My wish for the new year..

...Happiness.
The challenge at stampotique is "wish for the new year".
I decided to decorate a bauble with the Happy Definition from stampotique. This can then go on a bottle as a gift for a new year party host. I like the idea of giving decorations at new year, as people still have their trees up.

I stamped the definition repeatedly onto creamy/brown tissue paper, then tore it up (to remove the birthday bit of the definition. I attached this to small bauble with mod podge, left to dry and then sprayed with varnish.

perfect present for Grandma

A couple of years ago we bought my Mother-in-law a digital photo frame, and put some pictures onto a card for her. I thought it would be a nice idea to give her an SD card with some more recent pictures.


but then the SD card looked like such a boring (and small) present!



So I decided to make a box. To make it more personal I made the lid from photos of the children. I easily made this on "my craft studio" software by dropping photos on resizing and tilting. I printed this onto card to make the lid and made a base to fit in plain card. I then made a little niche (I will work out some proper measurements some time for how to do this, but I just made this up as I went along). I then decorated this up like a scrapbook page (my MIL is a scrapbooker)

it's not too late to make your own Christmas Sweater

I love the current trend for proper Christmas sweaters, they seem to be everywhere.
I wanted one, but
a) I didn't want to buy one, it had to be "homemade"
b) I didn't have time to make one.
c) I'm skint after all the Christmas Shopping.

The answer to this dilemma?

.........Swiss Darning!!

I had a rummage around my cupboard and found a plain thick knit jumper that had seen better days. Then I had a rummage around my wool stash and found some perfect red yarn.
Then finally I had a rummage through my knitting magazines and found an intarsia/fairisle pattern, to swiss darn onto my jumper.

if you fancy giving it a go, then you need to know that swiss darning is EASY. You do not need to be able to knit, and you barely need to know how to sew. This video calls it duplicate stitch but it's the same thing. If you can cross stitch, then you can do this.

You can use any chart designed for fairisle or intarsia knitting (do not use cross stitch patterns as they will look squashed.)

Crochet Mistletoe Bauble

My work Christmas do had a competition to make our own baubles. I decided to crochet mine.


I got the pattern for the mistletoe from a book (but made it smaller). The ball is made using prinicples of arigurumi (check out youtube for techniques). I hope that the photos pick out the lovely sparkle in the white yarn. I finished with some beads from a broken bracelet (I say broken..... to be honest I cut it up just to make this, but in my defense it was a really cheap one)

gingersnap challenge: Wax

I took the gingersnap challenge of wax quite literally this week. I remember I used to be fascinated when I was younger when restaurants had wine bottles with candles in and the wine bottles were covered in dripped wax. I know they are a bit tacky but I like them.

Candles don't drip like that nowadays, so to create this effect I had to drip the candle myself down the side of the bottle.
To add a little bling I embedded iridescent bubble beads from penny wise arts into the wax (just heat gently with a heat gun and then push them into the wax)
Finally I heated the wax on the front and pushed the crown coin stamp from this crafty individuals stamp plate into it. leaving the stamp unmounted makes this really easy to do.

Quick Crochet Gift.... it's not too late.

I originally got this idea from pinterest (an evil site that steals hours of your life without your realising)

And it's not an original idea (you can buy something similar here), but I loved the idea of making an "indoor snowball fight" for my kids for Christmas (just in case it doesn't snow this year). Each ball takes about 30 mins, so it really can be a last minute crochet gift.

I had recently crocheted a bauble (to be blogged soon) so knew that it was easy to crochet a ball.
-basically crochet a small ring, then dc (note I use british stitch definitions - not US) 6 into ring, continue in spiral, dc 2 into each stitch for first round, then 1 dc into 1 stitch 2 dc into next for one round, the dc into next 2 stitch, 2 dc into next, continue in this way until you like the size, then continue without shaping until the size looks right. Then start to decrease, reversing the procedure, but dc 2 tog, where you did 2 dc into one stitch before (basically this is amugurumi and there are much better instructions on the internet)


The problem with using fluffy yarn is that you can't see the stitches so there is a lot of guesswork, but the fluffiness hides any mistakes. all the balls may end up different sizes, but that makes them more like real snowballs.

The balls are stuffed with toy stuffing and then crammed into a nice jar. (from poundland). Decorate the jar to finish.

I love odd buttons

I made this cute jumper with buttons on the shoulder for a friend's baby. I couldn't resist using mismatched buttons. I love the effect

last minute gift for Happy Daze blog

To fit in with this month's challenge of gifts, cards and tags, I decided to share my last minute gift ideas. I often give Amazon vouchers as gifts, but any voucher that prints out onto an A4 sheet of paper will work.

I simply fold the voucher into thirds both ways to create a "z-fold" and then add covers (8cm x11cm) (be aware that the cover is attached to the top left corner of the voucher so make sure that there isn't any important information there.

The covers can then be decorated anyway you like. I have used Stamps from Stampotique.

GCSP10: Once in a Blue Moon - Thank You Notes

The current new theme at gingersnap creations is Thank you notes.
I made this simple card with lovely paper, but I finished it with some white acrylic paint.

less is more: green

I find it really hard to not take part in the less is more challenges, they are just so tempting! For this green challenge, I simply stamped a christmas greeting (that came free with a magazine) with forest moss distress ink, and then added vintage christmas flower soft along the bottom of the letters (this is definitely one of my favourite flower soft colours, it just shouts "Christmas"!!

last minute gift knitting with just one ball of yarn.

I have previously shown the pattern for this mini hot water bottle cover with a lavender bag in the pocket. This pattern fits a mini hot water bottle from poundland (my local poundland still has plenty in stock). I decided to make these extra two with some left over yarn (there was just less than 50g of DK yarn left on each ball, and this was enough). The fabric was also leftover from some bags I made.

I didn't do these ones stripy so they were really quick to knit up.