If I can do it anybody can

I'm a Christian and as we've established this means a few things, Jesus is God, the Bible is His word, and the Godhead is lord and creator of all things. Being a crafter it's easy to admire a creator. It does not mean I will hit you with my Bible on your way out.
Another awesome thing about being a Christian is that I get to celebrate Christmas with unbridled joy. This doesn't mean I spend millions on the people in my life (I wish I had millions to spend on them but let's face it I would just buy craft instead) it means I celebrate the birth of my saviour and jump with both feet into caroling, tinsel and yule log.
On the other hand a few pet hates of mine include Bah Humbugs, argumentative relatives and most of all the term 'Xmas'. First of all it doesn't work phonetically - you'd be forced to say crossmas or exmas and what has that got to do with anything. Secondly if you need to remove Christ from the Christmas forget celebrating it. Thirdly Xmas features in no Christmas carols. Fourthly X just means no, bad or wrong to me as a symbol so why celebrate that?
For all those people out there that use Xmas as a shorter version of Christmas I have a message - don't! The attached picture is a wool wrapped word which I will be selling this year to all Xmas to Christmas converts at a reduced price but prooves if you can wrap and bend wire to make 'Christmas', a pen should be able to draw holly and tinsel and snowflakes and candy canes and rudolph with no bother at all and the full word not a shorter apology for it.
Take that Bah Humbugs!

Right tools for the job

This blog starts with a gift. My mamma is responsible for a lot in my life for which she deserves an age of credit but one thing I can rely upon her for is amazingly random gifts. She bought me the first picture on the list after I had played with hers- I would insert the name of the contraption but since I'm a maker not baker I've no idea what it's called. At first I thought I would never use it but in less than a month it has saved my creations in a variety of ways.
The second picture is of an article I saw in a craft magazine. As it was in a craft magazine I was convinved that it would be suitable for crafters. Maybe it is and I'm just a dunce- who knows. I followed the recipe to the letter and unsurprisingly it turned out nothing like it should have. Where I should've had 'firm balls' I had something that resembled the scrotum of a ninety year old man- clearly watching embarrassing bodies is having an affect on my use of imagery. After a lot of improvisation and frowning I made the goo I had made into the 'firm balls' I required. I gave myself a cooling off period then went back to work on the chocolate.
Following the method in the magazine I was left with, well continuing with the embarrassing bodies theme I will leave it to your imagination. I abandoned the recipe again and went my own way and managed to make it look like the pictures then I added stars to replace the flowers from the magazine.
To be honest the picture on the plate looks nothing like the magazine but after I boxed them up and handed them out they were very well received.
I've frozen some mixture so I will be making more chocolates up for  Christmas gifts and I get to make even more boxes so I'm happy but I wouldn't have been able to make these goodies without the right tools for the job. Guess mamma knew what I needed before I did, that's why she is known as supernan.

Making as a reward for marking

As Christmas approaches it gets harder to write this craft blog as obviously my makes are going to be for gifts. As much as I would like to think that this blog is read by millions worldwide I'm pretty sure mostly it is read by my friends indulging my eccentricity. This leaves me with somewhat a dilema. Either I hibernate for the festive period then inundate you with blogs after the surprise can't be ruined or we establish a rule, if you don't want to have the surprise ruined- don't read on. For now I'm still fixated on my boxes so you can safely read on while we collectively try to reach the masses.
After being a good girl and doing my marking I decided I deserved a reward. I retreated to my craft allocated corner of my house and built my little boxes. I've attached tonight's effort somewhere although I confess I'm on a new phone so I'm not sure where it's gone.
I still can't decide if I prefer traditional wrappers to the 'nordic' papers which seems to be mega popular so please feel free to comment.
Be warned the next blog will be about the gifts I've been making- your surprise is in your own hands people, similar to destiny but that's far too deep and meaningful for a Monday.

If Coca Cola says so, it must be so.

The famous advert has been on so it must be true, Christmas must be on its way. I absolutely love Christmas! Mainly because I get presents and I'm a sucker for shiny boxes under a tree. As we've already discovered I'm a breeze to buy for so as long as its covered in shiny paper and has my name on it - I'm happy. 

Another absolute pleasure is being able to flex my crafting muscles under the guise of making gifts for others. I get to claim craft purchases as ingredients towards gifts and therefore put them on a joint account and I get to experiment with all the ideas I've seen in magazines - what is not to love about Christmas?! Did I also mention that it's the time we remember our saviour being born? Now eternity in heaven, try beating that as a gift! (had to point it out guys, I'm a Christian after all).

This year I've been reading a lot about packaging. And I have to say I'm a guilty packer. I make pretty gifts then generally put them in bags, it's a gift bag if you're lucky but I have resorted to 'posh' supermarket carrier bags in the past. As suchI thought it was about time I broke the habit.

This is my box making pallet groove thingy:

Obviously that is the technical name. On one side are grooves for cards and then on the reverse side are grooves for boxes. I've had it a while but not put it to the test. You will notice a black pen, that's because I've lost the implement to make the grooves so improvised. Keep the lid on if you find yourself in this position- it fits the grooves but doesn't leave unpleasant black lines.

These are my boxes:

The brown one was the first one and then I just gradually got more adventurous until I made a tiny triangle box with a tiny gift inside for a good friend of mine. The big triangle box is another PIF gift but the square boxes are Christmas gifts. Look at me being all prepared!

I'm very excited about the look of the boxes, I think they do have that professional appearance which I haven't been able to achieve previously- supermarket plastic bags just don't give you the edge. It also bumps up the simple gift inside to something a bit more special. Well I think so anyway, I will have to find out and let you know after the recipients give me their feedback.

Not for the love of money but for the love of making

I love craft. I love going to charity shops and finding things I can upcycle. I love making things from a whole host of goodies. I also love looking around me for inspiration and producing cute little makes either for myself or predominantly as gifts. And, let's face it, who doesn't love a bargain. But if that's your joy in life, craft might not be for you.

There is the assumption that if you make gifts they are cheaper- this is not always the case. Unless the ingredients can be found or sourced for free, other peoples clear outs for example or autumn leaves, crafting can become quite expensive and even if you do manage to forage some goodies the time it takes to make such items - even if you work for minimum wage - can start to add up. Look at the airsoft magazine I made:

Remember that one? Ignoring the paper, ink, card and double sided tape it took to create the magazine I spent an entire day putting it all together. To sell it in order to make money I would have to sell it for at least £30 which is beyond ridiculous. Another example:

These are my wool words. The wire and the wool are inexpensive but each one takes about 30-40minutes to make, depending on the length of the word. To be worth selling I would have to charge £8 per word.

Thankfully making these gifts was an absolute pleasure. For not a second of the making process did I count the cost, I enjoyed what I was doing and got a real kick out of knowing how much the recipients would like their gifts. I was even more pleased when those people displayed their presents and told others how much they liked them.

My point here is that when you try to make a gift for someone don't assume it won't cost you as much. Equally when you receive a handmade gift, consider how much it may have cost the person if not in money in time. Or if you buy handmade items, don't quibble over the cost - it isn't cheap to do!

I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty I'm trying to point out how loved you actually are for another to invest so generously.

My motives for handmade gifts are purely selfish- I love to make things. A friend of mine has asked me not to make her things because she can't return the gift- what she doesn't realise is my being able to make her something is as much as a gift to me as it is to her. Here's hoping she lets me keep going!

Oranges - kind of...

I was really hoping today to blog about oranges. Last year I enviously watched my friend make beautiful gifts with dried out oranges and so this year I wanted to give it a try, unfortunately I don't have my end product yet- oranges take ages to dry. So instead I've decided to blog about a PIF gift that didn't get a mention.

I think it's a suitable blog entry for two reasons:

1. It's an easy homemade gift just in time for a festive period.

2. It is incredibly pretty and orange so still partially what I wanted to blog about.

It's a collapsible food basket. My mother in law has one that she bought from France that she puts bread rolls in and is a fancy centre piece for something quite basic so I thought I would give it a try. And as a food basket needs food I made rock cakes to go inside.

I know my friend's kitchen is decorated in golds, oranges and earthy colours which is why I picked the fabric and I've already made her an apron using the same ribbon edges so soon her kitchen will have lots of matching accessories. The inside is a different fabric which is lighter and I really like the contrast of the two fabrics. You can see the inside better here:

What is so lovely about this is that it's two pieces of fabric, sewn right side together, turned inside out and ribbons attached in the corners to make it pop up. Easy! The ribbon part is the most time consuming- working out where to put it to get the right height. Equally it would be easy to make a set of these in a variety of sizes - now there's an idea!