The Home made year....Christmas 2013

Happy New year!! Did you all have a wonderful Christmas?? Are you full to the brim with turkey and mince pies?

How quickly it has flown by, so much preparation and its all over in a flash. But in all honesty I wouldn't change a single thing. I love this time of the year, its hard to choose between this and Halloween, and I enjoy the preparation as much as the day itself.

So needless to say I've made lots of things and rather than waffle on for ages I've put them into a visual collagey feast. So take a break from putting away the decs, grab that last mince pie and cast your eyes over this lot.............




 

Clockwise from left : countdown door hanger for Jacks room, which says Santa's been on the reverse, cupcakes with cinnamon butter cream.

 Flying reindeer applique blanket. Those that follow my facebook page will have seen this in the making.

 

 

 

 

Tulip decoupage card made with a kit by Papermania.

 

 

Cards made with digital stamps from Pink petticoat, and handmade sentiments.

 

 

Handmade Polar Express picture. I love the Polar Express and watch it on Christmas Eve every year, and yes the bell does still ring!

 My special Santa and reindeer that came home with me from Lapland last year.

 

 

Homemade gifts.

 Finnish piparkakut, gingerbread to you and me. We had this in Lapland last year and it was so lovely I knew I had to find a recipe for it, its different to our gingerbread as they use different ingredients and its much more spicy.

 Sweet chilli jam normally I make red pepper relish at Christmas but I'm told its not hot enough so I made this for a change.

 

 

 

Homemade mince pies and homemade apple and cinnamon ice cream. Those who follow me on Instagram will have seen this in its early stages, and I have to say its tastes amazing. Recipe courtesy of the icreamists.

 

 

Felt Christmas trees,

 yarn wreath,

 felt reindeer's, with button noses from nans button jar.

 

 

Jingle bell wreath with ribbon flower.

Close up of card made with digital stamps from pink petticoat.

 

So all that's left to say is have a fantastic new year I hope it brings you all you dream of, and don't forget in between blogposts you can always catch up with me on facebook, twitter, instagram and pinterest by clicking on the links at the top of the page. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Homemade year ; Halloween

So the clocks have gone back and we're all enjoying our extra hour in bed, which can only mean one thing. Yup autumn is here and its Halloween. Time for our Halloween Party!!

As usual there was much to be done and as usual there was much running around at the last minute..lol. At least I didn't have tonsillitis this year though. So without further ado lets have a mooch at the pics....

 

clockwise from left;

 Party bags. Yay I actually managed to remember to photograph them this year! Handmade by myself using my craft programme and some ace printables from gwynn wasson designs. Hop on over to her blog to have a look at the Halloween party on there. Its seriously awesome and puts mine to shame!

Skull shot glasses

Eye ball cupcakes, again made by me. Vanilla and chocolate marble cakes, orange butter icing and a jelly eye ball.

 

 

Boo Sign ; I wish I could take the credit for making this but I bought I from Asda for £1.00 and seriously you can't make it that cheap so you may as well buy it.

Glass pumpkin votive from Waitrose.

 

 

Dual iced witchy cupcakes.

 

 

Jacks beware sign which he bought with his pocket money to help me. bless him.

 

 

Rogues gallery; I intended to do this last year but due to being ill never managed it so I'm pleased I was able to do it this year. This is a wall of Halloweens past, there's pictures of jack in his costumes from each Halloween and pictures of past party guests. I made these myself by printing out some Halloween backgrounds found on google and gluing them to black card. I messed about with the pics a bit to give them an old, dark halloweeny look, printed them out and stuck them onto bright card. I plan to add to it every year.

 

 

Top; Pumpkins of course, and luminaries. I love those they look fab at night when the tea lights are lit.

Bottom left; Tree scene setter from party delights, made an otherwise empty wall look ace.

 

 

Graveyard cup cakes. these again were chocolate and vanilla marble cakes with green butter icing and had such residents as Eileen Dover, Claire Voyant, Uma goner, and Hugo First.

 

 

left; Aaargh there's a monster at the window. We also had one of these in the shower lol.

Right; bat votive.

 

 

 

Now these are as close to selfies as your ever gonna get from me, but I had four Halloween functions to attend this year and yes I know I could have had one costume for all four but wheres to fun in that???

So clockwise from top left; Witches cat for my own party.

Top right; Toil and trouble witches for the school spooktacular with the lovely Stacey.

Bottom right; Sugar skull for my dads party on 2 November which is actually Dia de los muertos (Mexican day of the dead) so it seemed a bit more appropriate and secondly because I'm a little bit obsessed with sugar skulls.

Bottom left; broken dolly

 

but of course no Halloween is complete without the pumpkin king himself.. the one and only jack Skellington.......

 

 

and here he is my very own Jack Skellington, with his ghost dog zero.

 

So what now? Well I'll be enjoying some fire works in our back garden this evening and I've already started to plan for Christmas so I'll be showing you some of the things I always make at Christmas and some new things too.

 

Thanks for stopping by

 Vicky Xxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sew Sunday ... scotty dog

This little scotty dog was actually a gift for my mom last christmas. I know its a bit lazy but the new stuff i'm working on is still a work in progress, but it will be ready soon. So back when it was very cold and wintery I made this. Yes I know its still fairly cold and wintery now but rest assured the new things im working on will remind you of warm sunny days!!
We did have a name for him or her but I honestly cant remember what it is, so any suggestions let me know.

I think I might have wanted to call him 'button' due to his button eyes, or maybe petal. But honestly who knows, it was christmas and ive slept since then. Anyway I guess its up to my mom to name it really seeing as he lives with her now.

I also wanted to show you this fab new magazine I found 'Ruby loves'.

 

I know anyone who has little girls will love this. Its packed full of stuff to make and only costs a fiver. The best of it is everything you need to make the projects inside is in the bag, apart from the eggs and flour for the cookie pops because that would be stupid lol, but theres no need to buy anything. In this the first issue you can make a bag, cards, a ring, a keyring and loeds more. I cant think of better way to get young girls interested in craft, and yes I know its aimed at young girls but I couldnt help but buy it anyway. So if you've got little girls who love to craft I suggest you check it out.

 

Love Vicky

Xxx

Homemade Christmas - Cookies

I gave these cookies away as presents as part of my attempt at only giving handmade gifts this year. I intended to pipe the red lines, but I have to admit my piping sucks and after a few failed attempts I admitted defeat. Now a paint brush I can handle, so these have been hand painted with red colouring, dusted with shimmer powder, appropriately titled snowflake, and sprinkled with edible glitter!!!

These ones I made as a quickie to use up some spare icing. I gave them to my little man as a stocking filler, who assured me they were yummy! I only wish he was always this easy to please. lol.

xXx

Homemade Christmas - Wreaths

One day I might get to show you all my Christmas makings before the new year instead of in it, but hey ho what can I say?These past few months have been so busy for me and I feel like Christmas just jump up and bit me on the ass! I was planning on having any Christmas stuff made before the end of October but due to an unexpected turn of events I hadn't even started anything in October!!
But I had vowed when I was making Halloween Stuff that I would make one of these wreaths for Christmas. I made this white one to hang on my dining room door, I had a vision in my head of how I wanted it and I am very pleased with the finished result,  (I have to aplologise for the crappy picture quality in this one but I forgot to take a proper pic before I put it away and this is a quickie taken with my phone) soo that was where I intended to move on to other projects. However my mom had other plans.......

As soon as I showed it to her she wanted one too !! So I postponed my projects and set to work. To be honest I was kinda glad as I love making these. Mom asked for one the same but with green wool and I have to admit that I think I like this one slightly more. What can you say, Mom knows best. lol

 xXx

Midweek Make

Hey all, I'm back from somerset, and what a great time we had. It didn't rain, woo, and Gary really enjoyed his birthday. Ive been all busy busy since we got back, what with Jack turning 4 on the 25th, and I'm not sure how I managed to fit in this midweek make, but manage I did and here it is.

The challengers on the Allsorts blog must have been reading my mind as the challenge this week is to make a gift box. I've been giving a lot of thought to my handmade Christmas challenge, yes I know its way too early to think of Christmas, where all my gifts will me homemade. Ive got tons of ideas of things to give and I wanted to put them all together in some sort of box. Sort of like a little box of treats. So this is what I came up with.

I wanted the box to be fun and contemporary, and not look like a traditional Christmas gift. I handmade the flowers with an assortment of papers, vellum and card and stitched on some beads, then to give the box a finishing touch I added some heart shaped stones and some ribbon. It was really tempting to over do this box, and after much experimenting I'm glad I didn't as I've got just what I was looking for. I need to make about 6 more of these for my Christmas gifts and then I just need to make the gifts to fill them....so back to the busy busy. lol

Vicky Xxx

Happy New Year

Happy New year to all, was Santa kind to you??? I must have been a very good girl last year as got lots of crafty lovelies under my tree, but more of that later. I thought I'd show you the pics of my Christmas cake and some cookies I made. the idea of the cake was to have the snowflakes o wires to give the effect of the snow falling. Unfortunately my crappy photography doesn't show this at its best as you can't see that the snowflakes actually sparkle like frost, the cookies were just a quickie to have a go with the new cutter I've been waiting an absolute age for, It came all the way from Hong Kong you know!!, so I'll probably be a bit more adventurous with this next Christmas. I did make cards too which I'll show you in the next post.

So what did Santa bring...well I had some new cookie cutters, a gorjuss girls cross stitch kit (which I'm not allowed to start until I finish my other one) some air drying clay and some delicious felt in some really funky patterns. I think he also gave me a new waft of inspiration as I have so many ideas I don't know where to start.

And Inspired by the red pepper relish I made as gifts for people, which went down a storm, I've decided to set myself a challenge. For Christmas this year I will not buy any one anything, I'll make everyone something, apart from Jack of course, I don't think he would appreciate Jam, chutney, or pickled onions in his stocking!! Xxx