Guest Crafters Iris and Bertie With Their Personalised Shopping Bags

As I often say, Bertie isn’t as keen or free as an artist/crafter as Iris, as he tends to like everything he makes to have a purpose, so when he found that I had some plain cotton shopping bags (Hobbycraft £1.80 each) in my top drawer he and Iris were both away!

Putting a piece of cardboard in each bag to stop any ink bleeding into the back and then holding everything flat and in place with four small pegs they set to work, Iris her usual flamboyant self making a bag for Nanny Marcia and Bertie just keeping things to the point for Auntie Lulu using Zencolor Fabric Markers (Amazon).

Iris also used some adhesive letters as stencils for her wording, while Bert’s preferred to free wheel with his.

Then, Bertie found the iron-on flower patches I also had, well that was it, he was totally enthralled with how the flowers stuck to the back of his bag using an iron ……..

He put them exactly where he wanted them to go while I did the “dangerous” work! 

Once happy with his design, he then added a butterfly and stems and leaves using two shades of green with the pens…….

……. but this is where I failed to take any more photos, we were all so in the moment that having Nanny hovering over the table to get all the right shots wasn’t really on the agenda, however, as there are still more bags to be made and put away for Christmas, hopefully there will be a repeat performance!  Happy Days!

Little Wooden Woodland Fairy Tree Ornaments.

Christmas Stash Busting ……..

This idea follows on from the more traditional peg doll tree ornaments from a week or so ago using the taller ??? cm dolls in the packs that I found in The Range (8 assorted sized dolls for £1).

There were two dolls of this size in each pack that I thought looked more willowy than the others (??) and made me think of tree fairies ……..

…….. so  I started out by seeing if I had any dried acorn caps, foraged last year, that would fit their heads and the of the rest sprang from that.

After varnishing the peg doll heads to stop any ink bleeding into the wood, I gave the bodies one coat of Wilko leaf green emulsion.

…….. and while they dried overnight I coloured the wings (4cm MDF butterflies from eBay) on both sides using a gold chrome effect pen (Amazon), putting a small bail on the reverse and then threading a thin, gold cord through it, before gluing the wings to the fairy as it was a lot less fiddly to do it that way around.

The fairies were then given a rough bob, using a brown Sharpie pen and their acorn hats applied with a good dollop of E-7000 and then simply given two tiny, black, flat back eyes to make life easy.

The fairies were then ready to get their wings, again using E-7000.

I then wanted to give the fairies something to hold, and came up with the idea of using the smaller acorn cups and filling  them with small, red, wooden beads that looked a bit like berries or apples.

I also add a little foliage to the cups, using a few of the autumnal leaf sprinkles I got from The Range), but, this is where I got a little anal, the leaves had a hole at the top which grated on me (????), so I glued over it with a scarp of tissue and when dry, coloured over it with a brown Sharpie ……. I know, I know, but I that hole was the first thing I saw when I looked at the “baskets”!

I sanded what would be the back of the cup ,making a flat surface that would then adhere to the fairies body, putting two small, flesh coloured Das Smart balls either side for hands. 

The fairies were on the very cusp of being finished, with just a a tiny, punched holly sprig and three red, flat back pearls to be added to their ”hats”  …….

…… then I got all fiddle farty and wondered what their “dresses” would look like if I added a few strokes of two shades of green Sharpie pen along the bottom and around the neck ……..

It worked and they suddenly took on a whole new magical forestry/natural look ……

……..and the clusters of three gold dots, well, why not!  Do the wings need a little something down the middle, or is that overkill?

I love them, they are something a bit different  ………

Now, what to do with the smallest of the peg people, I am currently thinking “nativity”, I just need to have a play and see if I can make a simple stable using a small, wooden, picket fence panel for a stable roof? We shall see………

Baby Polar Bear - Snowball Christmas Tree Decorations

Remember the weird and wonderful potpourri I bought a few weeks back from my favourite Evesham charity shop for £1.50? 

Well, this is the first project to come out of the bag, once I’d sorted all the bits and pieces out …….

……. made by taking two of the middle sized, seed pods/nut shells (???) and giving them two coats, inside and out, of a Wilko white emulsion test pot.

When everything was thoroughly dry I tentatively used my new electric drill to make a hole for a screw eye hook.  My old hobby drill finally gave up the ghost, it owed me nothing as it must have been 20 years old, however it’s replacement is not as sturdy or robust, so I think I will have to treat it very gently.  The end of the screws did show from the inside, but wouldn’t be visible later on in the making.

I put Hobbycraft white, Superlight Airdrying Clay in the bottom of the shell/pod to look like snow.

This wasn’t too bad a job, but adding the pre-glittered MDF trees was very much a trail and error job ……….

……. as I wanted them to show as symmetrically as I could, behind the tiny, ceramic, baby polar bear (20p each from another local charity shop).  It took several attempts before I was happy, before using E7000 to keep them in place should the clay shrank when it had completely dried.

The polar bear was securely glued down too.

The edges were then gone over several times with DecoArt Snow Writer to build up layers and dimension……..

……. so that it sort of resembled cross section of a snowball.

The edges then given a light  dusting of ultra fine, translucent glitter to add the Christmas magic.

It was tempting to add a ted or blue bow on the top, but I don’t really do bows, so opted for a less is more finish. On looking at the pictures I know I need to touch up the bear’s noses with a fine tipped, permanent pen.

I am now on the charity shop prowl for other tiny, wintery/Christmas figures to put in other similar receptacles or some of the walnuts shells I have left over. I’ve looked on eBay and they are asking stupid money, even in China, so I have just got to be patient.  

These are so cute and yes, I am super chuffed, one each for Iris and Bertie to hang on their tree this year to hopefully come out year after year, with memories of Christmas’s past, long after I’m “gone” and they have families of their own, hence all the glue!

Eeeeeeek, Yet Another Craft Room Sort Out ……..

Is it too early to make a New Years Resolution, because, lord help me, I seriously need to rein in.  I have allowed something to happen that I promised I never would,  as my crafty bits and pieces have spread to the other side of the room, over the sofa bed, which had, up until now, been filled with my kitschy decorative bits and pieces.  It started very, very slowly when boxes could be hidden, but then I had an idea, (never a good thing), to help future proof and make things easier for me as I get older and stiffer……….

Much as I loved the compartments above the sofa, they were rather deep, much deeper than I had originally planned when I had them fitted, due to a walled in extraction pipe, however, it always seemed such a waste of space behind the fiddle fart I had up there.  Then I started  to get tired of having to climb up to get the spare bedding from my room, every time I had a visitor and then put it all back again, so I cam to the thought that some of this compartment space was best used for storage to save time and effort.

With this in mind, I decided to have doors fitted to the compartments that matched those on the other side of the room, I wanted everything hidden away.  My man “what does” is always very busy, so I know it’s going to be a long wait, especially when there’s more work for him in transforming a whole room or kitchen, compared to just fitting five new doors for me, but hopefully it’ll get done when he gets a quiet spell …….. if not I am sort of scuppered…..

…… because, with all this in mind, I  have started to prepare, seeing as the craft stuff had already begun to sneak over, so I ordered a whole pile of storage boxes from Ikea, rather than have a hodge podge of odd sized shoe boxes on display in the meantime. That’s when I, once again, realised just how much stuff I have.  This “new” side now holds all the bulky stuff, tins, bricks, bits for wreaths, skeletons, my beloved Home Bargains easels, large wooden jigsaw pieces, all acquired, it seems, in bulk!  To be honest, it’s a lot of stuff that I have been and intend to use for this Halloween and Christmas, but why does it weigh so heavy on my shoulders?  It feels too much.  So, I am going to do my darndest to work my way through it in the next few months to get it all used up either to sell, for fairing gifts or as RAKS ….. and as each box empties, it will be folded up again and NOT refilled! 

I don’t really like seeing the boxes, but I know I need to be patient.  The top shelves are not filled as they are a less deep than the others, owing to the aforementioned pipe.

With this job done, the drawers on the other side have become much more ordered, which was something else that was getting me down, now I don’t have to get everything out just to find one small thing, there is wiggle room with most boxes are labelled, but any space gained, must not be refilled!

Therefore, with three months before 1st January 2023, I need to say “NO” to any more stuff, not matter how tempting ……… I can’t be the only one, can I?