Christmas Champagne Glasses

What you will need

• Champagne Flute (or any other glass you want to decorate)
• Metallic coloured Sharpies (I found a pack with gold, silver, red & green in Ryman)
• Christmas snowflake template & Printer
• Masking tape

Instructions

Step 1 - Position your design

Before starting give your glass a wash and dry well - you don't want any greasy fingerprints ruining your design

Cut out the text / image you want to use and stick it in place on the inside of your glass using masking tape. 

I tried two designs (both are on the template supplied):

• All I want for Christmas is bubbles
• You're my snowflake

or you could try your own idea. I quite like the thought of using them as place setting on your Christmas table and come up with a personalised glass for everyone.

Step 2 - Draw your design

Holding your glass, draw over the top of the template with a Sharpie pen on the outside of your glass. You can also add on any extras you want to draw freehand, like these cute little bubble. I did this one line at a time, keeping the dots close at the bottom and further apart as I worked my way up.

Step 3 - Finishing Touches

I fancied a snowflake design on the base of my glass to add a little bit of extra glitz. This part was really simple as I just places the snowflake image under the glass and then draw the design over the top, adding some extra shapes round the edge.

Step 4 - Go get a drink

After all that crafting it would be rude not to test them out! Just make sure you hand wash them and dry carefully but the Sharpie should stay on pretty well

I'll be back,

Paper Cut Christmas Gift Tags

I try to find a new way to wrap my Christmas presents every year and this year I has a new toy to play with - my Cricut Explore

Since it's the season of giving gifts I thought I would share my SVG file with you and instructions on how to add the lettering - hope you guys enjoy using it

Step 1 - Download the SVG file

Click on the image below and down load my christmas.svg file

Step 2 - Upload SVG to Cricut Design Space

Upload the christmas.svg file buy selecting the vector upload option and then choose the image to import

Step 3 - Add your text

Add text to your image

Turn it black and then move it so that the centre is touching to one of the lines on the line.

Once it is touching the line, ungroup the text

When the text is ungrouped you can move the letters individually. This means you can slightly turn the text so that it an all be moved to touch the line on the image.

Once you've finished moving all the text on one line, select each of the letters and click on "group" so they are linked back together.

Then select both the sentence and the image, before clicking the Weld button to link the test to the image. Repeat until you have added text to all the lines.

Step 4 - Link your star

There will be a gap between your text on the top line and one of the falling stars so link it up by adding a square and move it until it fits between the bottom of the letter and the star. Remember to weld the square to the image so that it stays in place when cutting.

Step 5 - cut out the image

Cutting out these tags with my Explore, I then glued them to the front of  my gifts, finishing it of by writing the recipients name on the tree with a gold pen.

I'll be back,

Paint Swatch Christmas Cards

This is a great one to do with the kids, especially when they are school age and need to take loads in for their friends / teachers!!

What you need

• Paint swatches (I picked mine up from Homebase but most DIY/paint stores have them)
• Blank cards or sheets of card folded
• Christmas Text 
• Buttons
• Sequins
• PVA glue

Instructions

Step 1 - Select your swatches

I walked into Homebase and had so much choice that my Christmas trees were almost purple but in the end I stuck with green and brown. However, if you want to be more adventurous and give everyone a different coloured tree, then go for it!

If you can't get your hands on any then coloured card will do the same job.

Step 2 - Cut out your tree

Cut a triangle from your swatch. I ended up having to cut this tree in half as it was too long for my card but you can adjust this to whatever works for you. I like a range of different sizes so they don't all look the same.

Step 3 - Plant your tree

With a few dabs of glue on the back of your tree, stick it to the front of your card. I used a ready made pack of blank cards I already had in the house but you can just buy sheets of card and fold/cut them to the size of your choice.

I also cut a small piece of the brown paint swatch to use as the base of the tree, also gluing it onto the card.

Step 4 - Add sparkle

For some reason I also had a tub of sequins in the flat that had snowflakes and stars (as well as some dinosaurs and cats mixed in - don't ask) so I was able to glue a few of these around the tree to add a bit of sparkle. Circle sequins or sticky gold stars will have the same effect though.

Step 5 - Add your Christmas Message

Print out your Christmas message. I've attached a sheet full of Merry Christmas labels for you to use but feel free to come up with your own.

Glue this onto the bottom of your card and then a button on either side or use more sequins / stars to finish it off.

I'll be back,

Gluten Free Gingerbread House for your Mug

I've got lots of friends who have a difficult relationship with gluten (including myself) and the holiday period is particularly hard with all the meals out and goodies being brought into the office so this year I'm going to try my hand at a range of gluten free recipes so that all of these gorgeous girls can enjoy Christmas as much as everyone else!

The Recipe

Ingredients

Gingerbread

• 300g of Gluten free plain flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 2 heaped teaspoons of powdered ginger (or less if you only like a hint of ginger)
• 1 heaped teaspoon of powdered cinnamon 
• 250g of honey
• 125g of shortening (brands such as Trex, Flora White or Cookeen in the UK)
• 1 tablespoon of treacle

Icing

• 1 sachet of powered egg white
• 250g of royal icing sugar
• 1 cap-full of vanilla extract
• water (I used 5 table spoons)
• sprinkling of desiccated coconut for the roofs

The Method

Step 1 - Make the Gingerbread

• Heat the shortening, honey and treacle in a pan until it starts to boil and then turn if off and leave until it is room temperature
• Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and then mix in the liquid ones once they have cooled. You'll have to get your hands dirty of this one and don't worry about it being quite a soft/oily consistency)
• Wrap the dough in cling film and put it in the freezer for 1 hour (or in the fridge overnight if you are not in a rush). This stops the dough expanding when you put it in the oven
• After removing from the freezer, put whatever you are not using just now in the fridge to keep it cool

My dough looks dark in this picture because I put too much treacle in my first batch. Yours should look lighter than this.

Step 2 - Roll your dough

I put my dough in between 2 sheets of grease proof paper on a chopping board and rolled until it was about 1/2 a cm thick

Step 3 - Cut out your house

Print out my Gingerbread house template onto some card and cut out the shapes. before placing the template on the dough, sprinkle a little flour over the top so that the card doesn't stick to the dough.

Cut out two of each to make 1 house

 Step 4 - Bake

Put them in the oven for 8/10 minutes at 180 degrees celsius. but keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn. it will still be a little soft when you take it out the oven but will harden up as it cools.

Make sure none of the pieces are touching otherwise they will join together when baking

Step 5 - Leave to cool

Leave your pieces out to cool as they need to be cold to touch before you can put on the icing

Step 6 - Make the icing

• First beat the egg whites with 2 tablespoons of water until they are light and fluffy
• Add half the icing sugar and 1/2 more table spoons of water as needed
• Repeat with the rest of the icing sugar

Step 7 - Build your house

Pipe the icing on the house pieces to join them together. The small squares are for the sides of the house and the larger rectangles are for the roof.

Step 8 - Let it snow

Ice the roofs and then press some coconut of the top to make it look like snow. Then all that's left to do is serve them to your friends on mugs of your favourite hot drink, I recommend a chai latte!

I'll be back,

Kids Craft Day

The kids in my family share my passion for crafts so when it gets to this time of year I love to by them crafty Christmas presents so that it's something we can all work on together. This year my youngest cousin got a crafty book as a Christmas present and she was so excited to show me all the wonderful things she wanted to make!

We started by making a yes and a maybe list of all the things she wanted to make but after ending up with 10 things on the yes list we had to a bit more narrowing down!

So here are the 3 things we narrowed it down to....

First we started of with blinging up her shoes! This was the one she was most excited about and it required a bit of thinking on my part as we would need to use some strong glue to do it. I had a choice between using super glue or hot glue and with young children in the mix I wasn't keen on using either! however i settled on the hot glue as it dries much quicker and they had less chance of gluing their fingers together.

I pulled out all the beads and let them pick which they wanted to use. Rosa's big sister came up with the idea of putting her name on them and then came up with a design around the name that Rosa was very happy with. We started by writing on the letters with a marker pen. The way we worked the gluing is that I would put a dab of glue on the shoe and then my cousins took it in turn to place on the beads using tweezers so that their hands didn't touch the glue and then we would press them down to make sure they were stuck on properly.

The girls were over the moon with these shoes and Rosa can't wait to were them to her street dancing class in the new year

Then we got started on project number two. This project Rosa had chosen to make it as a present for her Daddy. In the craft book she had there was a picture of a very girly looking material pin board and as I started telling her about all the material I had in my house she screamed when I mentioned tartan and said that she wanted to make a tartan one for her Dad because he's Scottish (they all live in England)

This was another project that was difficult to do with young kids as it requires the use of a staple gun. My cousin Matthew as just started high school and is enjoying his wood work classes etc so this seemed like the perfect project for him to take lead on.

We lay down a piece of material that was larger than the pin board on a table, and then a piece of wadding that was the same size as the board, finally putting the pin board on top. I then pulled the material over to the back and held that in place while Matthew pressed down on the staple gun. He was a little bit shaky with it so I held the staple gun in place for him and checked there was no fingers in the way before letting him know it was safe to press down.

Once we had finished with the material, Rosa picked which ribbon she wanted to use and Matthew chose how to lay it down on the board before we stapled that on as well. As an extra touch, all the kids added a special note on the pin board!

After all this crafting the kids were getting tired so we took a little time out and watched a film but this also gave us some time to work on the final project of the day which was friendship bracelets. This was a really simple project to do while sitting on the couch. We just took some embroidery thread in Christmas colours and plated them. Only took 5 minutes but the kids loved them

I also had my friends kids round that morning and as they were a bit younger we just put out lots of bits and bobs for them to glue to paper and they made some really fab pictures! unfortunately in all the rush of people turning up and leaving I forgot to take photos of them!

So I hope this gives you a few ideas for crafts you can do with Children but also the main thing I learned was that kids really love picking their own crafts to do and are so proud with the results when they finish them! Get a list of ideas together that you feel comfortable making and then let your kids pick which of those they would like to do!

I'll be back xx

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Hopefully by now you are all getting in the Christmas spirit...are at least getting some spirits in you!! But between all the drinking and eating, you decide you want something different from your traditional Christmas tree, then this tutorial is definitely for you!

What you need

• 3D Christmas Tree (This one is from hobby craft and was given to me by my AMAZING friend Tatum)
• A shed loads of buttons (I needed about 3x300g bags - which also came from hobby craft)
• Black spray paint
• silver paint
• scouring pad
• assortment of beads
• glue gun

Step 1

Working your way round the tree, glue on your buttons. I used a hot glue gun at it makes sure the buttons are sturdy and don't start pushing each other down.

Step 2

Take the tree outside and spray paint it black, making sure you get in between all the little buttons. Also make sure it's not windy when you do it as I learnt the hard way when the black paint came back in my face! Bring the tree back inside and leave it to dry. I put it next to the heater and it dried in no time.

Step 3

Once the tree is dry, put a very small amount of silver paint on the scourer and then dab it on some paper so that there is only a thin layer. 

Gently rub the scourer down the tree until you have silver lines over the top of the buttons and you are happy with the effect. I had to go over some a few times to get the look I wanted.

Step 4

For the tree ornaments I bought a range of beads and strung them together, using this silver embroidery thread.

Step 5

I then glued the decorations evenly round the tree and then stuck these little bows over the top of the glue so you don't see the join.

There you have it and it only took 5 steps!

I'll be back xx