DIY Stocking Hanger

I made this Christmas stocking hanger for our family last Christmas as our mantle was looking a bit overcrowded!!  I used wood for my back board, but mdf would be fine to use, and cheaper too.  My wood measures approximately 81cm x 22cm, with a thickness of 2cm.  I sanded it all down just to get rid of some rough patches and make it nice and smooth, and then applied 3 coats of my chosen colour.  Then using a Sharpie paint pen I wrote all the wording on which was easy peasy as I used the same technique as my 'Silent Night Christmas board'

As I was shaking my Sharpie paint pen to get more paint on the nib, I ended up having some lovely white 'snow' fall onto my board, so then I had to adapt what I'd planned and do the same all over, which was rather fun!  Luckily this crafting mistake didn't end up in tears but I think it actually gave it that finishing touch.

Once the writing was all dry, I attached two sawtooth hangers to the back a few inches from either end, and then screwed in the hooks evenly onto the front of the board....Ho Ho Ho our stocking hanger was finally complete!!

A Very Happy and Belated Merry Christmas to you all,

Love

DIY Cup-a-Soup

This is soup-er quick and soup-a-licious...I couldn't resist it sorry!!?!

We have a lovely old gentleman who lives across the road from us, sadly his wife of 70 years passed away a few years ago.  Over the years that we have lived here (7 to be exact), we have grown to love Mr & Mrs Yates, they have always be so kind to us and love having conversations with our kiddies.

We regularly take Mr Yates some dinner, cakes and drawings...my kids love to draw some very interesting things & feel that Mr Yates should be the recipient (maybe this should be the feature of my next post, lol!?).

Anyways, I had some large clear disposable tumblers left over from something and spied them the other day when I was making soup.  And lo and behold the literal 'cup-a-soup' was born, haha!!

I poured the soup in, covered it with clingfilm and instantly a platform for the roll to sit on is made, ta da!!! 

Now cover the roll and hey presto you have a soup dinner ready to be transported to neighbours, friends, family with no worry of having to track down your soup bowls.  

And if it's still hot when received, the recipient can dunk away with their roll, drink/slurp/spoon the remains and then put the tumbler in the recycling bin = no washing up (particularly handy if the person is poorly).

Well that's all the inspiration for today...probably loads of people have already discovered this phenomenon, but I was amazed by it so it just had to be shared, lol!!

Soup is back on the menu :)

DIY Sharpie Tea Towel

A quick, simple yet thoughtful gift to give to family, friends, teachers etc....and its ready in five minutes, well if the kids cooperate!!?!

Materials needed

Sharpie pens (or fabric pens)

Plain tea towel

Lots of hands to trace!

I drew round all the kids hands (preferably get an adult to do the outline as the material needs to be pulled tight so that the pen doesn't go off at random angles!!) and then they wrote their names inside their handprint.

 I traced the phrase 'many hands make light work' from a printout I whipped up...and from experience I made several different font sizes on the one sheet so that I could find the right fit without having to go back and forth to the laptop/printer :)

We gave these to each our mothers for Christmas, they'd also be great for Mothers day.  Hey, why not let the kids go wild drawing any sort of pictures on a tea towel, although I think an embroidery hoop might come in handy to keep the material taut for them as they draw...we wouldn't want any tears now ;)

Bespoke Notepads

At Christmas I was trying to think what we could give to our children's teachers that would be 'homemade' but wouldn't take too much time as I was really busy with several large assignments at church.

So the cogs got rolling, and I thought why not design an image on photoshop and then get it printed on a notepad.....and of course I got carried away with myself and ended up making quite a few of them (and I'm still getting bespoke orders now!).

I then attached a small pencil using ribbon or twine and then put the pad in a cellophane bag, to some I put some adhesive magnetic strip so that they could be used on their fridge.

You could easily use a word processor to design something bespoke for a teacher, family or friend....or for you!!

These notepads have been great for Christmas presents for teachers, friends and families...and have helped put a few extra pennies in my pocket too :)

If you live in the UK, here's my facebook page where you can buy these notepads along with other things that I've created...the page is called KugAlls Kreations.

I also have a facebook page to go alongside this blog (I haven't got around to finding out how to do a facebook icon to this blog yet), so for now here's the link to KugAlls.

Santa's Post decoration

These are super cute and very addictive to make, so watch out as your tree may get covered in them!!  It's a really simple activity for the kids to do to and is ready in minutes.

It all started because I had a massive bags of these large lollipop stick 'scraps' leftover from a recent craft project at my church....I was determined to use them in some way, and hey ho, after a little bit of playing, failing and trying again I came up with this idea!!  And just a tip, we found it was a lot cheaper to buy a box of 100 waxing strips than it was to buy 50 large lollipop sticks..they are basically the same thing :)

Cut your large lollipop sticks up to roughly 3cm in length, don't worry about making them exactly the same size as they look better being slightly different lengths.  You will need to cut five 'letters'.  Make one 'letter' look like the front of a letter, then on another one look like the back of an envelope.  Leave the other three blank as you won't seem them.

Then use four strips of thin double sided tape to stick your five 'letters' together, just stack them up without worrying about them being perfectly lined up (it looks like a more authentic stack).  Put the front letter at the top of the stack and the back of the envelope drawing facing out at the back.

Wrap your letters up with some thick bakers twine, I'm sorry I didn't measure my twine, but the length of twine depends on where you will be hanging them, so play around with it and see what looks best...they look really cute on a small christmas tree.

Ho Ho Ho!!!

DIY Christmas Plaque

This plaque is really simple to do and hopefully my tutorial will explain it quickly and easily for you too!?!  There is a pdf file at the end for the words, and a link for where I got the Bethlehem Star from too. 


Before I start, I've only tried this technique with darker backgrounds as it won't work for lighter ones.  However, I will suggest other ideas of what you could use instead, but until I do one  myself, I will not know what works best until I try it.

1.  Choose what you want to have on your plaque, ie words, symbols, pictures etc.  I chose to do 'Silent Night, Holy Night' for Christmas.  Choose the fonts, size etc and no worries if it doesn't look like the end product, you can cut the paper up so that you can locate them where you want them to be.

2.  Make sure your words fit on your chosen plaque before you start.  For my 'base' I chose MDF (18mm thick) and sanded the rough edges down.  I then painted it using Dulux 'Urban Obsession', I love it against the white lettering, and I only had to give it two coats too.

3.  Cut your words, symbols etc into strips (if you haven't already), so that you can work on it section by section.  Now rub white chalk on the back of your chosen piece of paper and then trace round the edge of each letter with a biro or pencil.  You don't have to push too hard.

5. When you remove the paper you should have an outline of your word/image, like the above.

6. Now fill the chalk outline in using either a paintbrush or I cheated and did it the really easy way and used a paint pen marker...I love colouring in ;)

7.  Attach a sawtooth hanger (if you so choose) to the back and you're done.

NOTE for lighter coloured bases - try rubbing a charcoal stick, or a pencil on the back of the paper, or use carbon copy paper between the paper and your base.  I hope one of them works and don't worry I'll be trying one of the techniques soon so I will let you know how I get on. 

Here's the links for the Silent Night words and the Bethlehem Star I used...

Silent Night Holy Night pdf

Bethlehem Star

Have fun creating some lovely plaques!!

DIY Christmas wrapping paper

As you know I have a few kids (6 to be exact) and so I have several teachers, teachers assistants, play school teachers etc that I like to get presents for at Christmas.

I didn't have time to search or come up with an idea for something that the kids could make this year, so instead I got them to decorate the wrapping paper and Christmas tags for their teachers....they loved it!!  It was super easy and no mess either, which is always an added bonus.

The kids used my Sakura souffle pen, and just like their mum they love how it's 'magic'....go buy one now, you won't regret it :)

They drew stars, snowflakes, wrote Christmas messages, and one of my sons just scribbled all over the paper and tag and even that still looks good...and as mentioned before it will be almost invisible when you first put it on, but give it a couple of minutes and it will 'magically' appear!!

We just used brown parcel paper, got the tags for 3p each from a local stationers, and tied it up with chunky butchers twine. 

Hope you enjoy doing this as much as we have, Merry Christmas!

Kids Hanging Christmas Decoration

My three daughters have been keen to have some 'crafty' time with mum...so on Saturday we shipped all the boys off to the park with a football and had an hour to get creative!

Our stake does an annual Festival of Nativities, so since I'm helping in the Children's craft room this year I thought I'd get them to make something I could display in the room for ideas of what children can make.

This was one of the items the girlies made (age 7-11)....

...and yes, we were all still in our PJs, haha, the best way hey!!?!

Materials needed

CD/DVD - old or blank

wadding

material

felt

ribbon

hot glue gun

1. Put a small amount of wadding on top of the CD, then place it on the back of the material you are using as the cover, with the wadding in between the cd and the material.  

(Our material measured approx 24x24cm, yours could be smaller if you use a larger piece of felt on the back) 

 

2. Use a hot glue gun (with assistance) to glue the fabric to the cd, we folded the top section down first and glued it, then folded the material around bit by bit, gluing as we were going.

 

3. The back ended up looking like this, no worries how it looks as you can cover it up....stick your ribbon in the middle and to the edge of the cd so that it will hang correctly.

 

4. Choose what shape you are going to put on the back, my daughter chose to cut out a red felt heart.

5. For the front she chose to do the word 'JOY', so to help my girls not waste a load of felt and also to help get a nice edge, we ironed some freezer paper to the felt so that they could draw their words/shapes on the paper, cut them out and then peel it off ready to stick on....or to make it really easy (esp for kids) just use self-adhesive felt.

 

My other daughter made this one....

Just a note...you can cut a larger circle of material and do a large running stitch around the edge of the circle to then gather the material in, and this should make it look more circular when finished.

Enjoy being crafty, and don't forget to wear your PJs ;

Christmas 'Tag'

Several weeks ago a good friend of mine, popped over for a play day....and boy did we play!! ;)

We were chatting about how we wanted to help spread the Christmas cheer into our local communities and to be more unified as church members, and this idea was miraculously born!  Somehow it all came together soooo quickly and we couldn't stop high fiving and squealing with delight to each other (no joke!!).

Materials needed

Tag

Long ribbon

Red sharpie (felt tip)

Sakura Souffle - white (my new found love)

Distress Ink Pad - walnut stain

Christmas 'Tag' poem

1. Write Christmas 'Tag' using the red pen and then use the white Sakura Souffle pen to make snowflakes...this pen is magic, when you write it will be clear but wait for a couple of minutes and it will magically turn white!!! LOVE!!!

2.Then use your distress ink pad to dab along the edges of the tag and the poem, then use a glue stick to attach the poem.

3. Thread through a long piece of ribbon (I love red and white gingham for anything Christmassy) so that the gifts can be attached, mine measured about 50cm.

4. Attach your small gift that can be posted through a letter box eg a christmas decoration, candy canes, chocolate bar, cd, bag of sweets, dvd etc.

5. Next, post your Christmas 'Tag' to your friend, family or someone in your community and quickly run before you get caught!!!  Or you could also put it in a jiffy bag and send it through the post to someone further afield.

And not forgetting (because I almost did, lol!) here's the poem that you need to attach to the back....

In case you can't read that, here it is.....

You've been 'tagged' in this Christmas game,

Now find somebody else to 'tag' the same.

Attach a small gift to post through their door,

And see how the Christmas cheer spreads even more!

This is a great activity to do as a family (my kids love being secret gifts ninjas...yes they hide, crawl, roll just to get to somebody's front door, haha, love it!!!) or youth group and doesn't cost much either, but helps to share the Christmas feeling with everyone.

Merry Christmas....and please let me know how your tagging goes, or if you're a lucky one to get tagged too!! :)