New Years Crafty Sales – Heads Up …..The Works

I don’t usually purposefully “do” the sales, I am just happy when I stumble upon an unexpected bargain, however this Christmas has been a bit different, with Lu and I deciding to go for a walk and then a posh coffee in town on Boxing Day to stretch our legs and get some fresh air. The only place open, except for the coffee shops and pubs was The Works and well, it would have been rude not to have a little mooch wouldn’t it, especially when the windows were all plastered with up to 75% off signs.

Well, it seems the early bird catches the bargains as the ladies in the shop were putting stickers on, among other things, all the Christmas craft bits and pieces.

Now, I had lusted after these little wooden houses ever since they came out but at £1.50 each they were a bit pricey, but at 50p each, that’s a very different matter, I bought all they had.  They look pretty simple to put together, I am thinking a quick flick of varnish, followed by Ranger Enamel Accents highlights?

They also had a few of the wooden sledges left, so I availed myself of them too, I think they were 50p a pack.

These other wooden embellishments will come in very handy too.  I am already thinking of putting the penguins on small 4ins x 4ins cards for school?

The packs of 4 house treat boxes were also reduced to 50p, perfect to pop a small chocolate in etc. to hang on the tree. I am thinking school dinner lady fairings?  I would simply go over the lines with white 3D paint, add some nail art peppermint swirls and candy canes and then perhaps a wooden gingerbread man or two.

Our branch of The Works doesn’t carry the greatest range of crafty bits and pieces, I notice the variety of crafty stock tends to differ from store to store, so I will admit to having a look online in the evening (as the TV yet again was rubbish this year) to see what else was being reduced. Click and Collect is £1.99, which seems a cheat, but hey ho!  A pack of the wooden Christmas trees above was 50p, a no brainer, as the bigger trees are a really useable size and all are a decent thickness that would take to being glued upright and then standing up on say a wooden domino to create a little scene?

I’m not sure why I bought the card Christmas puddings, so no ideas how to use them yet, but at 50p again they were worth a punt, perhaps Glossy Accented and glittered …….

Then at the bottom of the bag I found that whoever put my order together had also popped in two packs of these felt shapes for free!  Perfect again for small school cards.

My apologies if it’s to early for you to be thinking about Christmas, but these past few years I seem to work it all year round. I promise I will give Valentines Day and Easter some thought.

I will also admit to putting in an order with Hobbycraft, it was the wreath frames in particular I was after, but as they had some real bargains in the 50p and £1 range, again it would be rude not to. I’ll post these next week, but it might be worth a look beforehand if you are interested, as things seem to be selling out fast.  The Range is also worth a look, but I always find their site so difficult to navigate.

Anyway, I start the New Year with no excuse whatsoever not to get crafting so watch this space ………

Happy New Year 2023 – I Really Thought I Had Craft Fatigue!

Happy New Year

When I first started this post just before Christmas I really thought I was suffering from the most humungous dose of craft fatigue. I hadn’t crafted for at least six weeks and I didn’t think I’d missed it all that much either.  I will admit to overdosing on Christmas crafting throughout 2022, most of my projects made in bulk, thinking that I might have a festive craft stall at sometime in the year (but in the end I didn’t!!!) and in turn, it did take away some of the pleasure in the making. I know I could have tried a bit harder in looking for a table, but then in September I had a flare up of osteoarthritis in my knee that took the wind out of my sails physically and confidence wise. 

I now realise it had been creeping up on me for years now, especially since I moved to Evesham where I walk everywhere because the buses just don’t go where I need to, so I’ve been clocking up the miles thinking I was simply getting slower  and more achy with age.  However after an x-ray, diagnosis and a steroid injection a month ago (which seems to have done the trick), I  am back on track, a couple of stones lighter and moving a lot better.

Christmas was lovely, a little different again from past years (traditions have changed since Covid), but tired from the run up, I was sure I’d start 2023 bereft of any ideas and enthusiasm to craft, even though I didn’t have an excuse especially after I was able to spend a wonderful, long weekend at the end of November with Marc, who showered me with boxes full of fabulous things after he bought almost all of the contents of a ladies craft room after she sadly died ……

I came back with enough cello bags (something I always seem to run out of) to sink a battleship, dies (I am loving the Brenda Walton 3D Christmas Tree in particular), inks, interesting material swatches, papers, embroidery hoops, you name it, all very interesting things.

Then from his own collection Marc gave me all these papier mache houses, plus a pile of small and large wooden decoration kits from Hobbycraft, all begging for festive embellishment, which I’m pretty sure he’ll get back after a little fiddle fart, ready for next Christmas.

On top of all that, when I was in a more crafty frame of mind I treated myself to a whole box of MDF shrines and wooden dolls in various shapes and sizes from https://www.calicocraftparts.co.uk/shrine-kits.html. I can’t believe I simply put them away as soon as they arrived, so I really don’t have no excuse do I?

I just need to get back to making one thing at a time, whether it takes a couple of minutes or an hour or so, simply for the fun of it, for the next few months at least with no pressure. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to begin by completing some of the projects I have started but never finished, as per the first few pictures.

For the next little while, I am going to continue to post on a Monday and a Tuesday if I’m tickled by something, have a particularly good charity shop find or I have a guest crafter or two, but this might not be every single Tuesday while I try to start to build up my schedule of posts again.

I hope see you, hopefully, tomorrow for a quick catch up of a few things I've found in the crafty sales that helped get my creative juices flowing again   …….. happy days!

Happy New Year–It’s 2023!

Happy Christmas 2022 ………..

I’ve wanted a Charlie Brown type Christmas tree for ages now …… so for this year at least, this is the closest I’ve got.

Found in an Evesham charity shop, where else, for just £2.50 and three AA batteries, it would have been rude not to.  All I had to add was the shiny, red, jingle bell ornament. I love it.

With just a few days to go I’d like, with much love, to wish you all a  wonderful and peaceful Christmas, stay safe and after a short break I’ll hopefully be back ………. on the other side, on 2nd January 2023 and then "properly" on 9th January.

Mini Santa Chocolate Sleigh Decoration/Favours

This is the idea I’ve had in mind ………..

…….. ever since I bought a few packs of the little, white, wooden sleighs (2 for £1) from The Works when they first appeared in the shops.

There’s not a lot to them, it was just a case of waiting for the nets of chocolate Santas to arrive in Home Bargains (79p a net of 12) and then finding the right sized, wrapped chocolate to fit on the sleigh, in this case Marks and Spencer Italian Chocolate Assortment (£5) which look a bit like Santa’s sack(?).

I tied a narrow, red ribbon around the neck of the chocolate and then put two, self adhesive, foam pads on the bottom so that it would stick on to the sleigh.

I used two, self adhesive Christmas greetings (Hobbycraft, a couple of years ago) in either pink or green on the two sides of the sleigh runners.

An adhesive, foam pad was also stuck to the back of the Santas to attach them to the front of the chocolates.

As I said, there’s not an awful lot to them, it was just a case of trying to find components that were all in reasonable proportion to each another.

I think these would make a really cute table place setting/favours, perhaps changing one of the greeting tags on the side of the sleigh for the name of the various guests? 

Knitted Christmas Wreath

What’s a girl to do when she spots a knitted wreath kit in the Salvation Army charity shop for just £3.50, well, it would look rude not to!

The kit was originally from Aldi and I was curious, as to how hard could it be, for less than the price of a coffee and slice of cake I thought it would be worth a punt while saving the calories!

Oh my goodness the needles were mahooooooosive, as was the thickness of the yarn ……

…… a good thing the instructions seemed pretty simple.  The knitting itself couldn’t have taken me more than an hour.

When I saw it wrapped round the metal frame I loved the texture.  The yarn was far too thick for any needle, but it was possible to thread it between the stitches to join the two ends together and then to close the edge inside the ring, although it didn’t like too much pulling to tighten anything up.  I used the left over wool (almost a whole ball) to pad out the inside of the wreath.

I used some burlap ribbon that originally came with a hamper a couple of Christmas’s ago, to make the bow following a tutorial on YouTube.

To add a little more colour I glue gunned some red, wooden snowflake embellishments, putting a flat backed pearl in the centres.  I also threaded a length of jute thread in the back to hang the wreath from.

The wreath is now destined for Marc and the cottage, he loves a knitted novelty, he loves a wreath for any occassion and he loves a good charity shop bargain, so I can’t really go wrong to score maximum points can I?   I’ll post pictures later when it’s in situ and his reaction, especially as I’m going to put it back in the original box and suggest we tackle it together to busy ourselves during my stay!  Happy days …………

Christmas Cat Tree Decorations

This follows on from my post of last week, musing on making other variations of my experimental cat tree decoration.

I started by cutting part of a wooden fence embellishment just short of a length of a narrow craft stick. If/when I repeat this idea, I would make the fence slightly longer, so it’s more visible on the finished decoration.

I glued the craft stick along the bottom of the fence and then added two small beads stuck together to give something to glue the cat embellishment on to.  To give extra dimension the cat was stuck on to the front of the craft stick and onto the beads to keep it stable.

The cat was given a ribbon scarf and a Christmas tree.  It’s here that I wished the fence was just a centimetre longer on each side

The cat was given a fish (a wooden bead) and a foam, glittered hat (The Works pack of 21 for £1), all of which were given a generous coating of Ranger Glossy Accents to give it, in my opinion, a more “professional” look.

Then I went mad, adding a small, wooden Christmas plaque, glued on the bottom of the fence (The Works - pack of 6 for £1), a tiny, punched holly sprig with flat backed pearl berries on the cat’s hat, gems and nail art snowflakes on the tree, all topped off by a little Snow-Writer for the snow.

A small bail was glued to the middle of the back to allow the decoration to hang by a thin, gold cord .

I think I will return to the idea again in the new year, this was just another trial run which could be tweaked a little here and there.