Crafty As L

  This week’s blog post is a little late due to that pesky Covid.  I was going to do a post on a fun decoration I’d made as gifts for a couple of friends but have been unable to deliver them due to being suddenly upgraded (or is that downgraded?!) to Tier 4, which is essentially another lockdown.  Since the recipients don’t have their gifts, I can’t post about them!  So instead, I’m focussing on Christmas tree decorations.  First though, I finally got my wreath made for the front door. Do you have a colour theme for your tree? Ours is predominantly red and gold but not exclusively!  Wherever we are, if we spot a nice Christmas decoration, we get it to add to the collection.  I love unpacking the decs each year and having the memories of where they were bought.  I’ve got ones made from Fimo by my sister about 30 years ago, a Smurf Santa from when I was a kid and collected those Smurf figures, ones given to me by old neighbours and lots of ...

Last weekend, I did my first ever 10k.  It was a charity event to raise money for a little girl called Sophie, who lives in the next village.  Sadly, Sophie has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and is facing many years of treatments.  Her Mum set up a Facebook group (called Sophie’s Journey, if you’re interested) and it was through this that I found out about the virtual 10k event.  You could run, walk, cycle or swim the distance – I jogged half and then walked the rest - between 4-13 th December and afterwards, collect your medal from Sophie’s house, socially distanced of course!  The medals were designed by Sophie and are super cute! When I went to collect my medal, I wanted to take a little something for Sophie and her two sisters.  I’d seen this idea from Sew Dainty on Pinterest for a Christmas tree garland and thought they’d work well as individual decorations too.  First, I drew and cut out my Christmas tree shape on paper bef...

  For the past month, I have been sewing up a storm to complete a set of 12 Days of Christmas ornaments for my Mum’s birthday.  This is the 4 th set of these ornaments I’ve made (see post from April 2019) and usually, they take me about 3 months to make (at a leisurely pace!) so making these in 4 weeks was quite a challenge.  I decided to make them in a limited colour palette to give the cohesive look of a set, choosing felt in two shades of red, green and grey together with white and gold.  The embroidery was done in coordinating threads. Here’s the finished set. 1-4: Partridge and Pear, Turtle Dove, French Hen and Calling Bird 5-8: Gold Ring, Goose-a-laying and her egg, Swan-a-swimming and Maid Milking   9-12: Drummer, Piper, Lady Dancing and Lord-a-leaping and a bonus heart! My Mum’s Christmas tree is only diddy and would be overpowered by these ornaments so I got her a twig tree for displaying these.  I’m really hoping Mum will like th...

I bought this Nordic ornament stamp last week and I’ve been trying to think of the best way to present it.  It’s about 5¼” across and I don’t have any dies that big.  Also, I wanted it to have the hanger part on the top too so a straight circle die wouldn’t work.  This seemed like a perfect job for the Cricut. To begin, I stamped the hanger and bow and scanned it in to my computer.  I imported it into Inkscape using a great tutorial from TroyTube on YouTube and then added an offset (the red part) to give me my basic cut-out shape.  I played around with the shape a bit to remove the holes to make the cut-out section sturdier. Next, I uploaded the finished shape into Cricut Design Space and scaled it to fit the stamped image.  I made the basic card shape by making a circle 5½” diameter and welding the ornament hanger onto the top.  I also sliced a smidge off the bottom so that the card would stand up.  The shape was duplicated and flippe...

This week, I’ve been slightly obsessed with watching beginner watercolour videos on YouTube.  I’ve watched loads of videos - they’ve kept me entertained (distracted?) whilst I’ve been on the treadmill!  The artists all make watercolour painting look so easy.  I’ve never painted but have fancied trying out watercolour for a while, so thought following some guidance would be a good place to start. First was a scene with a colour washed background with fir trees in the foreground from Maremi SmallArt. I colour washed and dried the background before painting in the trees in varying shades of grey/black.  This gives depth to the scene by making it look like the lighter trees are further away and darker ones in the foreground.  Once the pictures were dry, I splattered on some white acrylic paint for snow.  I was very happy with how these turned out. After completing these two, I went downstairs to show Mr L and found that he had been busy cre...

  Whilst your decorated artificial Christmas tree may look stunning, the stand usually doesn’t, by virtue of it having to be practical rather than aesthetic.  I used to just lay sheets of cotton wool ‘snow’ around mine but then heard of a tree skirt and set about making my own.  We have two trees so I made one with Christmas trees on and one with snowman.  Here’s the snowman skirt.   A friend was admiring the skirts and asked where I’d bought them and subsequently commissioned me to make one for his tree.  His daughter then admired that one and requested one of her own so I thought it’d make the perfect Christmas project for the blog.  So, if you fancy having a go at making your own, here’s how I did mine.    First, draw a circle that will cover the legs of your stand plus an extra inch or two for the seams.  Cut out a section so that the skirt will form a cone shape and then cut this out from your main fabric and backing fa...