• recycled toy decorations
    Christmas - tutorial

    Recycled toy decorations

    December 24, 2014 - By 

    As part of my pre-Christmas clear out I sorted through the toy boxes and put aside some of the children’s old toys. As I was putting them into a bag for the charity shop I had an idea about recycling them into decorations. Both children have small trees in their bedrooms and I thought we could make some decorations for them. Equipment needed to make recycled toy decorations: Unwanted plastic toys Spray paint Screw eyes Pin vice How to make recycled toy decorations: Pick a selection of plastic toys. I would love to use toys the children play with but…

  • Cookie cutter Christmas gift tags
    Christmas - handmade - Kids crafts - Paper craft - tutorial

    Cookie cutter Christmas gift tags

    December 23, 2014 - By 

    I have a brilliant craft to share with you today, cookie cutter gift tags which is a great way to recycle Christmas cards. For some reason I packed away last years’ Christmas cards, fully intending to recycle them into gift tags. Today I finally found the time to make them. Equipment needed to make cookie cutter Christmas gift tags: Christmas cards Festive cookie cutters Pencil Scissors Hole punch Ribbon How to make cookie cutter Christmas gift tags: Pick a part of each card that you want to keep and position your chosen cookie cutter over it. Draw around your cookie…

  • Kids crafts - tutorial

    Make your own gingerbread house paper

    December 22, 2014 - By 

    We had some small gifts to wrap today so we thought we would make our own wrapping paper – gingerbread house style, of course! Equipment needed to make gingerbread house paper: sheet of styrofoam (we used a piece from a pizza box) cookie cutter brown paint and brush sheets of white card rolling pin How to make your own gingerbread house paper: Use a cookie cutter to impress your chosen shape into the piece of styrofoam. We did this several times with a gingerbread house cutter. Cover your styrofoam sheet with brown paint. Next, carefully place a sheet of white…

  • No sew Christmas pudding ornaments
    Christmas - crafts - tutorial

    No sew Christmas pudding ornament

    December 21, 2014 - By 

    Earlier this month I made some no sew Christmas pudding decorations to sell at the school Christmas Fayre. They were quick and easy to make and look great on a Christmas tree so I thought I’d share a little tutorial with you. Equipment needed to make no sew Christmas pudding ornament: ping pong balls silicone glue brown wool green and white felt red sequins scissors How to make no sew Christmas pudding ornament: Wrap your ping pong ball completely with brown wool, make sure there are no gaps. When you’ve finished leave a small loop to hang your ornament and…

  • clay gift tags
    crafts - handmade - Handmade gifts - tutorial

    Easy personalised clay tags

    December 21, 2014 - By 

    As we’re hosting a family Christmas I really wanted to add as many handmade touches as I could. This year I’ve made some super sweet clay tags to hang on everyone’s cracker. When they’ve finished with the cracker they can remove and keep their tag and hang it on the tree. Equipment needed to make easy personalised clay tags: Sculpey oven-bake clay Small cookie cutters Acrylic paint and brush Small letter stamps How to make easy personalised clay tags: Roll out your Sculpey clay until it is 2-3mm thick. I rolled it between two sheets of greaseproof paper so it…

  • Christmas - crafts - handmade - tutorial

    Brown paper packages tied up with string

    December 19, 2014 - By 

    This evening I’ve been playing around trying to pretty up some Christmas presents. I love wrapping my presents with simple brown paper but they are not always well received. I remember last year my father in law looking a little puzzled when I handed over our presents, he asked if we had run out of wrapping paper! This year I made sure to wrap his presents in the brightest Christmas paper I could find. I wanted to re-visit my idea of simple brown paper for some gifts but I thought I would embellish them to show I’d put some effort…

  • Liberty scrap baubles
    Christmas - crafts - handmade - tutorial

    Stash buster Liberty scrap baubles

    December 18, 2014 - By 

    I love crafting with styrofoam baubles. We’ve made a styrofoam snowman, styrfoam pumpkin, and even a styrofoam spider. I have lots of them so am always trying to think of different uses for them. Today I’m sharing my tutorial for stash buster Liberty scrap baubles. This is the perfect activity if you have any left over fabric scraps, but I think Liberty fabrics are exceptionally pretty. Equipment needed to make Liberty scrap baubles: scraps of Liberty fabrics PVA glue water bowl and brush styrofoam balls How to make Liberty scrap baubles: Cut the scraps into small pieces about 1cm square.…

  • Recycled toy Christmas decorations
    Christmas - Crafts for kids - Kids crafts - Recycled crafts - tutorial - upcycling

    Recycled toy Christmas decorations

    December 16, 2014 - By 

    This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #CollectiveBias I think I’ve mentioned before about the beautiful wooden storage shelves my husband built for my son. They normally house his collection of small plastic toys but over the weekend my son took them all down so he could display his toy cars. I thought it would be fun to incorporate some of them into our Christmas decorations so, with my son’s permission, I recycled them. Let me tell you how. First of all we went through his toys and took out…

  • Christmas - Kids crafts - tutorial

    Personalised bauble decorations

    December 15, 2014 - By 

    For the final time this year I’ve teamed up with some European children’s activities bloggers to co-host a Countdown to Christmas organised by Rainy Day Mum. Every Monday we have a different prompt to inspire our festive crafting – this week’s theme is family fun. Don’t forget to add your crafty post to the linky at the end of this post! This time of year is all about family fun – we’ve been wearing our festive jumpers, listening to brass bands play carols on the High Street, attend parties and festive lunches whilst the excitement builds up to Christmas Day.…