Festive beading & Snowman Earrings...

Only 9 days to go until the big day! 

For us that breaks out into 5 days of school/work followed by 4 days of last minute shopping, making and generally feeling over-excited! There's also a couple of Christmas parties coming up which led to todays festive theme tutorial which is, as you can see above,  a pair of cute Snowman Charm Earrings! 

As well as being nearly Christmas, it's also nearly the winter solstice and don't we know it with all these dark & dreary mornings (it's definately made photographing the step-by-steps a bit trickier today!)  We haven't actually had any snow here yet - or even a hard frost to speak of but I keep reading that we are going to be hit by 'arctic' weather this winter so I guess we'll just have to see.


Anyway, back to the earrings. You will need to gather up some beads & bits as follows: 2 x 8mm white beads, 2 x 6mm white beads, 2 x large black sequins, 2 x large seed beads in black, 2 x small seed beads in orange & blue plus a couple of long head pins.

You will also need a black marker pen, glue, pin and some fine red crochet thread.

I used a variety of tools such as a small crochet hook, scissors, and various jewellery pliers.


So first, prepare your snowman 'head' and 'body' beads - which basically means drawing some black buttons on the large white bead and a face on the small one.

Then make a small 'scarf' by crocheting a row or about 8 chain stitches with a very fine crochet hook (leave the ends and inch or so long for now as it makes tying it much easier)

Now you can start to assemble the snowman by slipping one of the tiny blue seed beads onto a headpin followed by the 'body' bead.

Then tie the scarf around the pin and add a dot of glue before adding the 'head' bead and holding them together for a moment while they set.

Once set, you can trim the thread ends off the scarf.

Add another dot of glue and slide on a large sequin and large seed bead for the 'hat'.

Then, the last but most fiddly bit, use a pin to add a minute dot of glue to the snowman's face and pop a tiny orange seed bead on for the 'nose'.  Leave it to dry.

Repeat the process to make a second snowman with the remaining beads...

Once the glue on the Snowmen has set, you can bend the wire tips over at right angles and trim, leaving just enough to turn a loop.

Use round nose pliers to turn a loop on the tops of each Snowman and straighten up a little if necessary.

Now just add your charms to a couple of earring findings!

If you're not off to a party, these would always make a sweet little christmas gift too...

Who could resist these Christmas cuties?!


With not long to go to the 25th the question now arises: will I manage to get another yule tide tutorial done and...you'll have to check back to see :-)


Happy Making!


(p.s. my snowflake background paper for the main picture was from the Christmas issue of Homes & Antiques)

Partridges, Pear Trees & Quilling

Hello Again!

Here we are in December and how quickly it has arrived!  The Robin is back and happily singing his heart out at the top of his favourite tree each morning while our house is full of advent calendar openings & munching sounds.  The current calendar count = 7  and apparently there's another 2 on the way from Grandparents...all that choccy before breakfast feels a tiny bit decadent ;-)

Of course we've also had the obligatory trip up into the attic to get down all the tubs of trimmings (..I can never remember which tub has what in..) and we've rescued our trusty old fake tree!  It'll just about last for another year by the looks of it and with a curious puppy around it's probably better than a pine-needle-in-the-paw drama! Maybe next year we'll splash out on a new one.

The other thing that the beginning of December brings is Christmas card writing and this year I thought I'd make a few cards too , especially being as I had all my card making stuff out following a recent magazine commission (sorry.. can't tell you any more about that right now... ) 

Anyway button cards are sweet & easy, you only really need a good stash of buttons and a glue gun.  I really like this simple tree design..

A button heart could be for Christmas or any other occasion come to that -  and who doesn't like hearts?

I also wanted to try something I haven't done for a while... quilling.  I discovered all my quilling bits and tools hiding at the bottom of my card making stash and decided to buy a new pack of paper strips and some glue when I went shopping at the weekend. That's pretty much all you need really.  Oh, and maybe a little patience as it can be fiddly.

As I was starting the project on 1st Dec I got inspired by the whole 'Partridge in a Pear Tree' vibe and started out with a rough sketch of a partridge-like-bird and pinned it to a piece of corrugated cardboard..

Then I began making a small yellow coil with the Quilling Tool which, for those who have never used one, has a split in the end that holds the paper strip while you start to wind.

I then put a tiny dot of glue on the end..

Let it uncoil slightly before pressing the end down to make a basic circle shape.

When it was dry I squeezed one side to make a tear drop shape.

Then I tried it out to see if it fitted the 'beak' of my bird and pinned it into place so I could go on working the rest of the piece around it.

I used lots of pins to help hold the paper strips in place and some longish strips to create the outline of the bird..

It's quite useful and time saving to make up a batch of paper coils in various colours and sizes as then you can pick, shape and place them without having to keep stopping.

Gradually I filled in the outline with shaped coils and used tiny dots of glue to stick them together.  Every now and then I checked I was able to slide a blade underneath the bird and that it wasn't all stuck to the paper.

Eventually, when dry, I was able to lift the whole piece off the paper.  At this point you can still shape it a little by gently squeezing the sides.

I made a few yellow coils and shaped them to looked like 'pears'..

After quite a lot of  experimenting with a whole tree design I decided that just a branch might look better and, more practically, would fit on a card a bit better.  And then, because it didn't look partridge-y enough for my liking - more like the plump wood pigeons I see in the garden - I added a couple of coils to it's head. I'm hoping the pears are a good clue to theme too ;-)

The cards just need a suitable sentiment to finish them off and maybe a little hand stamp on the back.


'Tis truly the season to be jolly and I'm sure I will be back soon with another festive inspired make but for now....

 Happy Making!

October... November... the blog that went MIA...

Oh dear - it seems I have been neglecting my blog a bit although I promise it has very much been in my mind to do an update. I think my to do list has just been very long this last month or so but I have been crafting.. honest!  

Part of the trouble is, the longer you know you haven't blogged the more you feel guilty, and the more you feel guilty the more you try to excuse yourself by saying well maybe no-one's missing it anyway.  I'm sorry *shameface*

Anyhow, to prove I have been crafting away here is a bit of a round up of things I have been playing working with...

So, backing up a little first, September was a blur of 'back to school stuff' and then came October with family birthdays & anniversaries and then Halloween.  To celebrate I put a new tutorial up on my you tube channel for some mini-crochet bunting (I do love cute little crochet things!)

The link to the video is HERE.  

We had so many 'Trick or Treaters' on the night that we pretty much ran out of sweets within an hour!  I loved that all the local mini-kids (as we call them) were out in their witchy, zombie, ghostie outfits - including some of the mums!

Straight after Halloween there was the festival of El Dia de los Muertos aka 'Day of the Dead' - one of my favourites  - and I was inspired to make a colourful eclectic necklace of skulls, flowers, butterflies and charms..

With Remembrance Day approaching, I also re-did the crochet poppy tutorial and put it on my You Tube channel in the new 'flip book' style HERE

In between I was writing and publishing the Autumn issue of 'PsAZZ News' (support group magazine) and got busy co-ordinating the new 2013 awareness campaign which this year is called 'A Bouquet of Hands' .  It has now been up in The Mineral Hospital, Bath for the last couple of weeks and they like it so much they are keeping it in one of the patient waiting rooms so hopefully it will go on being seen for much longer than we had dared hope!

I was so touched by all the wonderful hands that had been made by group members, their family, friends and other people who had seen the  posters.  Each one was photographed and contributed to the display and I think you'll agree it looked pretty fabulous when assembled...

Newly assembled....

In situ at The Min!

I've also (randomly because I love them)  been making crochet butterflies...

and birds...

and, because I decided to try and raise some funds for PsAZZ (so we can get some printing done etc) I've been doing lots of sewing type projects too...

Door stops...

Birds...

Hearts...

Brooches...

More little lavender bags...

and making a few more bits and pieces of jewellery to sell..

In between all that I also completed 3 new crochet poppy projects for Simply Homemade Magazine (issue 35)

New poppy trio: a cuff, a ring and a brooch/hat clip

 ...one of which made it onto the cover

(cover pic poppy...yayy)

Oh my - having loaded all those pictures I think even I forgot just how much I've been making & doing recently!

Right, I'm off to work on a new commission, tackle a few more 'to do's' and then I'll work on a new blog tutorial :)

Happy crafting - whatever you are doing!