Welcome to my creative online journal

Sunday 25 November 2012

Christmas Lights

Tonight was the switch on of the christmas lights in our town.  You may remember my shots from last year  (has it really been a year already?! Where does the time go?)



Like last year, I also took photos of christmas themed shop window displays:

Attending this event and seeing all this Christmassy stuff really gets me thinking about Christmas more.  Are you inspired about Christmas yet?

(For more creative inspiration, you may like to visit my Christmas board on Pinterest)

Thanks for looking today,
Nicky


Wednesday 14 November 2012

Bead Christmas Decorations

As well as the painted stone activity I did with my boys last weekend (following on from this post yesterday), we also made lots and lots of plastic bead christmas decorations. 

 (Pic 1 of 4)

We used two types of beads, Hama beads and Pyssla, which are Ikea's own brand.   They seemed to be compatible with each other.

The designs themselves were a mixture of ones that we found on the web and others that were our own design.  Some were modified versions of ones that we found on the web. 

The boys (aged 10 and 12) really seemed to enjoy this activity and the younger one, as well as making models, quite happily sorted all the beads into their individual colours, to make the selecting task easier.

Ryan, the 12 year old, made all these snowflakes himself:
  (the top, 2nd one was his first 'practice' go)

....and also this Father Christmas:
Which was completely his own design!

After ironing all these, I decided that next time we do this activity, we might like to consider getting ourselves some of the non-iron, water spray sort!

Thanks for looking today,
Nicky

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Out from Hibernation

When I did my first proper craft fair a few weeks ago, one of the comments I got from an interested customer was, 'Did your boys (who were with me) help you make the crafts?'  I had to admit that they hadn't and the customer looked a bit disapointed.  It made me think, 'Maybe they could, in fact they would probably enjoy it too.'  So, for this next craft fair I am doing, the boys have started to help me and last weekend we made these:

Pet rocks

I found this children's craft idea on Pinterest (originally from here as fridge magnets, but ours are just going to be (potential) pets.  We were thinking of selling them at the primary school craft fair but I do like the idea that I saw SJ had done with some of the ones she had made.  She left them in places in the wild for other people to find!  What a great idea!  (Also love her designs, see here and here). 

Making note: The pebbles without the googly eyes were created by just adding lines to the natural cracks found in the stones (eg bottom left, green).    All the stones were painted using Designer's Gouache and varnished with spray gloss. 

Most of the items we are making are Christmas items, but we will also have a few (like the above) that are not.  

 * * * * * *

The weather is proving to be quite a mixed bag at the moment.  Some days it has been surprisingly warm and other days really WET! (like yesterday)  but one morning last week, bright and early, we had a frost.
It was FREEEEZING!  But the sky was a lovely colour:
(Taken from the skylight in our attic room)


And finally, for my round up of today, my photos of our Bonfire Night at the local rugby club:

See you again soon(ish!)
Nicky

Sunday 4 November 2012

Why we celebrate Bonfire Night

Whilst looking for some crafty material in my (very messy!) craft room I found an interesting leaflet all about Guy Fawkes and why here in the UK we celebrate Bonfire Night.  I knew vaguely of the story (history lessons at school were so boring in my day, not like the fabulous Horrible Histories programme kids get today, thats brill!) but I never knew there was a connection to my (now) home county of Warwickshire.

I will show you the leaflet, which is in comic book form, after I have shown you what I've been doing today as part of my preparations for the school christmas fair.

It's these parcel labels:
These and many more were all painstakingly done by hand, stamped and individually cut out as I haven't got a die like this for my Cuttlebug.  I also individually distressed all the edges by hand and then added the twine.  The vintage and kraft paper look is so 'in' at the moment, Paperchase says so! lol.

On to the leaflet and to read the story, click on the pictures:
 
 
It was an educational leaflet produced for local schools in 2008.

Our family are going to our local rugby club firework display this year, are you celebrating?

Finally today, my husband was asked to bring along some food to a samba event today, for adults, I might add!  This is what he made and took along:
Appetising, huh?...  Some of the adults didn't even know the story!  (I, incidently, made the label).  "I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere!"

Thanks for looking,
Have a safe Bonfire Night,
Nicky
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