Recycling Your Christmas Cards - Coming up in January

 Hi Crafters

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and have time now to sit and contemplate, consider your crafting for next year and making designs in your heads. I find myself doing this when I have free time.

I have planned my blogs for the first half of the year, and the emphasis will be on using what you have in your stash, starting with recycling your Christmas cards. Be sure to save you cards and anyone else’s who are happy for you to recycle theirs. 

The projects will be presented over January and I will try to share with you ways of preparing the projects in a way that will allow you to store your makes for the year until you need them, storage is always a consideration for crafters and so preparing your items to a place where they can be stored easily is useful. This process may require you to make notes on the finalisation of the projects to store with the items so when you come to complete them in October/Nov you have the prompts to finish them well, but it will be worth it. 

So see you all again with these projects the first week of January. 

Dee

Round up of the Year

 Hi Crafters

First let me wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and thank you for stopping by. I realise there are many things you could be doing and blogs you could be visiting so THANK YOU for checking my blog out. This year has seen a good increase in viewers and for that I am very grateful as it gives me the encouragement to continue. 

So this year for crafting has been very messy and looking back at my posts this has been reflected in the mix and maelstrom of my posts. Not just because there has been little structure to the crafting year but also because I like to try my hand at many styles of crafting. I am not sure if this is helpful to viewers but hopefully you can find items you are interested in, although this has made me realise I need to be more careful with headings. 

I have only been able to visit one Craft Show this year (Exeter) and have held one Workshop. In August I attended a Craft Fair, this was not great for me (or many of the other stall holders) which has made me question doing any more Fairs. I am not closing that door completely but I am thinking that I will not do any in 2022, and see if I can find another outlet for items. So in this respect I am looking forward to trying something new. 

For the Blog I would like to tidy it up a little, and have an idea to focus on a particular area for each month  instead of ad hoc posts, with a little more planning for weekly posts. Let’s hope this is a new year resolution that is followed through. If I can plan a little better then my posts will be better structured and photographs to match improved instructions. Please check in  in January to see if this works for you. I would also appreciate feedback at any time as this will tell me if a more structured approach is good for you, the readers. 

So I leave you with a picture of my Christmas Cake this year. Honestly I am no good at cake decorating or icing, so soft icing has been used, meaning the corners are not clean squares but I find ribbon hides a multitude of errors. This is a simple pattern of snowflakes in 3 sizes made from cutters, placed around a circle of icing rolled out and cut using a saucepan lid. 

The cutters used were the push down style:

I am not experienced with these and struggled to remove the snowflake once cut. In the end I found a great system. Press the cutter into the icing and lightly wiggle to cut your pattern. Lift the cutter and clean out the pieces in between the edges, with a cocktail stick, before pushing the handle down. This will not release the shape but a careful pick at the edge with cocktail stick will enable you to get under the shape and go around the edges gently lifting before removing the shape. I then turn these onto a piece of grease proof paper when I I had a selection of all the sizes I placed them around the circle of icing before placing the whole lot onto the centre of the cake. I have placed 3 silver reindeer into the centre of the circle of snowflakes but you could add an iced picture or a selection of Christmas trees or poinsettia, whatever you fancy. I then wrapped the sides in silver ribbon with another fancy ribbon placed in the centre. 

I then used the spare snowflakes to place around the cake stand. I am happy with the finished item, it certainly suits my needs as this cake will sit on the table until Christmas/Boxing Day and once cut will not be around long, and will be probably be shared out to family and neighbours, (if not gone by January) 

Hope you all have a great Christmas and looking forward to crafting in the new year.

Dee

 

Gift Boxes & Bags (A round up of styles)

 Hello Crafters
I have been busy over the last couple of weeks like most of you. Christmas cards are now made and mostly distributed, and the last couple of days have been about parcel wrapping. I have always enjoyed the wrapping almost as much as the giving and like the gift to be a surprise so boxes are useful at this time of year. 
I also make gift bags especially for toiletries, makeup and jewellery as the bags can be used to store the items after opening and hopefully re-used a few time for wrapping. I know some of my card boxes have had multi-use too, so thats good.
Today I thought I would do a round up of a few of the boxes and bags I have made and give you directions  to the particular blog or YouTube video so you can make them yourself.

No1

Recently made, a 2 section box for hand wash and hand cream gift. This I made by measuring the bottles and then making a base to fit the 2 bottles side by side. This particular box needed to be 8” long and 5” wide 2.5” deep. So require a 12 x 12 sheet and I used the Sara signature “Letters from the Heart” paper pad. Just make your box as you would normally and then for the dividing centre part take a piece of card the length of the box and just under  double the width The width of this box is 5” so I make the card 9.5” x 8”. Score the width 2.5”, 4.75”, 7” . Fold the centre score lines to form a double layer and glue together. Then lay into the base of the box. Check the fit (it may need a slight trim either side to fit snuggly into the box base. Then glue the 2 panels to the base of the box.

No2

Best Box Ever

I called this my best box ever as I had learnt to add an extra section to give a professional finish to the inside of the boxes. You can see this in my blog 9 Sept 2021.

No 3

T Light Box 

For some reason I cannot find a blog for this although I cannot believe I have not given you this. It is a simple box to make and can be made from 1 sheet of A4. Simply measure your T-Light and make sure your sections are wide enough. This box has been made with a sheet 21cm  x 28cm by scoring along the 21cm side at 2.5cm,5cm,11cm,13.5cm,19.5cm, and turn to score both sides and 2.5cm and 5cm both sides. This box hold 3 larger T-lights.

No 4 

Self Closing Pouch Box

I made this a long time ago and have several sitting in my craft room stores flat with the extra base pieces and tape in place ready to put together when I need them.

See my blog 22/11/20

No 5 

Small Box with Laminated Lid 

This box was made to demonstrate using pretty papers laminated one side to enhance your box making. It means you can use thinner papers printed on home printers as once they are laminated they have added strength. Perfect for the little jewellery gift box etc. 

Just make your box as you would normally using a sheet of laminated paper for the box lid.

No 6 

Origami Box 

I made 20-30 of these cute origami boxes. The one pictured here is one of my largest and has been made from a 12 x 12 square for the base.

A great gift box for jewellery that can be used by the recipient as a jewellery box as it is pretty enough to be left on the dressing table or sideboard. 

You can see how to make in from my blog on 3/12/2019

There were some that got away - in other words were given to the recipient before i took a photograph for the blog. 
Ingenious Bottle Box that is double skinned and sturdy enough for a bottle and to keep its shape. this was from a Crafters companion CD that came with my A3 Scoreboard 

Triangular Box - So simple to make from a sheet of A4. Ideal for sweets and trinkets. You can find how to make here. 

https://youtu.be/wrIHETxrB-E

Hope you enjoy these and have a go at some of them. 

Christmas embossed Stars for decorations

 Hi Crafters

I noticed that only the last few of my recent blogs have been Christmas crafting, noticeably less than in previous years where I have done whole series  of projects such as “12 days of Christmas Cards” or “Craft Fair makes” . What is it about this Christmas that has not led me to do Christmas crafts in such depth as before?

Firstly I think it is lack of Craft Fairs to take part in and then having done one at the end of October I decided not to do any more this year and I will seriously be looking at doing them at all in future. There are 2 main problems for paper crafters.

Firstly craft lovers who attend such fairs, are often crafters themselves, enjoy your products happily chat to you about your makes,  but then rarely buy as they prefer to go home and try making it themselves. This happens more and more nowadays. Five - ten years ago they would buy as they wanted the template and perhaps did not feel confident to make the item themselves without a sample to follow. But as time goes on and they have made more themselves so the construction of projects is more easy to them. That is a natural progression and you only have to consider the amount of craft items sold on Tv to understand how many people are participating in some type of craft today. 

Secondly there is a wide variety of cheap products available in the stores that are similar (although not as personal or unique ) as hand crafted items. Many of your makes can be purchased for less in stores such as Home Bargains, The Works and B & M. All stock pretty stationary, notelets, journal book and planners, they make great stocking fillers and at throwaway prices. The area I live is not a market for £40 Journals and Albums. So I need to be realistic and view my hobby as just that, a hobby. 

With that said I intend to continue to enjoy my hobby and the upside of not making for fairs or to sell in any way, is I can make what I like when I like and take my time learning and trying new techniques. 

And so I find myself trying something new this weekend. I saw the technique on Positively Papercraft, and will be making star decorations from Paper Towels. 

Ann on P.P. Used the embossed paper towels with her dies to cut out leaves painted them with water colours, finished with PVA glue or clear embossing for a 3D wreath on a card. It looked amazing.

I have made paper stars a lot and found a good way of making them 3D, but decided to try using the paper towel technique and have a play. I also tried embossing the papers 

These stars have been made with 2 pieces of paper towels then folded in 3 to make 6 layers. My star dies were then used to cut out the shapes (the stitch edged dies seem to hold the layers together better, and so i mainly used these. I then decorated them, some I added PVA glue with water to give a firmer front.

I also added some to ribbon to make hanging stars and these will be hung from the Mantel  or shelf.

So what will I do with the individual stars???

Some will be used to make a couple of unique cards. 

Decorate gift bags and gift boxes 

And the remaining will be scattered like confetti in gifts or when I sell anything, as happy mail. 

Let me know if you try this technique, and please subscribe to my blog as it encourages me to keep posting.

Dee