The second installment in the Holidays By Hand project is now up. It is going to be a six part series of Handmade Christmas Gifts.

This week it is Handmade Gifts From Paper. Rachel, the host at Small Note Book (great blog to subscribe to if you haven’t already done so!) included my Handmade Fabric Notebooks.

Check out the post for some beautiful and creative ideas all made (mainly) from paper. Rachel’s has a photo of her contribution - a pop-up doll house scene which any little girl would love. I also loved the Paper Mosaic and the Story Book Puzzle Blocks.

Technorati Tags: christmas gifts, craft, handmade

• Holidays By Hand - Handmade Christmas Gifts
• Christmas Planning - Homemade Bath Salts
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Seven weeks to Christmas now! This week I have stuck to my Christmas Preparation Plan and have been working on Handmade Christmas Cards for the Children and myself. This post will show the results of the children’s work and mine will come later this week.

It is tradition at the children’s preschool and school to give out Christmas Cards to their class members and teacher at the end of the year. (The teacher also gets a gift, but more on that in another post!)

For the last couple of years I have encouraged the children to come up with their own design and make their own cards. The children now expect that they will make their own cards which is very sweet, as they put time into thinking about their design.

This year each child drew a design using the Paint application on their PC. Mac users like myself can download Tux Paint to use instead.

These programs are easy for children to use and allow them to use different colours, textures, widths and add text if they wish to their pictures. The designs below were what they came up with:

Thinker (Almost 10 y.o)

Little Rascal (7.5 y.o)

Possum (Almost 5 y.o)

Once they have created their design, I alter the size of the picture using Picnik (free image editing software), so that I can print out four cards per A4 piece of cardboard. The dimensions of the picture for the card are 275 x 171, so they are a small card.

I have also included the Children’s Christmas Card Template so that you can just slot your kids designs in if you wish. Happy card making!

Technorati Tags: children, christmas cards, handmade

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It is now 8 weeks until Christmas. According to my Christmas Preparation Plan this week I was going to be working on updating my Christmas Card list. The great thing about having the Christmas Plan is that I am aware of what activities I need to do and roughly in what order. This knowledge helps me to make the best use of my time. So this week I actually worked on finishing up my homemade Christmas Gift Tags. (FYI scheduled for 6 weeks to go.)

An opportunity arose for me this week to catch up with a friend. She was going to be attending a scrapbooking workshop and invited me along. I am not a scrapbooker, but the lovely workshop host (Paula ) was happy for me to come along, use all of the fabulous tools that she has and make my Christmas Gift Tags.

It was great to source some new inspiration from the scrapbooks that Paula had on display. I am pretty basic when it comes to this type of thing, but seeing ideas of what combinations can be used inspired me to come up with some fun little Christmas Tags for this year, whilst still sticking with my theme of gold and silver.

My favourites are the actual “tag” shaped ones (above). Paula had this nifty tool that cut the card into this shape and then would also place a whole at the end. So while enjoying the company of some new creative women (my friend actually couldn’t make it in the end!) I made another 18 Christmas Gift Tags and have completed my 50 that I will need for this year.

Now I just have to work out what I am going to do for wrapping paper!

Technorati Tags: christmas gift tags, christmas planning, handmade

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The countdown continues - 9 weeks until Christmas. My countdown is naturally of a planning nature and I am working through a Christmas Preparation Plan to allow a smooth and paced lead up to Christmas this year.

Week Nine’s activity was to complete making handmade gifts. Today with the two youngest children, I made the last of our handmade Christmas gifts, homemade bath salts. They were incredibly easy to make and it was really a fun activity to make with the children.

At their request tonight, we tested the bath salts (including me) in the bath and the children and myself were delighted with the results.

Here is a very simple tutorial that you can follow to make your own bath salts:

The Ingredients

• 1 cup of Epsom Salts
• 1 cup of Sea Salt
• 3 tablespoons of dehydrated milk
• Food Colouring
• 1/4 teaspoon of essential oil

A note about the sea salt. I bought sea salt that was “double washed and naturally evapourated”. It has slightly larger crystals than traditional table salt and looks better presentation wise.

The Instructions

(1.) Mix the salts in a large bowl.

(2). Add approximately 8 - 10 drops of food colouring to the salts. If you want a darker colour, obviously just add more dye. Mix dye in with a whisk.

(3). Add the powdered milk and use the whisk again to mix thoroughly.

(4). Add the essential oil to the mix. The smell is the strongest notable characteristic of the bath salts, so it is worth while using a quality oil. I used an essential oil blend called harmony, which smells divine!

(5). Spoon mixture into a dry jar.

(6). Place lid on and close tightly.

(7). I used a CD to cut out a circle piece of fabric to decorate the bath salts. The fabric is held in place by a length of thin ribbon.

I still have one more batch of bath salts to make (Possum thinks the next batch should be green) and I will have finished the handmade gifts for Christmas. As you can see from the photo above, I have been using the same materials across the three projects, so that I can team up multiple items, like gift sets.

Instructions for the other items can be found here:
- Handmade Fabric Covered Notebooks
- Handmade Fabric Necklaces

Technorati Tags: bath salts, christmas presents, handmade

• Holidays By Hand - Handmade Christmas Gifts
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SPOILER ALERT - To my family and friends, please do not read on as you may see your Christmas Gift for this year!

In my attempt this year to be well and truly organised for Christmas and the busy period leading up to it, I have been making some handmade gifts to give to people at Christmas. So far with my partner in craft, we have made:

Fabric Covered Notebooks
Homemade Works Of Art

This week I am very excited to show you the handmade fabric necklaces that we have made. We have made them using the same fabrics as we did with the fabric covered notebooks. The aim here was to be able to match them together to make a beautiful little gift set for someone special.

Now I must give full credit to my partner in craft who was the brains behind this project. Without her guidance I would not have been able to make these gorgeous little necklaces. I will take you through the steps that she patiently took me through. If I could make these, then I think anyone can.

(1). Cut fabric into strips approx 3cm x 60cm.

(2). Fold the fabric in half with the pattern on the inside. Sew the fabric together and sew one end about 0.5cm in from the edge.

(3). This was the hardest step for me. Starting at the sewn end, use a knitting needle (or like object), to push the fabric through onto itself, so that pattern of the fabric can now be seen. It is very easy to push the needle through the sewn end, so you need to be careful.

(4). Iron the fabric flat with the seam to one side.

(5). Using a small piece of masking tape, we folded and taped the end to allow for easier threading of the beads.

(6). After threading the beads, place them on the fabric, making sure that the middle bead will fall evenly in the middle. (Fold the fabric into the necklace shape to check.)

(7). We tied knots in the fabric to keep the beads in place and to create a pattern. You simply move other beads furhter up the fabric and tie a knot, sliding it down so it sits close to the bead. For the first knots, you need to make sure that there is room for the beads to move so the bottom of the necklace will be rounded and not straight.

(8). The hooks and rings we used can be bought from craft or fabric stores. They come opened and we used some small pliers to bend them close, to secure the end of the necklace.

And with that last step, you have your finished necklace! We made these necklaces from a number of different fabrics and once we have finished all of them, we should have eight each. We are starting to have quite a Christmas present stash already which is very exciting.

Have you been making anything?

Technorati Tags: christmas planning, christmas presents, fabric necklaces, handmade

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Earlier this month I got together with a talented and craft friend to make the first batch of hand made Christmas Presents for the year.

Our first get together in July was a planning meeting. For my crafty friend, this was very kind of her to indulge by planning nerdiness as she is a far more a go with the flow type of gal - so thanks for your patience! We decided to make a couple of items that would use similar materials and would not only make a nice gift set, but would also reduce waste and cost.

The first item for us to make was fabric covered notebooks. Now a big nod needs to go to Rachel from Booked Into Art who taught us how to make these books at the launch of Mixtape Zine Issue 3 at Sticky Institute.

If you would like to make a fabric covered notebook, you will need the following items:

- fabric of your choice

- a thick cardboard for the outer cover

- thin white cardboard for the inner cover

- recycled paper for the pages

- thin ribbon to bind the book

- a small bead for the ribbon

- craft glue

- hammer and nail (for making holes in spine)

- thick needle for threading ribbon

(1). The first step was to cut the thick cardboard to half the size of an A4 piece of paper. Using a scrap of cardboard, cover the cardboard with glue and then place on fabric.

It is a good idea to put old magazine paper or catalogue pages underneath the area that you are working. You just remove these if glue gets on them, so the fabric does not get glue on the outside.

(2). Cut the corners at an angle, so when the edges are folded, there are neatly covered corners.

(3). Glue the edges down to the thick cardboard. Glue the white cardboard on top of the thick cardboard, so as to make a nice inner cover. Store under a heavy book between magazine sheets, while you get paper ready.

(4). The recycled paper which will make the pages needs to be approx 0.5cm smaller in all dimensions, so that it will fit nicely into the book.

(5). Fit the cover and the pages together and mark halfway. Fold at the halfway mark.

(6). Using a nail and hammer (wooden block underneath) make two small holes on the fold mark of the book.

(7). With the thick needle, thread the ribbon through the holes, so the additional lengths of ribbon is on the outside. Close book and tie a not on the outside of the spine to keep the tightly in place. Thread a small bead on the end of the ribbon and tie a not to secure it.

(8). Wrap ribbon around book and weave ribbon on itself so it keeps the notebook closed tightly. And that’s it. It is a good idea to keep the book flat under a heavy item until it is dry.

Using a production line approach, we managed to come out of the evening (a long evening) with 10 fabric covered notebooks each. I do love to give a handmade gift at Christmas to teachers etc, so it will be great to have them ready when the festive season comes along.

I will show you our second creation which we made to match up with the notebooks in a separate post. Are you making anything already for Christmas? If so leave a link so I can come and take a peak!

Technorati Tags: christmas presents, gift ideas, handmade, Planning

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• Holidays By Hand - Paper Handmade Gifts
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