Chinese New Year

We had a little celebration of the Chinese New Year yesterday.

We started with a visual re-telling of the story of how the Jade Emperor decided on the animals of the Chinese calendar. I told the story, read from a powerpoint presentation off my laptop, and acted out the story with toys and a little scene made with tin foil, a couple of chiffons, some pebbles, bits of wood and some plastic stone and tree ornaments.  The boys were engaged, but I learnt it would have been better not to have the powerpoint presentation, for some reason they were more drawn to looking at the pictures on the screen than the story I was acting out for them.

After I told the story a couple of times (again on their request)  they had a go at playing around with the toys on the river, and tried acting the story out too. 

Later we made some Chinese lanterns.  I had to give quite a lot of help with some parts of the lamp making but they were pleased with the results. 

(My example)

Biscuits effort; he mostly did the cutting and I did the rest.

Boris' effort; he had a real go at making the lantern himself, though got frustrated at times when things weren't going exactly his way. 

And for dinner, well a Chinese stir fry of course. 

I hope you all enjoyed a happy Chinese New Year!

New items in the shop

As promised I am adding new items to my shop every day, going to try to stick to my word and continue adding items over the next few days.

I have added to the bunting in the collection with both more cotton bunting and some vintage paper bunting too.  I will be continuing to add bunting as the weeks pass, I have some gorgeous new fabrics and I am even planning a few festive strings of bunting ready for Christmas.

Aaaand, I am really excited to be bringing back some vintage ceramics.  Again I have more to add over the next days/weeks.  I love these so much, can't wait to share them with you.

Here are some peeks at my new items:

The Grand Re-opening!

Today is the Grand Re-opening of my Etsy shop!!

I have one beautiful item for sale - A string of union flag bunting, but I will be adding new items to my shop daily so keep your eyes peeled and check back soon to see what I will be adding.

I first opened my shop way back in March 2010 selling a variety of handmade items and vintage ornaments.
I have a large collection of vintage music sheet, maps, books and comics so started making items out of this including bunting, confetti, badges and garlands,

I also got into selling really cute vintage ceramic ornaments like these beauties:

As I developed my products I found that fabric bunting was also popular and I enjoyed making it so I have decided to continue selling the bunting and focusing on this for now (though I really hope to start including vintage ornaments in my collection again because they are so fun.)

So I really hope you will visit back soon to see my new products.

Stay tuned!

Slam Book

Back at the start of the year one of my goals for 2015 was to take a photo a day for 2015 and to make a slam book.  I decided to combine the two ideas by making a slam page for each photo.

I haven't managed to take a photo every single day, but have taken one most days.  I also haven't kept up with the slam book and I am quite a few weeks behind.  I am not sure if I will carry on with it or not, it was fun at first, I enjoyed being a bit ruthless with which papers to choose, but now I am so behind it feels a bit like a burden.  At first I was printing off the photos really regularly at an instant photo place, and I was doing a few pages a couple of times a week, but it was costing too much money so I decided to stop that and print them less frequently online, however this caused me to become more and more behind because I had to make it worth the postage so was saving them up.  The more recent pages have also had less time spent on them so I feel they aren't as good, but I suppose the whole point is to stop me being so particular about each photo.  But this is also part of the problem with keeping up with it, I still find myself agonising too much about every single page, and that just takes too much time.  So we shall see if I continue with it or not.

Anyway in spite of not being able to keep up with it I thought you might like to see a few of the pages I have done (showing people the book is probably my favorite thing about it, after all what is the point of art without an audience?)

Reggio Tag Toy

When Biscuit was tiny I had in mind to create a Reggio inspired play space like this one on The Imagination Tree. I decided to make a tag toy using strong contrasting black and white with bold shapes to grab Biscuit's attention.  It took me a long time and by the time it was finished he was really a bit old for it, but I thought I would share it anyway and give you a short run down of how I made it. 

I used to do loads of crafts but have so little free time now it is a rarity, I love sewing and crafting so much I hope I can get back into it as the boys get older and can amuse themselves for longer.  So any little project I do feels like a huge achievement, and of course I want to share it!  

Step 1: Cut 5 squares of black fabric and four squares of white measuring about 12cm each (for a 10cm square with 1cm for stitching together)

Step 2: Cut one piece of black fabric (for the back) measuring about 33cm by 32cm,

Step 3:  Cut strips of tape (I think I used herring bone) for the tags,

Step 4: Cut the shapes you want appliqued onto each square,

Step 5: Sew the shapes onto the squares using a very close zig zag stitch so it creates a solid line of stitching about 1/2mm thick all the way round, this stops stray threads on the applique shapes,

Step 6: Sew together the squares as you would a patchwork quilt,

Step 7: Place the front and back face to face then pin the tabs all the way round so they are inwards,

Step 8: Sew all the way round leaving a small gap,

Step 10: Turn inside out and sew up the gap.

Very basic instructions I know, it was pretty simple though so I am sure you can work it out, and there are probably way better instructions for how to make a tab toy than these such as this one  and this one. 

Have you ever made a tag toy? or any toys for your baby? I would love to see them, feel free to link in the comments. 

Hope you are having a great weekend x

Best Friend Scrap Book Pages

Recently my best girlfriend turned 30, the day before I turned 31.  We have been friends since before I can remember and I am so thankful to have her in my life.
For her birthday her lovely husband came up with a brilliant idea to create a "This is Your Life" style scrap book containing photos and journalling with fun and happy memories from our life.  I couldn't wait to get started, especially because I don't get to do much craft these days because I have so little free time, what I do do is usually for other people.
In an ideal world I would have had photos of us as children but they are all at my parents house so the pages contained fairly recent photos.  
I used scrap booking papers from my stash, a few flower embellishments and some tags for journalling.

60th Birthday Present

Finally I am writing a blog post about a craft project I have done, Hurrah!  (It's only taken 9 months!)
So a couple of months ago my mum and dad had a joint birthday party to celebrate them turning 60 (here's hoping I am lucky enough to make it to 60 and beyond), it was a great weekend with lots of family friends, work friends, old friends and new. As I have given up alcohol for let it is possibly I was the only person there sober enough to photograph every single person attending the party as well as getting them to write a little note to my mum and dad with a message to them for their birthday,
At the end of the party I gathered in all the cards and edited the photos on Instagram to make them pop a bit and printed them as 5" x 5" squares. And here is what I did with them:

The frame was originally a mirror I bought from The Range.  I took out the mirror then string string in a zig zag across the back.

I bought some decorated mini pegs, red and white paper clips with tags, washi tape and paper from Hobby Craft.

I used the pegs to peg the photos (which I stuck back to back because I had to many) to the string and decorated the photos and cards with the washi tape and paper clips.

I cut a "60" out of the coloured paper block I bought as well as some little triangles which I stuck along the top of some of the photos for bunting.

I also cut some larger triangles and stuck them along the inside top of the frame to look like bunting.

I was pretty chuffed with it and I think my mum and dad loved it too. At least I hope so, I was up till 2 in the morning finishing it!  I had to really not be a perfectionist on this project because I had so little time, which was hard for me as I will normally agonise for ages over which colour paper to use, where to put the embellishments etc, and will carefully measure each cut of paper to make sure it's all symmetrical and even. However in spite of my somewhat slap-dash approach I think it turned out pretty well.  

Are you crafty?  How do you fit in time for crafting with young children?  

Our Candlemas Celebration

You may remember me saying at the start of February that we would be celebrating Candlemas by making and eating a candle cake, making an earthen candle and eating a candle lit dinner, amazingly I did actually manage to do all these things on the evening of Candlemas.
In case you don't know Candlemas is a Christian feast day celebrated 40 days after Christmas day to make the day that Mary presented the infant Jesus at the temple, as was the tradition. It is also they day when churches bless the candles, which represent Jesus being the light of the world. Historically the date has been celebrated as the mid-point between the shortest day and the spring equinox, and thus seems an ideal date to celebrate light.

I like cake (a lot) so when I saw this candle cake I decided it would be a great excuse to combine the celebration and my love of baked goods.  It was pretty easy to make, literally covered a Swiss roll with water icing (it makes lots of drippy marks giving it an authentic candle-like feel) and I used a heart shaped marshmallow turned upside down and stuck on a kebab skewer for the flame. If I did this again I would make my own Swiss roll because, no offence, but Asda own brand Swiss roll is a bit minging.

The earthen candle idea came from here,I thought Boris would really like it and he did.  I made mine by melting some paraffin wax in a Bain Marie 

Then I filled Boris' little bucket with soil from the garden and formed a heart shape in it, I suspended a wick in it then poured in the melted wax. I left it o set whilst finishing dinner and laying the table.

And Voila!  Our Candlemas dinner was complete. I apologise for these photos, it was too dark really and no amount of iphone filtration was going to make them look any better!

After dinner we played shadow puppets in the candle light, it was good fun.

Fun things to do with toddlers - Paint in a bag

Like most great ideas, I got this fun activity off Pinterest.  Such a quick and simple way for a toddler to play with paint without all the mess! What could be better?

Begin by putting a few blobs of poster paint into a zip lock bag, then tape the bag to the table, floor, whatever. I taped it to the plastic mat that we put under Boris' high chair at dinner time.

The let them explore the paint with their fingers, they will probably wonder why the paint isn't going onto their fingers, Boris kept checking his!

Boris soon started getting quite excited, smearing the paint with his feet the lying on it and rolling around like a loon!  Love it!

Love the end result of the colours all mixing together.  Would be a fun activity to do with older children to help teach colour mixing.

I am not sure if I just have a toddler with a very short attention span or if this activity really is only interesting for ten minutes?  However it was good fun, super easy to set up and clean away, ideal for the mess-phobic out there.  I do have a bit of guilt in the fact that I am throwing away a plastic bag that will end up on landfill but in my case I couldn't use the bag again because Boris had started scratching at the plastic towards the end of the activity, damaging it so that it could easily have ruptured, potentially resulting in paint everywhere. I am definitely going to do this activity again with just black and white paint.  Could also add glitter to jazz it up a bit.