, another simple (and free!) pattern.

I actually made this top a couple of weeks ago but as I'm still concentrating on making a lot of headbands to fill Chloé's advent calendar with, I thought I'd post this one today.

The pattern is once again really easy to follow and you can print it here. This would fit a child age 3/6 months. I hope you like it!

Felt Headband with Sequins

Today, something downed on me... I want to make our advent calendar this year but because Chloé is only a couple of months old she's not going to be able to have chocolate and I therefore need to make her 25 little presents!

Because time is running out pretty quickly, these need to be incredibly easy and quick to make so I've decided to make her a lot of headbands and bows.

Hair accessories might also help people realise she's a girl, something which doesn't seem to be as obvious as I'd like it to be. Even when she's dressed in a pink dress. The reassuring thing is that this seems to happen to all my friends with baby girls. Or most of them anyway...

For this first headband, I use:
- Felt
- Elastic
- Sequins
- A needle
- Some thread
- A glue gun

Measure the head of your child (or yours is you want to make it for yourself) and cut the felt accordingly. Attach the elastic at both end so you now have a band which fit the head of your little one.

All that's left to do is decorate!

I used sequins but you could obviously use whatever you have in your house. Fabric, buttons, beads, anything!

I also made a cute little felt flower (this took me about 30 seconds) and you can watch the tutorial in the video below.

So that's one done. 24 to go....

Christmas Stockings

I have wanted to make Christmas Stockings for a very long time but never got round to doing it for some reason.

I went to the pound shop to get a stocking and traced my pattern from that but there are quite a lot of free patterns online that you could print instead. This one for example is very easy to follow and the stockings are simply gorgeous!

I used 1.5 fat quarter for each stocking and because the fabric I used wasn't quite hard enough, I had to use fabric stiffener on each piece before assembling them.

And here they are! I still need to decorate them and add names but I still haven't decided if I want to cut the names in felt or hand stitch them. Decision, decision...

And you might have noticed that I like these little wooden birds as I used one of them in my heart wreath. I got them from my local craft store but you could get similar ones online.

Wool Christmas Ornaments

Morning all!

Today is starting pretty well. Our neighbours have decided to cut our water supply without warning so I can't have a shower... And so here I am looking for my next DIY project.

As you know, I've decided to make my own Christmas tree ornaments this year and these wool balls made with balloons, glue and (obviously!) wool seem like the perfect project. Seriously, how pretty are they??

Click here to view the tutorial.

I've decided to add beads to mine so we'll see how that goes...