A few Christmasy makes

After a mad rush up to Christmas (we had builders in insulating an old loft conversion) there was unfortunately little time to spend baking and making. I had started knitting some Alan Dart mice back in November, so these got finished to hang on the Christmas tree – one for each daughter.
I also decided that I would take cake pops to my sister-in-laws for our Christmas Eve family meal – the reindeer heads with orange Matchstick antlers went down a treat with the kids.
Having a 3 year old daughter – Hello Kitty is very apparent in our house and the day before putting the decorations up, she asked for a Hello Kitty door wreath and decorations for the Christmas tree. The wreath was a step to far - we ended up with a hand made willow, ivy and red berries, but unfortunately the hook kept falling off the door. For the tree we came up with the idea of making little Hello Kitty angels – we printed off some images, drew up the wings. Emily then cut out the heads (I helped around the whiskers), wings and the semi circle dress - the lot was stuck together with plenty of cellotape. A loop of silver thread was attached and a hoop of tinsel added for a sparkly touch. They looked great on the tree, and will be stored away for next year.
During advent, we had a Hello Kitty calendar, the sort where you got a little toy behind each window. By Christmas Day we had furniture for a bedroom, kitchen and lounge plus two little characters. On the back was a room scene to cut out but it wasn’t big enough for all the toys, so after Christmas we made a 3 storey house out of an old cereal packet. Unfortunately Emily decided they had to have stairs too – so an extension was added for the two flights of cardboard stairs. Each room was then decorated using the scrap wrapping paper from Christmas. So now Hello Kitty and Mimmy have a house to play in.

The scrap page was hurriedly put together on CraftArtist – using a number of Christmas themed digit kits

All the best for 2012

Regards
Stompy x

A great combination – craft, sweeties and friends

It’s is always fun at Christmas to invite friends over for a little bit of crafting fun – in this case food craft.
Gingerbread houses to be precise – maybe a little ambitious when you have very little time – but I was surprised how easy they were to make. The only issue I had was that I only had one large baking sheet, so baking took some time with all the bits for two houses.
I found a recipe off the internet, most of them had black treacle, not my favourite ingredient so next year I will swap ½ the black treacle for golden syrup.
So the sides were made and a huge batch of royal icing was made up (using Dr Oetker egg whites), and out came my old icing bag and nozzles. The houses were fun to stick together – until my husband told me I got the roofs on the wrong way – so the pieces were prised off, cleaned and stuck back on. I was really surprised just how quickly it stuck together, and how strong they were when finished. The houses were then left overnight to really harden – ready to be decorated by Emily and her friend Lucy.
Making the houses was a great way of getting rid of the sweeties that we had collected over the past year. Emily and Lucy "directed" where they wanted the icing, and then covered the roofs with sweeties. Paths of icing were created so that the gummy bears could "conga" up to the front door of the house (although I don’t think many of Lucy’s bears made it to the party!). A reindeer cookie was added to each front garden, with cake decorations added for eyes and a nose.
Both girls were very good and didn’t eat too many sweets – the same can not be said about Claire and me.
Emily and Lucy (and mummies) were really pleased with their finished results, and proudly shown off to their Daddies later.
So Merry Christmas, Claire and Lucy – we hope you enjoy munching through the house as much as we all enjoyed decorating them.

The scrap page was put together using Serif CraftArtist – using Lifestyle digikit and my own little gingerbread man image.

Fondant Icing and Pop Cake fun.

Not only is making cake pops and icing models good fun it kept my 3 ½ year old quiet for ages – double bonus!
After picking up some reduced fondant icing from my local supermarket and some Dr Oetker coloured icing – Emily and I spent an afternoon making icing models for the Christmas cake. I had recently seen a demonstration on TV by Ann Pickard and took inspiration from what I had seen (and could remember). So we made some snowmen, penguins and trees. A few days later, Emily thought it would be nice to have an angel too for the cake – so out came the icing again and I made a little angel. The angel was nearly finished but she was missing something ….what could she hold? "A penguin" was suggested , and duly made. Whilst messing around with the icing, we spotted the Playdough dog that Santa had bought last Christmas, so 3 puppies and a teddy were made from the mould. I think I will dig out my fimo moulds and have more fun soon.
We also had a play with pop cakes – they seem to be everywhere – so I thought they would be good to make for the schools Christmas cake stall. Looking at the options on internet of how to make them – I went for a pop cake maker that makes little spherical cakes, instead of mixing cake and butter icing together. The plain cakes are a good size for little children, instead of the large muffins or cupcakes with lots of icing/frosting. I bought a Sweet Treats Pop Cake Maker from Lakeland, and so far we have been really pleased with the results. The cakes are moist and tasty. So I had a practice for the sale next week, I kept the decoration simple with dark or white chocolate and lots of sprinkles. Fortunately we didn’t have to munch through 25+ pop cakes as my niece had an 18^th birthday party to go to so she took the spare practice pop cakes. The process was simple enough for my daughter to have a go – and she had great fun sprinkling sprinkles everywhere and getting some onto the cakes too.

The scrap page was put together using Serif CraftArtist – using Lifestyle digikit.

Speed sewing saturday

After my two girls and me going down with colds over the half term holiday – I ended up only having the Saturday to make Emily a costume for Halloween. We were going to head into Newbury for the annual Hullabaloo on the Sunday afternoon.
I already had a pattern (McCall’s Costumes M5954). and some cheap black crushed velvet I had over bought. By the time I got to our local fabric shop, there was a very limited amount of Halloween fabrics left. So the theme for her witches dress became spiders and spider webs.
With some minor alterations to the pattern – I got it made from 1.5m of the red spider web (skirt), about 0.5m of the black velvet (bodice and puff sleeve tops), a small amount of the spider fabric (bodice front) and spider web fabric (sleeves).
I didn’t have time to make the hat, so that was bought from Sainsbury, but we decorated it with homemade spiders. The broom was made from 2 A5 sheets of brown fun foam and a small branch from our apple tree.
Emily’s faithful companion, Blue Cat, was then tide to the broom and the broom hung over her shoulder with black ribbon.

The scrapbook page was put together using Serif CraftArtist Software using the Modern Lace digikit and some images of my own.


Thanks for looking - I hopefully might have more time this month to get some crafts done.

stompy

Knitting Time - This is Zeb and his friends the Frogs.

I love to knit – and like all the crafts I try I never can follow a pattern – and have to make up my own designs.

One thing that concerns me when knitting toys for very young children is making sure that all limbs etc are very well sewn on. So as I knit for my two daughters and their friends, I came up with the cunning plan of making the arms and legs in one piece and threading them through the body of the toy – hopefully making them so much harder to pull off.

Zeb was knitted/crocheted for a friend’s new baby boy. Based roughly on the frogs body, I made the zebras head shape up as I went along. The ears where adapted from leaves from a flower fairy pattern that I have (more of them coming soon). The mane and tail were crocheted – using very basic crocheting as this is one craft I really struggle with.

"Frog" was designed for my then growing bump as a gift to be given by "the bumps" sister – but as it was being knitted "Big Sister" decided that she really wanted one too. So secretly I knitted the green/pink frog for the baby to give to her. So now Hoppy and Poppy are great friends and are often played with together.


All these toys are knitted from my stash of Double Knit Special by Stylecraft and stuffed with polyester toy stuffing.

stompy x

Welcome

Welcome – this is my very first foray into the world of blogs.
As a very busy mum of two, I have to realistic and therefore I hope to update my blog twice a month – sometimes it may be more – other times it might be less.
Anyway as my first post I thought it might be nice to have a little freebie.
On the Docraft Gallery I have had such a lovely response regarding my easy collage birdie, and as Christmas will soon be upon us, I made my little birdie into a Christmas Robin. This Robin is great to make quick cards, especially if you are making a lot to sell for charity.

I have made up a number of simple cards using my free template.

 



Simple Robin

Brown, red and yellow lightweight cardstock,
Pinflair glue
White Pen
Double sided "red" tape
Glitter
Printed border

Baby Card
Pink Petticoat – Vintage Rose Collection
Colorbox Fluid Chalk
Double sided "red" tape
Printed border
Papermania Glitter Flock
Acetate

Snowflake Robin
Artemio Clear Christmas Stamps - small snowflake
Inks Dew Drop Starlite Silver and Colorbox Fluid Chalk
Pinflair glue
Glossy accents

Blackbird
Brown, red and yellow lightweight cardstock,

Black and yellow lightweight cardstock

Pinflair glue
Glossy accents


I have also used the birdie on a number of other sewing projects, using it as an appliquéd motif on my daughters abc wall hanging chart and her soft baby blocks. I also used it to make a wall mounted peg string.



　
　Again thank you for looking – and I hope you will visit my blog again.

Kind regards

Stompy