It's a Creative World

12 days of Christmas- Santa sack

 
We are really lucky to have a new baby welcomed to our family last week so I cracked out the red velour to make a Santa sack! I have made them for my own children and they are just so easy.. have a go they turn into part of Christmas and a real heirloom for the children.

Ingredients needed: About a metre of fabric, some felt, cotton, trimming offcuts (optional basting spray)

 

Cut a christmas tree out of green felt or green fabric. I made a simple pattern from brown paper to check where I wanted to place it and to help cutting it. I used the basting spray to stop it moving and then there is no need for pins. The spray is a new addition in my house and rather fantastic! I used a close zig zag stitch, almost a satin stitch to attach it to the right hand side of the fabric.

I then added a brown square as a trunk and attched it the same way with spray and then stitching.

The Christmas presents are squares of felt and stiched to resemble ribbon. I have an embroidery machine for the name but you could hand stithc the name and date.

All the trimmings came from a box my Nanny left me and including the fluffy bobble on the top of the tree. That may have been from my Mum or Aunt's wedding. These little bits make it really personal.

The bag is made by folding the fabric in two and sewing two edges of the fabric. As the velour was stretchy I again used a zig zag stitch.

I haven't finished the top of the sack yet and think I will sew a channel but leave putting cord through it till Ivy is a little older for safety.

Have a go it's really simple and fun!

Happy Christmas!

Bev

 

 

12 days of Christmas-Quick candy cane cupcakes

Heres a super quick cupcake decoration for you! Chances are you have candy cane lying around. I get mine from £ stores. Cheep and cheerful and normally have some broken.  No problem! Make your cupcakes- I do a simple 100geach of self raising flour, sugar and butter and one egg. While they cook bash your broken canes into shards. Mix up white icing and when cool ice them and sprinkle your shards. Pop in a candy cane and you festive fancies in less than 30 mins!! 

Hope you're enjoying our twelve days of inspiration inbetween all the hardwork!

 

Laura x

12 days of Christmas - I love you just the way you are

Hello, Eleanor here for a chat and to share a beautiful card.

When you eat at the house of a friend, and your host makes a delicious dish, you ask for the recipe, right? And when you make the tasty dish which you so enjoyed, you try to make it exactly as the recipe instructs, because you enjoyed every mouthful, right?

Sometimes, it's perfectly right and proper to follow a recipe to the letter, as you want the finished result to replicate the version you ate, or in my case the one you saw and fell in love with. What I'm trying to say is that it's not always necessary to tweak, or change up, or 'make it your own'. Especially when the original artist has been kind and generous enough to share a video tutorial, as is the case with my project today.

So, thank you so much Julie Ebersole, over at the classroom  I loved this project from the moment I saw it, the wood veneer, and the delicate deer die, and I didn't want to change a thing, although I had no wee wooden snowflakes, so used a dinky fir tree punch instead.

These majestic animals are right outside my bedroom window, look right in at me, and never cease to awe me.

Here's my card, as nearly like Julie's as I could manage, bar a snowflake:

If someone has shared their work in the hope that others will like it and try it, then don't be afraid to copy, nobody will condemn you (well, nobody that matters) after all, why on earth do we spend hours looking at beautiful creations online? So that we can go to our desks and create something entirely different? Um, no. Not in this house anyway. The most important things are not to pass it off as your own, or try to profit from it. If you can, give credit, although it's not always easy to track down the original artist/creator.

What you learn in the replication of the work of another will take you forward - a technique or a new (to you) style, which you will then use in other ways, once you have the courage to step out of your comfort zone.

Pass it on. Oh, and we're back again soon with another project to share (COPYING ALLOWED!)

x

12 days of Christmas- Snowflake/book table decoration.

Hi Debbie here with an inexpensive table decoration for your Christmas table. My daughter got married last month and after making all the table decorations (here) I am missing having decorated books around, so I decided to make a Christmas version.

I used lots of cut out snowflakes using a sizzix die but I am sure that punched snowflakes would look just as good.

I kept to a vintagey colour scheme using a pale blue and text paper, and added lots of fine glitter glue (I bought an own brand glue similar to the fine glitter to get in stickles).

I made the 3D snowflakes by sticking 4 folded snowflakes together and then added glitter glue.

Thank you for looking at our 12 days of Christmas

Debbie x

12 days of Christmas - There's a journal in the house!

Hi everyone

Dolly here.

I am a huge fan of Journal Your Christmas and I think this year is my eigth year and so it always a challenge to try and do something different.

I love Christmas and can happily find things to document every year, but I do enjoy a twist on the theme.

In February last year my mothin in law gave me an old Yankee Candle box. Everyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for old boxes. This was so cute I knew straight away I wanted to use it for my Journal Your Christmas this year and I knew it meant I could journal all about Christmas in our home - our decorations. 

This was the box at the start of the process - good and sturdy but it had to be covered as it was too bright for me and had printing all over the back.

 

 

 

I took it apart and covered it

 

 

The photo behind the plastic at the front is a photo of the door to my dolls' house. Yes, of course my dolls' house is decorated for Christmas!

 

 

The box was a piece of cake to cover but the roof was an absolute nightmare and has many many flaws. However I have tried to convince myself the flaws just add to the whimsical homemade feel. I haven't QUITE convinced myself!

 

 

and this is the journal inside.

 

 

I have said it before ... and no doubt I will say it many more times ... don't throw boxes away. They are the perfect thing to re-use for all sorts of creative projects.

 

Enjoy your Christmas crafting, whatever form it takes x

12 days of Christmas - Santaleles

Hello, Eleanor back again, with another creative day of Christmas..

The post title refers to the order of plants to which Mistletoe belongs, funnily enough. The origin of the name mistletoe is uncertain, but may come from German, Mist for dung, and Tang for branch, as this parasitic plant's seeds can be spread in birds' droppings, and the plant itself attaches to tree branches and absorbs water and food from them. 

My mistletoe today is on a card, using a delicate little die cut wreath, with tiny little flatback pearls, and a brick wall embossing folder:

I secured the wreath just at the top, as I liked it hanging lightly:

No sentiment, is it needed? What do you think?

See you again soon.

x

12 days of Christmas-Homespun Cards

Hi Dolly here

There is still time to make Christmas cards and I have a quick tip that will save you time and money.

You can make really simple cards just by using up some scraps ... and I KNOW you all have scraps lying around.

 

I love kraft for homespun Christmas cards.

Use some plain white cardstock and run it trhough an embossing folder just to give a bit of detail.

For this card I used tiny scraps of printed kraft cardstock/paper.

Cutting them into small strips of decreasing sizes makes a very funky Christmas tree.I used foam pads to give a bit of dimension.

I added more scraps for a border at the bottom and even used scraps for the sentiment at the side.

Finish it off with some twine bows.

 

I made a dozen of these as a quick production line ... I cut all the strips and then it was a piece of cake to assemble them all.

Quick, cheap and effective.

Christmas cards.....a little different!

Hi Erika here and I hope you are enjoying our 12 days of Christmas crafting extravaganza?

Today I wanted to share with you a couple of non-traditional clean and simple Christmas cards.  Now don't get me wrong I do love a traditionally coloured Christmas card, especially of the handmade variety but today I'm am sharing a different combination of cream and black.  I just love this colour combo for anytime in the year, to me it just shouts class!  (That just could be me).  See what you think.

For this card I have used a tree image from Clarity stamps, it is stamped in black and then embossed with sparkle, it looks much prettier in real life.  The sentiment is by Waltzing mouse and the punch by EK Success.  

Clean and simple plus flat for posting just what you want when producing and sending a large number of cards at Christmas.

Or how about this one on the same theme?

The embossing folder is by Sizzix and the stamp is SU.

I love the simple lines of both these cards so I better get a move on and make a lot more.

Enjoy the rest of our 12 days of Christmas and I hope you have a super festive season.

 

Hugs Erika.  x

12 days of Christmas-Gingerbread

Hi one and all, hope you are enjoying these 12 Days of Christmas posts.  For me Christmas isn't quite Christmas without a gingerbread recipe.  The smell of gingerbread cooking really sums up the warm scents of Christmas.  A few years ago I was inspired to create a new family tradition and take on the task of creating a gingerbread masterpiece.  We happened across a recipe which I can tell you works a treat.  It's from the BBC Good Food site and it really is a fabulous little recipe and comes complete with a house template. 

We decided in our infinite wisdom to create some mini versions of the house as a mid-meal challenge for our Christmas guests.  You know that feeling after starter and main course when you can't quite face the prospect of pudding.  Scaling down the template using a scanner we created lots of little houses and as a 'larger' challenge for ourselves we set too adding to the original house to create a church.  This is what we got as a result.

I can categorically tell you that the house has never been so quiet on Christmas day, you could literally hear a pin drop as all our guests sat adding sweeties and icing to their miniature creations.  The houses were obviously baked in advance and assembled so all they had to do was have the fun of adding the decorations. 

The little houses decorated by guests made a fabulous little town and in turn a great Christmas picture and everyone left at the end of the day with their own little house, which I'm told was enjoyed and eaten through the Christmas period. 

So if you fancy doing a bit of baking why not consider giving this a go.  Even if you don't fancy the scale of this creating a simple little gingerbread house with your children or grand children really is magical and they love love love to decorate it.

Now I will warn you that making yourself this sort of challenge may not be for the faint hearted - why?  Well because we got a little carried away and bought an online gingerbread template to use for subsequent years.  

So here we have the following years Castle complete with a jelly baby army

And then the leaning clock tower, which did make it through Christmas (just).

So if you fancy doing something a little different this Christmas why not try your hand at a little three dimensional baking creations, catch ya later.

Virginia 

 

 

12 days of Christmas- Tag you're it!

Hi, well I don't know about you but I am enjoying our 12 days of Christmas.  I've already seen another couple of ideas I'd like to try between now and the big day.

Today I thought I'd mention the wonderful world of tags.  Over the years I've always made my own from scraps out of my card box left overs.  It's the perfect way to use up bits and bobs and to get the children involved too.

These are a couple I like to use most years for special friends as I love this colour combination.

The stamps are from Waltzing mouse and the dies by Spellbinder.

How about these for mass production....

Again the stamps are by Waltzing mouse and dies from Spellbinders.

The other day I was out and about Christmas shopping and happened to pop into one of those fancy boutiques.  You know the type of place you can pick up some really great or unusual items that you don't find on the high street.

Oh my, there was all manner of lovely presents, then there was beautiful papers and gift tags.  This is where I am heading....the gift tags were a tad on the expensive side and were so simple yet elegant it gave me an idea.  You could produce something very similar at home with old punches....you know the ones....you never play with them anymore, cause die cutting has moved on but you've kept them....just in case.  The idea is so simple yet effective that the kids could do them too.

Here is my take on the idea...

A bit of card, ribbon or string, a couple of old punches and bling/glitter.  How easy is that.  The green ones are my favourite and so quick to make.  Why not coordinate with your wrapping paper?  So much nice than shop bought ones too.  "Simples!"

Enjoy the rest of our 12 days of Christmas and have a super festive season.

Happy crafting, Erika.  x