4.12.16

Christmas tree advent calendar

Advent calendar

Our advent calendar has grown this year... conveniently the little pegs have numbers on them and I bought them thinking they'd save time sewing on numbers (which I know from experience takes me ages), but to be honest sewing up the felt baubles took a while anyway. I've only just finished! Quite pleased to have made a dent in the pile of felt scraps I've been hoarding for years.

I drew around the top of a cup on some felt and sewed two circles together using blanket stitch, leaving an decent sized opening, so it's a sort of bauble pocket. The Christmas tree frame is made from pieces gathered up after pruning the hedge in the back garden, though you could use any straight-ish thin branches. I used some gold wire bought from Tiger to bind them together, with three smaller bits in the middle to strengthen the frame and to give me something to wrap the lights around. Then just attached pieces of wire between each section for hanging the baubles. The star on top is an old Christmas tree decoration.

I like it because it's bright and Christmassy and doesn't look half bad on the wall - the kids like it because there's room for more treats...

Linking up with Darren's My Sunday Photo


24.11.16

Sparkly bird decorations - Christmas crafts


We've been trying out some new Christmas decoration ideas, and I thought I'd share a couple of our favourites over the next few weeks. We'll make glittery birds, Christmas trees and fairies to hang on the tree - and they all use the cone part from the middle of an egg box. As you've probably noticed these crop up quite a lot... they play a leading role in the Nativity we made last time, which is a really fun project because you can keep adding to the scene - does seem to help keep kids interested. Certainly worked with mine!

Glittery birds first, and this is very similar to a previous project - just a few tweaks here and there. It's also a slightly adapted version of the Love birds in Make Your Own Zoo.

You'll need:
egg box/carton
kids' craft scissors
pencil
paint
fine paintbrush
glue
feathers
glitter (optional!)
fine black felt-tip or gel pen
needle and thread
sticky tape
Nail scissors (to make holes - adult supervision needed)

1. Roughly cut a whole cone from the egg carton.


2. Decide how big you want your bird to be and draw a pencil line all the way around the sides of the cone.

3. Cut up two adjacent corners to the line, bend this flap back and cut it off. It's now easier to cut along the rest of the line. Neaten up the edges so the sides are even and the cone sits flat.


4. Paint the cone any colour you like. When it's dry, use the nail scissors to pierce a hole through the top (if there isn't one there already) - keep the scissors closed, press down and twist from side to side. Make another hole about a third of the way up one side (for the tail feathers).


5. Thread a needle with a good length of thread - we used gold, but use whatever you have - and push the needle up through the cone and through the hole, then back down through the hole, leaving a loop for hanging your bird. Use sticky tape to stick down the two strands of thread inside the cone (just make sure not to stick it to the side with the tail feather hole). Trim the thread ends.


6. On the side opposite the tail feather hole, use the fine black pen to draw eyes near the top of the cone. Keep them small and quite close together.


7. Brush some glue inside the cone behind the two holes and choose your feathers - big and showy for the the tail feathers, use several if you want - and short and fluffy for the head plume.


8 Brush a little glue on the sides and stick down two similar sized feathers for the wings. If your feathers are too big, trim them or cut the top off larger ones to get two pieces that look the same, before gluing them on.

9. For the beak, use a fine paintbrush to dab a small blob of yellow paint just below the eyes.


8 For some sparkle, brush glue on the front of your bird and sprinkle over some glitter. Shake off the excess. A good way to save glitter is to do the sprinkling over a paper plate, then bend the plate in the middle to catch the glitter in the fold, and funnel it back into a container.




Next time Christmas trees!


Joining in with the lovely Happiness is Homemade link party.



17.11.16

My new Animal Fun! board books get chewed over....


My little nephew, road-testing one of my new Animal Fun! board books which have just come out. I'm chuffed to bit with them - a totally unexpected but very lovely spin-off from the craft books.


There are four in the set - the usual suspects - numbers, sounds, touch and feel and what's hiding under the flaps? They're packed full of animals from Make Your Own Zoo, but there's also a bunch of new ones from my next craft book that'll be published in the spring.

I spent many happy hours tootling around, making little settings for the animals - with trees, birds, rocks, lizards, snakes, butterflies, squirrels....totally in my element! Especially for the 'Where do I live' book, which has big flaps to reveal what's hiding behind things.



And had to make a right old party of penguins and piglets for the number book.


Sadly mine are passed this age and stage now, but think the books brought back fond memories for my daughter who took a shine to the 'touch and feel' one.

My nephew seems to be pretty keen on the noisy one - my sister, not so much!


And the most important test of all?


Yes, they taste pretty good too.


22.9.16

Photoshoots, foraging and a food festival


Two trips to London and 8 days of photoshoots later, and at last I feel I'm making proper progress with the second craft book. Of course I'm relieved, but also weirdly deflated, which has left me feeling a bit restless, and possibly, depending on who you talk to, a little grumpy?

Coming up with 35 new craft projects took over the whole of my summer - if I wasn't making something out of cardboard, I was thinking about making something out of cardboard.... or feeling guilty I wasn't. It drove me mad but also gave me a focus, because I didn't have long, just 2 months, and the date for the first photoshoot was burning a hole in my wall calendar. Couldn't really think about much else, which made me feel guilty I wasn't doing enough with the kids. Can't win, can you.

When the London days came and went, I suppose it was a bit like taking the lid off a pressure cooker - and I just wasn't as over the moon with what was left in the pot as I thought. Probably didn't help that I'd had a really good time in London - the days were full-on but rewarding, and I stayed with an old school friend I don't see enough. After work we chatted, went out, ate out - no one else to feed or clean up after. I felt like me. Even took a bit better care of me. Even used my hardly ever touched eye-cream, which seems to be some kind of strange barometer to where I sit on my list of priorities.

There are many wonderful things about being able to work from home, especially with kids, school runs and an often absent husband to deal with - but it is hard to keep motivated sometimes, and it's lonely. Being away just brought all of that into sharp focus again I think.
I miss people and chat and talking ideas though with someone.
So, best not to ring me during the day at the moment, you'll never get me off the phone.

Possibly it's been a bit of an anti-climax and I'm kicking my heels about getting back to my quiet existence in peaceful Herefordshire - but I know it'll pass, it usually does. And it's not as if I have nothing much to do. Still need to write up all the instructions for the craft projects! Which is what I should be doing right now.

And sure, there are adventures of a different kind to be had here too. The day before I caught a very early train to London I went for a 'get thoughts in order' walk near home and did a double take when I spotted this huge puffball by a gate.


It was so big and brilliant white in the sun, I thought for a second it was a sheep taking a nap.
I rushed back to tell my daughter who gets extremely excited about this sort of thing. And it was a perfect giant puffball; very firm and hardly nibbled.

Giant puffball

She was desperate for me to take it home - when we found a much smaller one a few years ago, I fried slices in butter, garlic and bacon and it was a big hit. Lasted for days too, so goodness knows how many meals we could have got out of this one.* But we left it in the end, because I was off first thing, and my husband isn't keen on cooking bog-standard stuff, let alone a mushroom twice as big as his head.


When I got back home I treated myself to a day at the Abergavenny Food Festival. What could be better than delicious and lovingly-made produce as far as the eye can see? Though I do seem to suffer from some kind of food festival meltdown - happened last year as well - there's just too much choice. I become annoyingly indecisive, can't make up my mind at all, and end up eating very little. Instead I seem to spend most of my time checking out what other people are eating and wondering where it came from. I did bring a few things home and they did go down very well, especially the orange and chilli jelly.


I also bought a beautiful knitting book, which was a bit of surprise at a Food Festival.. Delighted with it though. More about that soon.




*Giant puffballs like this are about the only mushrooms I'd happily forage because they're pretty hard to mistake for anything else. More nervous about other ones, after going on an fungi foraging course last autumn (which was excellent) and realising there are a few common wild mushrooms that have an evil almost identical-looking twin. You really need to know your stuff. Think now the pleasure's in the finding rather than the eating for me.

22.6.16

Make a paper roll unicorn

Unicorn craft for kids

I needed to come up with a project for a craft workshop at Puzzlewood, and unicorns just seemed like the obvious choice. If they were going to live anywhere, then this ancient woodland, with its twisted trees and walls of mossy rock, would have to be the place!

6.6.16

A day at Hay

Standing in front of patient parents and kids, holding my cardboard tube aloft, I did wonder, just for a moment, what the blazes I was doing there. Only lasted seconds thankfully before the adrenalin kicked in, and we were off - making lions, giraffes, penguins, icebergs, birds in trees - back on familiar ground. Comfortable ground. In my sort of happy cardboard zone.


The workshops were in the Make and Take tent at the Hay Festival - a lovely bright, open space for kids to get crafty, draw or read books. And it's free - so, as you can imagine it's chocca during the Half Term week. Terribly Tall Terry was a huge hit and almost lost his legs a few times. I have the sweetest video of a little girl hugging him.


My husband and two of the kids came along for moral support which was lovely, and such a help with the car unloading and setting up all the zoo scenes - my daughter's getting really good at that.

I'd done a fair bit of prep for the workshops, because if I've learnt anything, it's that it's much better to keep things shifting along at a steady pace - no waiting for paint/glue to dry unless there's something else going on at the same time. Keep boredom at bay at all costs! The workshops never go the way I think they're going to go in my head, but that's okay... for a start, even though MYOZ is really aimed at primary school age kids, at a busy event like Hay, you can't really go about saying no to younger kids who want to join in. So, I try to pick projects that can be adapted for little ones.


The weather was cool enough when we started, but by lunchtime the tent was heating up and I was feeling it. Wished I'd worn something a little more summery. On the plus side, no problem getting paint and glue to dry! I did 4 sessions altogether, and although it's tiring being on your feet all that time, it's invigorating too, seeing what the children make, all so different, adding their own little touches. Love it when they start doing their own thing. That's what it's about really, getting their imagination going, getting creative.

The other encouraging thing for me was talking to people about the book - I haven't done that for a while and it's good to feel a bit more connected again. I am not the best at self-promotion, but this time I did try not to mumble or twiddle my thumbs, and I did get some lovely feedback and a few good ideas about promoting the book that I really should follow up. The problem is, I come home and lose a bit of that drive. Still, I have another workshop next weekend, so maybe it'll help give me a sharp shove in the right direction...