Home made Christmas

 It's Christmas - and the Advent tree is now fully decorated.

 My new twiggy wreaths have ribbons and 'berries' attached to finish them. Hung in a corner with two older home-made bird hangings.

....and a special Christmas angel - a joint effort between me and my youngest daughter when she was 4.

Advent Tree

I'm not sure how long ago we swapped from shop-bought chocolate filled calendars to our home made version but here it is again for another year. Each night I pop something into the next day's felt bag. The tray at the bottom holds decorations to replace the emptied bag on by Christmas it's totally decorated.

Creative twigs

Following a tree-pruning session last week, I decided to try making something useful from all the off-cuts. 

Most ended up trimmed for pea and bean sticks but the smaller, more pliable ones I've twisted into wreath-shapes. I now have them hanging to dry and if they don't distort totally I hope to decorate them for Christmas.

D I Y decorations

I've been fiddling away at these parcels for a while.

Originally they were intended for my daughter's den but she decided she didn't want them after all, and they've been sitting around unfinished. Now eventually they have some sparkly ribbons and ties, and are ready in the sleigh.

christmas decorations

my husband has several tin-working project books but they always specify a certain weight tin foil to be obtained from the craft shop or hardware store. I've never seen such foil for sale at all so, working with the idea of re-using and re-cycling, I decided to try turning a foil faggot tray into Christmas decorations and I'm very pleased with the result.
I'd expected a struggle to cut the foil but the flat bottom section is easily cut with a pair of kitchen scissors. the cut edges are quite sharp at first but flattening by rubbing something over them reduces this - I used the scissor handles - it's not something for young children to try though.


the embossed patterns were made merely by marking with a pencil - again I was surprised how malleable the foil was. I did have to buy the silver thread but the beads came from the little packets of spare beads that come with decorated clothes - I've acquired a lot of these, as the spare beads are kept in my mending box even after the clothes they belong to have been passed on. definitely a project which "uses what you've got"

Last Christmas - 1

it's that time of year when one begins to think of Christmas and all the present buying that comes with it. instead of just dashing out to the shops on a spending frenzy, we decided to make some things ourselves - mainly for our younger daughter. I'm not going to post any of this year's ideas; instead I'll put up those from last year.

this daughter is into anything "horsey" and all her magazines are full of horse- related things to buy as presents but we were looking for something a little special and hit on this idea of a pony mobile. the ponies are mainly made out of MDF offcuts from other projects as they are only about 2"(5cm) nose to tail; they're all cut to the same template, a fairly basic pony silhouette and painted in pastel pinks and lilacs (from tester sized pots) to co-ordinate with our daughter's room; they're suspended from pink crossbars with fairly heavy pink knitting cotton (again oddments of leftovers) and the purple felt saddles hide the point at which the cotton is glued to the pony. ALL of the materials for this project were leftovers from something else, which must make it one of the most environmentally friendly presents my daughter received last year.

more of last year's Christmas presents to follow