Christmas Eve Mincepies

It's a tradition in our house to make mince pies on Christmas Eve, often we make gingerbread too depending on time. This years design is based on Lorraine Pascale's pinwheel stars, and they came out quite well.

 

 

 

All you have to do is cut your pastry into squares, snip/cut at each corner, a spoon of mincemeat in the center, fold every second corner into the center [like this] dab a little beaten egg on the join and top with a star, glaze the rest of the showing pastry, bake, cool and then dust with icing sugar :)

Melted snowman fruit cake gift

One of the many lovely things Josh brought home from nursery this year was this melted snowman fruit cake. Technically this is a 'handmadebyjosh' and his teachers project, but it was such a good idea I thought I'd share.

 

 

 

About 3 weeks ago we were asked to send in empty clean 220g bean tins. I couldn't work out what sort of craft a nursery class could make with them - I had visions of them being used as plant pots or candle holders. And was very happily surprised to receive this cute cake. Very simple to do, you just used them instead of a baking tin. The cake is removed once cool, turned upside down, topped with a disc of icing, a ball of icing and decorations to look like a melted snowman and dressed up with corrugated card an cellophane to make a really sweet gift.

 



Happy Birthday Jason: A masculine travellers card

I need a card for the birthday of one of Mr S's best friends, and found this wonderful scrapbooking paper at my local crafting store. I couldn't resist sprucing it up with a bit of a travel theme and voila this card was born. One of the most 'me' cards for a long time, rather pleased it came out so well. I love the blue accent colours, although I wish I could have picked up on the red somewhere too.

 

 

Help! I'm drowning in Christmas Cards!!

The first batch of cards for nursery and a few friends is complete (and on going). Here are the first two designs, which I've been making in two sizes, 4x4 and 5x5. I've tried to keep the design quite simple as it had to be replicated so many times (cue: trip to my local craft shop more than once for more MME paper).:

 

 

I do have to keep asking myself why decide to make ALL of my Christmas cards this year? Especially considering Josh has 25 children in his nursery class and 5 teachers on top of the usual family, friends and neighbours ... the original reasoning behind it was that next year I want to launch packs of Christmas Cards in my Etsy online shop and take samples and pre-made/bagged tags and cards to some local craft fairs, and I figured practising making cards in quantity was good experience. What I hadn't counted on was the family having one illness after another for a month and no time to craft.

 

Right, no time to blog, back to the BigShot, guillotine and stamp pads :) Hope you are all having a lovely festive season, and good luck to those of you with projects of your own to finish! xx



Almost december ... and I'm Feeling Summery

After our family holiday in St Ives in Cornwall this summer I was definitely feeling the love for VW Campervans. To the point I was researching second hand campers on the drive home. For now it is possibly a little impractical for our family particularly considering the carseats and my love of a good hotel mattress but you can't beat the iconic look of those lovely vehicles, and so we bought the kids a toy Camper van each and I treated myself to some VW Camper and Beetle style stamps.

 

 

I've already featured the stamps as part of my steadily growing Christmas tag range. But when I started experimenting with my more bright and summery distress inks I just couldn't stop and ended up with 7 vivid variations. I really love these bright colours against the monochrome camper and the natural twine give it a bit of a beachy feel!

 

[Now available at Etsy]

 

Super Hero Party: The finished result!

It's always nice when a plan comes together. Weeks of research on pinterest, brainstorming, cutting, gluing and baking finally came together. This time for my son's 4th Birthday Party. Amazingly this is the first children's party where I didn't feel rushed at the end, no sobbing into the regal icing, I even had time to go back and try ideas shelved as 'if I get time I might try that' - all helped by a few late nighters of course.

When we first started party planning my son quite liked Spiderman (you may remember the mask post back in August) then he quickly discovered other animated series the Super Hero Squad Show, X-men and the Avengers and so the party evolved into a more general 'Super Heros' party. I tried to represent all of his favourite characters in the food and party items: Hulk Jellies, Iron-man Biscuits, Captain America Cupcakes, Wolverine Cake, Thor's Cheese Hammers & Spiderman Invites ... we even had a telephone booth to change in....

Showing some love for local crafting :)

Feeling the love today for local crafting. I discovered 'Sparkle Dreams' paper crafting shop and workshop at Studley Grange. Having lived in Wiltshire for 4 years, I have long bemoaned the fact that we have quite limited sources for good crafting materials - often having to resort to online shopping or my weekly pilgrimage to the crafting giant Hobbycraft.

 

 

How wonderful to discover an intimate little shop, around the corner with animated and passionate staff, offering a more personal service. It was a joy to be able to browse the racks, see and touch products I'd only seen photos of online. I was like a kid in a candy shop, with cries of "Tim Holtz!" and "I've not seen this MME paper before!" it was a revelation ... and probably a bit embarrassing to everyone I was with.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am a bargain hunter and will always shop around for my crafting needs, but for the joy and shear satisfaction of being able to touch and see what I'm buying might be worth overlooking a little price comparison now and then ;) Not to mention showing support for our local businesses.

 

NB:- Sparkle Dreams can be located at Studley Grange 16, M4 Motorway near Wroughton. The shop also offers regular crafting workshops. [Photo credit Sparkle Dreams]