Craft Festival

Yep that's where I'll be this Sunday. To say I am a little snowed under right now trying to get things ready is an understatement. I am considering a 48 hour computer ban .... wish me luck! There will be lots of fabulous people exhibiting, I am hoping to get a bit of Christmas shopping done myself. If you're in the area on Sunday come and say hello. And remind me not to spend all my money. Thanks!

Patterns Galore

First of all: this is not an offical product review, i.e. I have not been asked to review the following products or been offered anything in return for this. In fact I will never use this blog for any official product reviews, because this is not what this blog is for. So the following is purely something I came across and wanted to share.

I am not a huge magazine reader, they often just end up in a big pile beside my bed and eventually with huge delay I manage to get through them. But when I found myself in a newsagent's a couple of weeks ago with a few minutes to spare, I browsed through all the craft magazines that were for sale and two in particular caught my eyes, so I bought them - and have been very pleasantly surprised:

Both magazines offer a great selection of various craft projects, some of them I will be trying out myself soon. And amongst the advertisements I found a link to the Coats Crafts UK website, which features a large selection of free patterns for knitting, crochet, stictching and sewing. I am particulalry interested in all the patchwork patterns as that is next on my list so I can start using up my fabric scraps. What's on your list?

Christmas Potato Stamps

We've had a lot of rain recently - I know, a lot of people have had snow but that won't happen in our neck of the woods, but let me tell you we've had rain. A lot. And so we had to find things to do inside. The other thing that has happened is that this year we have none of our Christmas decoration. I don't fancy going out buying a lot of things just for this year so instead we spend time making things. It's a bit limited what you can do with a 3.5 year old - he is really into MAKING things but that doesn't mean you can make the most complicated things. So we opted for potato stamps:

First press cookie cutters into potato halves, about 1cm deep. With a knife take off the surplus of potato that is outside of the cutter shape. I wouldn't recommend using plastic cookie cutters, the metal ones are just easier to get into the potatoes.

Get colours, glitter and paper ready ....

Once finished, let your stamps dry fully.

Cut out and place in a heavy book overnight to flatten them. Then stick around your fireplace, voila.

And if you're still looking for some last Christmas cards, print off some free ones here at Dawanda. Christmas stress? Pah!!  [frantically buys last-minute Xmas presents online with no hope in the world of receiving anything before the end of January]

The Crafting Mojo Is Back

With all that has happened this year, I haven't even looked at my fabric stash once. It was just too depressing, so I just buried that subject somewhere, but I always knew that one day I would start again. And voila, I am happy to report that the crafting mojo is back - in fact I have spent the last couple of days scouring the internet and discovering various incredible blogs of fabulously crafty people. More of that next week.

I always had the idea of making an advent calendar for the little man and I doubt I'll have the time to start and finish it this year, but it will definitely be a project for the next year. So far I have found a few that I like, now all I have to do is decide which one to go for.

I love this design, very simple but relatively easy (ha ha I'll probably regret saying that ...). It's from Lina at Linaloo.

This one is probably even easier, all instructions here from the ever inspirational Martha at Martha Stewart.

And last but not least, I also love the idea of these tins on a baking tray, from TyAnne at inspiremecrafts.


Decisions, decisions ...!