Christmas Countdown

With just two hours to spare, Sophie's new advent calendar was finished and pinned into place!

I wanted to make something very different to Finn's wooden train and settled on a garland of mittens, stockings, envelopes, gingerbread men and birds.

I choose a range of colours that would go with her room and tried to avoid anything too obviously girly or christmasy. I wanted something that would last her for years to come.

 I think mitten 19 with an applique robin is my favourite!

The gingerbread men each carry a small bag (made from lovely liberty bird lawn) on their back,  for advent chocolates. 

The bird's wings are small pouches for carry tiny gifts and the envelopes have press studs so slightly larger gifts can be added.

I looped each item onto the wire hessian ribbon back through itself so that they stay in place whilst hanging.

 I then pinned the whole thing to Sophie's wooden wall shelves.

6 christmas stockings, 6 children's mittens, 6 santa letters, 3 gingerbread men, 3 calling birds and 1 little girl's advent calender!

Bookbinding

I'm lucky to be surrounded by creative people and so when the lovely Judy invited me for a day of bookbinding it became a date I looked forward to...

She talked me through all the bits you need.

And soon we were cracking on with a pamphlet style book.

Using the bone folder to make our folds super crisp.

Neatening up the edges.

Choosing the cover - paper made by Jude!

Folding and cutting corners

Choosing some coloured thread to bind it all together.

Adding the finishing touches - a title indent!

Some bubbles and the log burner and plenty of chat made it the most perfect way to spend a wintery Saturday!

Dometic Patchwork

This is clearly not the most exciting patchwork project I've done but much needed. Our ironing board cover had all but disintegrated and so I decided to recover using a picture I'd seen of vintage board covers as my inspiration.

It was a great wy to use up a lot of small scraps. I used mainly green fabrics to go with my newly painted wall you can just glimpse!

Stop Motion

Not exactly a crafty make from me but still creative! I wanted to share our wonderful attempt at making a stop motion film using the Stop Motion app.

Finn was 4 when we started making films and soon grasped the easy to use interface and it wasn't long until he ditched me as a co-creator and went solo as Director / screen-writer / cinematographer!

We used toys from the basket and quickly came up with a story line. He understood quickly that small changes and lots of snaps made a better film!

We even added background music and our own sound-effects!

I'd definitely recommend  next rainy day!

Patched Up

 

I love this cardi, its cashmere and also had holes in the elbows. So a quick DIY patch job was needed.

 

I found a cup which I drew round and then moved to create a longer oval shape. This was my template.

 

I used my chopped up jeans (cut up to make my super useful bag!) as the fabric. They will be strong, a good colour to complement the oatmeal of the wool.

I positioned the patches over the holes, pinned and used perle cotton thread to sew the patches in place.

Warming Canon Street

Sarah's home has been a labour of love - bringing it from a shell with plenty of holes to a wonderful family home. Although there is still much to do, it was finally time for living room cushions l- yeah -  my house-warming gift to them.

After much discussion and link sharing the great cushion debate resolved with a set of seven fabrics ordered from M for Make. Sarah settled on 4 large square cushions, 2 smaller square ones and 2 rectangle sized.

The larger squares have contrasting piping.

The smaller squares and rectangles have different patchwork designs.

A DIY Jungle Party

Finn is five! And so to celebrate our first, proper, kids party. And an old fashioned kids party at that, otherwise know as encouraged chaos!

We started with the theme - animals - jungle / safari / domestic - up to you! Mainly as Finn has always talked about being the person to take people to visit animals in the wild - now amplified thanks to the discovery of Go Diego Go on Netflicks! So his party invitation were created and sent far and wide.

Next on the list was the cake. Now i'm not a baker and so sought advice from the friends and family and ended up using the Big Raspberry Cake recipe from the Great British Bake Off (minus the raspberries, plus some vanilla essence and an extra egg.) I then made a ganache (which sounds so bake-y!), which is chocolate and double cream. I left it over night to set and then whipped up a good dollop to make the filling then softened the rest to cover the cake:

After this had set it was on with the coloured fondant icing (brought from a shop!). I rolled the base out on cornflour and used water to stick my cut out shapes.

 

Next were decorations. I spray-painted charity shop plastic animals, made paper vines which were blu-tacked to the walls, animal-print balloons and blow-up animals - created a perfect jungle!

I designed a special message for our blackboard wall.

Next the all important party bags. Having gone to several parties recently I knew how much kids loved getting these but also the pressure to fill them - they can get so expensive. A tip from a helpful shop owner saved the day. I got two packs of animal books from Ebay from an outlet similar to the The Book People. I then found some great printable downloads from Pinterest and dropped in a lolly!

Getting the food right was crucial. Again Pinterest offered lots of inspiration and soon we had a table of jungle treats.

 

 Jungle Juice, Swamp Water, Twigs, Tiger Tails, Bettle Wings, Flying Bugs, Safari Salsa and Shark Fins, Snake sandwiches

 elephant poo!

Snake eggs

 Hungry Hippo Dips

I also made Lion Pizzas, Crocodile teeth (watermelon) and the show-stealer a Mud Bath (Chocolate Fountain) with pineapple and marshmallow dippers.

Although the weather wasn't great we were still able to play some favourites of pass-the-parcel and musical chairs.

Which resulted in one happy birthday boy - pictured here in his Go Diego Go outfit. I made the vest using the Oliver + S Explorer Vest pattern - and swapping the top pockets for the Diego emblem (made from felt) instead.

Thanks to everyone who made it a success and such fun!