Tag Archives: crafts

A signal to the skies!

December 5, 2012 By in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: , , , , , , , , , 16 Comments

magic reindeer food december

It was with trembling hands and bated breath that I opened the travel-worn vellum envelope postmarked the North Pole….Yes!! I had been sent the top-secret recipe for Magic Reindeer Food; the scent and sparkle of which can be seen from the skies as Rudolf and his friends wend their weary way around the world on Christmas Eve.  If you want to be sure of a visit from the great man himself during Christmas night, then catching the eye of his reindeer can only help increase the chances, especially if – like me – you have not managed to be good quite all of the time this year….  The lovely Mrs Claus is a fortunately a forgiving and generous soul, and has shared the recipe with me on condition that I share it only with you, and that none of us tell Mr Claus.

I’ve included two options for making these; a use-it-and-keep-it drawstring bag that will be a small labour of love for your own children, grandchildren or those very special young believers in your life, and a simple paper bag version for mass production for school Christmas fairs or parties (below)

In her letter, Mrs Claus explains that – somewhat surprisingly – Rudolph, Dancer and chums have a particular soft spot for sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, preferably all mixed up together.  In short; birdseed mix.  Who knew??  Add a dash of sparkling glitter and they are in heaven.  Or more importantly; in your back garden, quick as a shot.  I used a conventional birdseed mix and Martha’s tinsel glitter, which has bigger flecks.  I’m assured that should any birds or wildlife get to your sparkly reindeer food ahead of Rudolph, the glitter will pass harmlessly through them or be ignored altogether.

glitter and birdseed

For the special sack itself, which I will give to Harry at dusk on Christmas Eve, I used a simple bouquet garni sack (sold in packs quite cheaply at foodie shops), and rethreaded it with red thread, to which I tied a pair of festive jingle bells.  I added a label – PDF attached below  - and glued it to a scrap of leather before stitching in place.

reindeer food sack

I stealthily borrowed a little wooden scoop from Harry’s play shop and hey-presto! his reindeer food looks like it might just have been sent special delivery from the North Pole itself.



To mass produce these as I’ve done for Harry’s nursery party, I simply stuck labels on mini paper bag, added (sealed!) baggies of reindeer food and clipped shut with a little silver peg.  The printable below has a sheet of the labels I created for these, so do download and have a go if you’re making these in quantity.

reindeer food templates

Now onto other festive preparations and a couple of websites for you to check out; these may be familiar, but if – like me – you’re still relatively new to the world of doing-Christmas-for-children, then they might be a source of new delight… At PortableNorthPole you can get Santa to record a (free!) video message for your child, which is beautifully done and awesomely real.  Harry received his last night (via email), and was astonished to discover that Santa knew not only exactly where he lived and what he wanted for Christmas, but also that he had been asked to try really hard to remember to brush his teeth before bedtime and that he was doing – mostly – very well.  You can upload photos and lots of details and if you haven’t done this, I urge you to click and explore – we love it.  I should add that it’s not just for kids; I sent one last year to a girlfriend, who witnessed Santa opening his special book to find a compromising photo of her, post-Tequila slammers, and received a sorrowful warning from him that she had better stop being naughty if she wanted a visit this year.  So, fun for all…

Finally, one to bookmark for Christmas Eve is NORAD – the multi-langauge site of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks Santa’s progress through the skies on 24th December.  There is nothing more exciting than going to bed knowing that Father Christmas is due to enter the skies above your bedroom in approximately 3hrs and 42 minutes…

We’re creating kitchen chaos this week with some homemade gifts and festive projects – more news later this week!

Magic Reindeer Food Printables

Tea with a twist

September 9, 2012 By in Making Tags: , , , , , , , 13 Comments



Sometimes the simplest projects are the most fun, and these are certainly simple. When we have people to dinner, the evening inevitably draws to a close with coffee – for the hardened souls who can sleep despite any amount of caffeine – and herbal teas, for those of a healthier disposition.  I have a range of lovely different fruit and herbal teas, but all are pretty uninspiring to look at, especially when served bag-in… so here’s a way of pimping your teabags to raise a smile! I raided my stash of beads and charms, and simply replaced the original paper tags with something a little more interesting.  Ideas below…

Lovebird tea? Use a simple mini heart peg and tie the teabag string to the clip. These pegs came in a pack of about 20 for £1.50 / $2.

These neon rubber beads are a good accompaniment to zingy fruit teas…

How about making a set of these to tie onto Christmas tea as a gift – I’ll be enlisting Harry to help with punching these and choosing the colours as a simple homemade gift for relatives later in the year.

I used whatever I had to hand – it’s fun experimenting, and you don’t need a full ‘set’ of matching tags.  For the charms you’d be sorry to see go, just make sure you serve them at home – then you can craftily snip them off when washing up and start all over again…

Starstruck

July 17, 2012 By in Making, Paper Paper! Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 36 Comments



Stars… don’t you just love them? Folding and cutting stars and smothering them with sparkly glitter glue and paint is surely a right of passage for all children, and is the basis for much homespun Christmas craft. But it would be a great shame if we limited star-gazing to those times only.  I challenge all fully-grown adults to grab the nearest piece of paper (bills, doctors appointments, fines; the more depressing the paper, the more satisfying this will be…), and make a star.  Hell, make a galaxy; once you’ve started it’s very hard to stop…

I made these ombre tonal stars (above and bottom) for Harry’s room, to hang jauntily from Brad the Stag’s antlers, and also to form decorative garlands about the house.  Whipping myself into a snipping & folding frenzy, I’ve also decorated our beautiful but lethal ancient spiral staircase, which seems to be invisible to adult peripheral vision and has caused many a painful encounter for anyone over 5 foot.  With its gaudy bling-tastic stars it’s now quite hard to miss.

Experiment with different colours and textures for very different effects per below.. I embellished with glitter and tiny buttons, and used gift wrap for the bright stars, 216gsm textured card stock for the tonal stars.  Step-by-step instructions below for those who have forgotten everything they learned in geometry classes… no complicated measuring I promise!

3D Star Tutorial:

I’m showing the ‘no fancy tools’ method first using just a cup and a ruler… those who can rummage in a draw and retrieve a pair of compasses will find an even easier method below.

  1. Take a glass (or anything round and flat) and measure the diameter; halve this and make a note.  It’s 4.5cm for me.
  2. Draw around the glass, and then measure and mark this distance around the rim, giving you 6 equidistant points.
  3. Join up these marks with straight lines, skipping alternate points, ending up with a star like this in Fig.3
  4. Cut out the star, and fold right-sides together along each of the INNER angles of the star – do this 3 times in total.
  5. Turn over and fold wrong-sides together along each of the OUTER POINTS of the star, giving you your 3D shape – again, make 3 folds.
  6. refold and score again to reinforce the sharpness of the folds, then pop out to make your star.

If you have a pair of compasses, simply set them to the distance you want for the circumference of your star, draw a circle then choose a point at random along the rim. Swing the arms of the compass to mark either side of this where it bisects, and ‘walk’ your compass around the rim to make 6 marks in total – by holding the compass in the original position you won’t need to measure.  Then follow steps 3-6 as above.

These make beautiful gift tags too – just tape a piece of ribbon or thread to the back and then loop over the neck of a wine bottle or onto a gift.  Thread them together to form a garland, prop them up on mantles or shelves, or simply hang a few from a doorknob; be warned though; they’re so tactile and perky that visitors will gravitate towards them and want to give them a good squeeze…

If you try these do let me know how you get on… message me below or even upload your beauties to http://www.facebook.com/katescreativespace and let’s have our own paper constellation…

Handmade Memory Books

June 11, 2012 By in Making, Paper Paper! Tags: , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

My love of paper is well-known to anyone who has visited this site with any regularity since I began writing in January; show me a craft knife, a gluestick and a roll of interesting papers and my heart starts to race faster than if Mr Clooney swung by announcing I was his plan for the evening.  Well, maybe not quite that fast, but fast enough nonetheless…..

Where was I? Oh yes, back to far more appropriately maternal thoughts for a moment and this week’s project; a homemade scrapbook for Harry to colour in, fill out and cover randomly with photos of his choosing.  Documenting his friends, passions and a carefully curated collection of his exuberant artwork, it will capture a little piece of his life at 2, and will be a great rainy day project (and we have plenty of rain right now…).

I learned the sublime art of book-making a few months ago at the hands of the serene and wonderful artist Ciara Healy.  Ciara takes a zen approach to paper craft and despite spending her days upto her elbows in PVA glue manages to look effortlessly elegant and well-manicured, without attracting all the bits of discarded paper and ribbon that seem to adhere themselves to my entire body surface by the time I’m done.  The scrapbook or memory book I’ve made above is deliciously simple, and can be made with two sides of a cardboard box, a few large sheets of white paper, a roll of giftwrap and very little else (though you can increase the sophistication endlessly).

The pages for this book are standard size sheets simply folded in half. You can choose any starting size – I used A3 – and decide whether to leave them blank or add text as I did by running through the printer first.  I added headings to some pages ‘my favourite toys’ ‘my best friends’ etc, and left others blank.  When making grown-up books for friends I love to use old maps, diagrams, and textured papers interleaved with regular paper stock to make each book more interesting and individual; you can also add vellum envelopes for the recipient to store keepsakes.

Score and cut your cardboard so that it is 1″ longer than the folded paper at both the top and bottom and 1.5″ wider in total.  Choose some colourful strong gift wrap, wallpaper or even fabric for your cover (plastic coated fabric like tablecloth material works brilliantly for this), and a contrasting strip of book cloth or tape for your centre seam.  Decide how deep you want your seam to be, and then measure and lay out your card so that you have a gap of 0.5″ between the two covers (1).  Apply PVA glue liberally to the book cloth seam and then lay the cardboard in place, scoring down the sides for definition.  Place a sheet of greaseproof paper in the middle and fold the book shut, weighting it down to dry out (this will help flatten any bumps and prevent the cardboard from curling).  Once dry, it should look like this (2); overlay various decorative papers to decide which looks best, and work out which part of any pattern or design you want to show (particularly important with large prints or images). Carefully apply PVA to the back of each sheet of your paper and lay over the cover, overlapping your seam by a fraction.  Trim off the corners and fold under neatly, before weighting to dry out as before, at which point it should look like this (3).  By this time I had become too covered in rapidly-drying glue to take intricate photographs of each stage so have simply described them, but for the visually minded and determined, there’s an excellent online tutorial here.

Whilst your cover dries, stitch together your pages as shown here, using a strong thread that won’t snap easily, and then glue the front and back pages into your board cover, which should leave a lovely decorative border around the side whilst masking your stuck-down edges.  If the thought of sewing makes you want to weep, you can staple your pages together instead, just don’t tell anyone I suggested it…

As a final touch, you can add a closure for your book; I opted to punch small holes in Harry’s book cover and sew on two contrasting buttons, then added a ribbon to the inside back cover (secured with another piece of glued cover paper), as shown below.

Harry is rightly proud of his new book and marches around clutching it possessively in the manner of a trainee Traffic Warden looking to note down infringements.  I am attempting to follow closely behind and impound the gluestick before all important bits of household paperwork become irrevocably adhered to its pages. Wish me luck…

A Moment in Time…

March 29, 2012 By in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: , , , , , , 8 Comments

At 2 and a quarter, Harry finds it utterly incomprehensible that he was once a baby. ‘You soooooo funny, Mummy!’ he chortles, with patronising affection,when I venture to suggest that he was once small enough to fit in a Moses basket and slept for 20hrs a day.  The notion that he once came from inside my tummy is met with stunned incredulity.  I pretend that this is because my stomach is so flat it seems impossible, but this hypothesis in turn causes my husband to giggle with incredulity so I swiftly move on.

Anyway, I digress; the thing is that at some point between about 6 and 9, (esteemed studies show), children are at their most intensely interested in stories about how they used to be and what they did, said and liked to do. I anticipate this phase with mild trepidation because my memory is very unreliable and I know I will fall short when it comes to detail, despite the vividness with which I feel I’m storing the memories away now.  So today, Harry and I built a Time Capsule to be hidden in the loft and ‘discovered’ again some wet Sunday when he is about 8yrs old.  Packed with photos and information about exactly who Harry is today, it should prove interesting, especially as it contains some challenges and a few pieces of treasure as well.  It does, of course, depend on his father and I remembering that it’s up there, but hey, we can at least hope…

Here’s a selection of the stuff that Harry and I put inside….the possibilities are endless.

1. A list of all the things he loves the most right now; foods, friends, toys and games

2.  A load of shredded tissue (gotta have something to throw around..)

3. His favourite toy character, at Harry’s insistence (don’t worry, we have another one….)

4. The current brochure and newsletter from the school he’ll eventually go to at 5yrs old, so he can see what all the teachers looked like back in 2012
5. A picture of us – though with some hesitation as I know this will provoke a later critique along the lines of ‘Dad, where did all your hair go? Mummy, what were you wearing??’
6. Footprints and handprints to compare and contrast with then and now
7. A note of his current height, and a challenge to find the marker of this that is shown in the photo (a small carving on a tree in our garden), and to make a new one…

8. And best of all, treasure: a small, corked glass bottle with clues as to where to find £20 of his 2011 Christmas money, which I’ve hidden somewhere in the house… I’m just hoping he works out the clues because I’m sure I’ll have forgotten…

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