Handmade cards and other crafts

I love decorating the house for Christmas but this can be time consuming specially when there's so much to do: cards to write and post, gifts to buy, wrap and hide until Christmas Day plus a million other things.

I wanted to make something for a little window in the entry hall and this is what I came up with.

It took me only a few minutes to make it and I love to see it up on the window.

To make something like this you'll need:

- Acrylic pomp-poms (as you can see mine are different sizes and colours)
- Cotton thread (I used some of my white crochet thread)
- A sewing needle

Thread the needle with the crochet cotton and then go through several pom-poms. Cut the thread to measure, tie a knot or two at the end and fix to the wall or window with adhesive tape.

Today I'm going to show you how to make a card topper like the ones below:

You'll need:

2 cocktail sticks
2 beads
Yarn (you can use your leftovers)
Small strip of paper
Glue

Step 1

Make your knitting needles by putting just a little glue on one end of the cocktail sticks and insert the beads. Put aside until the glue dries.

Step 2

Make the paper ring for your skein. Cut a small strip of paper in keeping with the theme of your card and glue one end over the other to form a ring like the one shown above.

Step 3

Make your skein. Use a template or just your hand and go around several times until you have a skein big enough for your project. Tie a knot around the middle so it doesn't come undone.

Step 4

Insert the paper ring to finish your skein.

Step 5

With your regular knitting needles knit a few rows with the same yarn you used to make your skein.

Step 6

Transfer the knitted bit to one of the cocktail sticks. Apply a little glue to the first and last stitches and press onto the cocktail stick so they remain in place. Allow the glue to dry and there you have your card topper ready to be used.

Tip

You can also adapt this idea to a Christmas card by changing the colour of the beads and the yarn and by changing the message from "Congratulations" to "Warm Wishes" for instance.

I finished these four brooches this morning, they can be found in my online shop.

How often does this happen to you? You have an idea of something you want to make and by the time you're done it turned out something quite different. To me it seems to happen all the time

At the moment I'm into crochet flowers and that's what I was trying to make when I got these leftover yarns from my crochet box. These were bought years ago by my mum, she knitted a jumper for Alex and I kept the leftovers. Anyway, there's me sitting on the sofa trying to come up with a new flower design and instead get this spiral thingy. It reminded me of some glass Christmas decorations I had as a child. So I made a few more using different colours and in different sizes and then attached then to a crochet chain and now I have a cool (well, I think it's cool anyway!) Christmas garland.

These are my new headbands, they are a one-size-fits-all design and very comfortable to wear.

  Ref. 001Headband - £5 including P&P (for UK only) For other countries the corresponding postage will be added Payment by postal order or PayPal (please email me your order and I'll send you my details) Description  Made with green felt and light green dotted ribbon, measures approx. 90 cm and is embellisehd with 3 little crochet flowers each with a cup sequin and bead in the centre.

  Ref. 002Headband - £5 including P&P (for UK only) For other countries the corresponding postage will be added Payment by postal order or PayPal (please email me your order and I'll send you my details) Description Made with pink felt and brown dotted ribbon, measures approx. 90 cm and is embellisehd with 3 little crochet flowers each with a pink bead in the centre.

  Ref. 003Headband - £5 including P&P (for UK only) For other countries the corresponding postage will be added Payment by postal order or PayPal (please email me your order and I'll send you my details) Description  Made with red felt and light green ribbon with white and blue circles, measures approx. 90 cm and is embellisehd with 1 green crochet flower a red button in the centre. Not available.

  Ref. 004Headband - £5 including P&P (for UK only) For other countries teh corresponding postage will be added Payment by postal order or PayPal (please email me your order and I'll send you my details) Description Made with red felt and red ribbon, measures approx. 90 cm and is embellisehd with 1 white crochet flower with a metalic red bead in the centre.

  Ref. 005Headband - £5 including P&P (for UK only) For other countries the corresponding postage will be added Payment by postal order or PayPal (please email me your order and I'll send you my details) Description Made with white felt and blue dotted ribbon, measures approx. 90 cm and is embellisehd with 1 white  crochet flower  with a blue bead in the centre.

I now have my own online shop, I'll try it for a while to see how it goes.

I've listed a few of my new handmade headbands, if you'd like to have a look, just click here.

This is one of the headbands I made recently.

This is a photo tutorial for one of my crochet flowers. All my flowers are either my own design or based on someone else's but with some alterations.

I am used to crochet charts instead of written instructions, unfortunately everytime I tried to draw a crochet chart it was just so awful that I'm sure no one would understand it so I decided to take photos of every stage of my flower making.

Let me show you the finished flower first so you know what it will look like:

A flower like this one is done in 5 quick steps as you can see below.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

And the winner is...

Alexia

Congratulations.

Last month my blog had over 2000 visitors, a number beyond all my expectations and so I think a big Thank You is in order to all those who not only visited my blog but also took the time to leave such lovely comments.

Thank You

As a token of my appreciation I'm giving away these 6 lovely crochet snowflakes I made. All you have to do is leave a comment or subscribe to my blog until November 7th. I'll then put all your names into a hat and take one out at random. The name of the winner will be posted here on November 8th.

I had such fun making these two Christmas stockings. The one with the teddy is for my son Alex and the other one is on its way to my niece, I hope she likes it. Alex loves his but he'll like it even more when it starts getting filled with little gifts.

They were much quicker to make than I'd thought. If you'd like to make some too you will find the top part of the stocking here, the bottom part is here, click here for the teddy and here for the star.

Today I'm going to show you how I made these cute hair clips.

Let's start with what you need, just check the photo below for a visual guide. I'm going to make the pair for the one with the blue crochet flower:

Circle template (big enough for your hair clip, you can use anything that's round. I used my Fiskars template)

2 felt circles

Crochet flower to which I added a bead in the centre

Thread

1 hair clip

Step one

After cutting the 2 circles out of felt, I stitched my crochet flower to one of the circles and added the blue bead to the centre of the flower.

Step two

The next step was to make a small cut on the other felt circle, as the photo shows. Determine where this cut should be using your hair clip as a guide.

Step three

I then inserted the bottom part of my hair clip through this cut.

Step four

I closed the clip and turned it downside up. This is what you should have.

Step five

For this step, I made a sandwich placing the felt circle with the crochet flower on top of the circle with the hair clip as you can see in the photo below.

Step six

My last step was to go around with a blanket stitch to join the top and bottom circles. This is the result:

Hope you enjoy this tutorial

This is what I made lately:

Also made some new cards:

My son Alex is always complaining that I never make anything for him!! Before you say "Poor boy!" read back some of my posts and you'll see how unfair this accusation really is.

Anyway, next month he's going on a 3 day school trip and all the children are allowed some pocket money. Alex has a wallet but it doesn't have a zipper and he needs one where he can keep his change safely... Enter crafty mum and this is it:

He chose the patterned felt he wanted me to use and I spent the whole morning working on it mainly because I really don't like sewing zippers onto things, never did and no matter how many tutorials I see on the Internet telling me how easy they are to sew I'll never get the hang of it!

Can't wait for him to come back from school today and see this.

I recently learnt 2 new embroidery stitches; the fly stitch (on the left) and the feather stitch (on the right).

These 2 stitches are very easy to learn and master and although they look gorgeous on their own I love them embellished with little beads and sequins.

I used the fly and feather stitch for the first time on this wall hanging I finished a few days ago and I'm quite proud of how they turned out.

If somehow, after reading this and having a look at the links below you feel like giving hand embroidery a go I would advise you to first experiment on a separate piece of fabric so you get the hang of the particular stitch you chose.

For brilliant video tutorials and links to patterns check ou the Needle 'N Thread website.

The following websites/blogs are also well worth a visit:
Knitting-and.com
BellaOnline
Primrose design

Have fun embroidering

The days are getting shorter and colder too, a sign that Summer is definitely over and Autumn is settling in. Some shops have even started displaying things for Christmas!!

Although there are still 3 months to go I've began working on some Christmas projects, the reason being that I can't devote many hours to crafting and only do so for short periods of time in the evening  and as there are a few things I want to have ready by December this is a good time to start!

This is what I'm working on at the moment: an Advent Calendar for my lovely niece who is 17 months old. I think they look very pretty all piled up .

As you can see this Advent Calendar is made of felt tags that I cut with my Sizzix Big Shot and my big tags die cut. I still have a few to make but cutting them with the Big Shot is a breeze.

These can also be used to make a garland or as Christmas ornaments to hang on your tree.

If you don't have a die cutting machine you can cut your tags by hand using either templates that you can download for free from the Internet (just click on the links below) or you can draw your own. Instead of felt you can also use paper.

http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/tags-templates.html

http://tigrisdesigns.net/creativity/templatestags.htm

Made these for a commission so the lady can choose one or the other. Which one would you choose?

I've been wanting to make a bunting for sometime and Alex's birthday (he was 9 yesterday) was the perfect "excuse".

Depending on the level of detail you want your bunting or banner to have, it can be very quick and easy to make. For this one I used a template a drew myself in the shape of a triangle but you can use any shape you like. A bunting is also perfect to use up any scraps of fabric you might have leftover from your previous projects.

I enjoyed making this one so much that I'm thinking of making one for Christmas and one for my little niece's birthday in February.

Here are some very cool buntings/banners you can find on Flickr:

Bella Dia made one with crochet flowers, and this one with crochet hearts, they are so pretty.

Cupcake bunting by Jellybelly*Jellybrain, isn't it just adorable?

A few months ago I posted a tutorial on how to make headbands. To me the problem with the type of headbands that have an elastic at the back is that you have to measure the head of the person you're making the headband for. This is all very well if you're only making them for personal use  but if you're making them for sale what will happen is that you'll need to have an assortment of different sizes. Not pratical at all, in my opinion.

This is a design I came up with when making the headband below to give as a birthday present to a little girl. I didn't know how long the headband had to be and therefore what I needed was a one size fits all kind of thing.

Here's the headband I made as a birthday gift for an adorable 2-year old.

And here's how you can make one yourself:

1 - Cut a strip of felt, mine was 40,5 cm long and 6 cm wide. Determine how much ribbon you need and cut the necessary lentgh. Choose any embellishments you want to add (crochet flowers, buttons, felt appliques, etc.).

2 - Fold the felt in half widthwise and sew all the way around. Trim with your pinking shears.

3 - Place the ribbon centrally on the felt and sew all the way around and as close to the edges of the ribbon as possible. 

4 - Embellish as desired and your headband is ready to be used.

Hope you like this tutorial.

I got this book on Cupcakes from my local library, and simply had to try one of the recipes. I baked the ones below following the basic recipe and they are delicious.

Basic cupcake recipe

115 g butter, at room temperature
115 g caster sugar
2 eggs
115 g self-raising flour
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, grated zest of 1 lemon or 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (optional)

a 12-hole muffin tin

Preheat oven to 180ºC (Gas 4). Line muffin tin with paper cases.

Beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Then beat in the eggs, one at a time.
Sift over the flour, then fold by hand. Stir in the milk and flavouring if desired.

Spoon the mixture into each paper acse and bake until risen and golden.

Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and leave to cool completely before decorating.

The 2 cards below are going all the way up north to Aberdeen to my Internet friend Susie, we've been commenting on each other's cards on Flickr for some time and we're both on the Kool Crafts and Arts Forum.

She liked this embroidered sheep card so much I decided to make one for her with a few changes in the design. I'm sending it blank so she can keep it or to send it to someone. The collage card has a little personal message. Hope she likes them.

Meanwhile, my son has started school again and I'm slowly catching up on several projects that were put on hold over Summer (not that we had much of a Summer, it rained almost all the time and the Sun has been playing hide and seek, more hiding actually ).

This is my list of projects to finish as soon as possible:

- Birthday bunting for Alex
- Wall hanging for Jen
- Head band for Isabella
- Advent calendar for my niece
- Christmas stocking for Alex
- Make Christmas ornaments

I'd better go and do something then if I'm to finish any of these in time

I made the 2 cards above for a Halloween card swap at the Kool Crafts and Arts Forum. I've never made Halloween cards before so I had great fun making these and I hope my swap partners like them. They are both flying across the Atlantic to the U.S.A.

These also gave me the chance to put some of my paper punches to good use, they don't really get to see much action . For the spider I used a circle and 8 swirls for the legs, add the wiggly eyes and you've got a scary creepy crawly. The pumpkins were made using 3 circles and some swirls. Slightly overlap two of the circles and glue them, glue the third one on top. Position and glue the swirls as you see in the picture, you can also use a leaf punch if you want. I drew some black lines all around my pumpkins to make them look a little more realistic.

Can you see the bats on the purple envelope? To make one bat all you need is a small star, a heart and a larger star. To assemble the bat, glue the small star on the back of the heart (the heart is the bat's body) in such a way that only 2 pointy ends will show (these will be the ears). Cut the larger star in half and glue each of these halves behind the heart to make the wings.

I tried to upload a few cross stitching charts yesterday but for some reason I couldn't :-(

Anyway here they are today, you can use them on your Christmas projects. To download them just follow the links bellow:

Heart, tree, snowman, Christmas bear

Christmas baules

Small Christmas baules (this is the chart I used to embroider the tiny Christmas baules you see on the white cross stitched bag in yesterday's post)

For those of us who really love to make things there's nothing like Christmas to get our creative juices flowing. There are so many things we can make: cards, git tags, ornaments for the Christmas tree or to scatter around the house, gifts for family and friends, etc.

From now on until Christmas I'll be posting templates, charts, tips and suggestions you can use when planning your Christmas. Hope you like them .

So, here's my first project: little handmade bags/sachets. These are very easy to make and you can use them as gifts (fill them in with pot pourri, lavender, etc. to turn them into pretty sachets) or as bags for small gifts. If you make them small enough you can even use them as ornaments for your Christmas tree.

Here's how to make them:

1 - Cut a rectangle of fabric with the length and width you want.

2 - With the righ side of the fabric facing up (and with the fabric in a vertical position) fold in half upwards. Make a fold around the top and iron to crease.

3 - Sew the sides and turn the bag inside out.

4 - Attach the ribbon to the back of the bag and near the top with a few stitches. Your bag is now ready to be filled with goodies.

I made these 2 bags yesterday to show you as an example.

I've decided it was time for another tidy up of my craft supplies. Unfortunately, I don't have a craft room, I use my dining room table to work on and my bits and bobs are stored in boxes underneath the stairs so it's important to go over them once in a while and have a good tidy up so I always know where things are and to make sure they don't spread all over the place .

Although I don't use peel-offs much I have quite a few, bought mainly on sale. I've been thinking how I could organize / store them, one solution would be the plastic boxes available on the market and made specifically for peel-offs but I find these a little expensive and they don't take much anyway. Then, last Thursday I had an idea, why not use an empty ring binder I had and some A4 plastic envelopes to sort out my peel-offs. I divided each A4 plastic envelope into 2 sections by stapling it vertically along the middle that way peel-off sheets are kept place. I also stored them back to back and by themes: Christmas, lettering, words, flowers, insects, etc.

I also bought new storage boxes. The red metal box is one of 2 I bought from B&Q. Each one has 11 plastic containers inside which can be moved if needed. I also bought 2 plastic boxes with 12 compartm