Happy New Year!

A little late I know but better late than never.

Hope you all had a lovely festive season and ate and drank far too much. Well I ate as much as I could (especially when Tom had bought me a metre of Jaffa Cakes, Yum). But I certainly wasn't drinking as I am now 4 months pregnant. Yippee!

I can't quite believe it has been four months already it has flown by and I'm nearly half way through. We now have a pretty tight deadline to get the house finished, aaahhh!

Here's a pic of the little wriggler, my dad (or grandad as I will have to refer to him now) has nicknamed it ducky because it looks like it has a beak, how rude!

Anyway I thought I should let you all know as you may notice my posts are interspersed with baby shopping and decorating tips and you might think I had got a bit obsessed.

Anyway hope you all had a good start to what will be a very exciting 2012.

DIY Paper Snowflakes

Once again apologies for the silence on my blog, I am knee deep in decorating our main bedroom in time for Christmas. The carpet fitters are coming tomorrow morning and we still need to put final coats on everything including the skirting so starting to panic a little! aaahhh.

Anyway I thought I better sign off for Christmas properly with my last post of the year. Here are some instructions on how to create wonderful paper snowflakes from Jessica at How about Orange.

Image from How about Orange

All you need is some standard printer paper, stapler and scissors. Simples!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year and hopefully i'll be back to posting on a more regular basis from my new cosy bedroom.

How to make a Gift Bow

Hello one and all.

Apologies for the lack of posts these past few weeks, what with work being rather hectic and living in a building site my mind has been elsewhere. We are currently working on the master bedroom, we have booked the carpet fitters for the 23rd so we literally have to get everything finished by then, no pressure then!

Anyway the real reason I wanted to post was these wonderful instructions I found on 100 Layer Cake for making your own gift bows. I've always wondered how the ribbon all interconnects. Even better is that you can make them out of old magazines, wrapping paper or pretty much any kind of paper.

Image from 100 Layer Cake

Step 1: Cut the page lengthwise into nine 3/4-inch-thick strips of heights shown: Three at 11 inches, three at 10 inches, two at 9 inches, and one at 3 1/2 inches.

Step 2: Twist each strip to form loops at both ends. Make a circle out of the smallest.

Step 3: Secure the ends with a piece of double-sided tape.

Step 4: Layer and stick, starting with the longest strips. End with the circle in the center.

These bows are so sweet, think I might have to go and invest in some red paper. I was thinking of brown paper parcels, red bows and red and white bakers twine to wrap all my crimbo pressies. Why not let me know what themes you are going with this festive season.

craftgawker

Apologies for not posting this last week, It's been very hectic at work what with the run up to Christmas and having to drive up to printers etc..

I just wanted to let you know about a new inspiring site i\ve discovered called craftgawker. It's a photo gallery that you can search for visuals of crafts and projects with links to the original websites for instructions and further details.

I found the image below submitted by Ellineé showing how to create these wonderful snowflakes. I've been making these for a couple of years since I found the instructions in a magazine. They are so simple to make, I just used ordinary printer paper. The site gives you free downloadable and printable instructions so get crafting!

Image from Ellineé

Christmas Julekugler

As featured on the Decor8 blog this is a fab video showing Rie Elise Larsen making really inexpensive but effective Christmas decorations called Julekugler. All you need is some patterned paper(you could use wrapping paper), striped twine and small beads. I fancy making these at the weekend!

Decorative Christmas Bags

I saw this image on Pinterest and loved the effect of the opaque print on plastic bags.

For the last few Christmas's I have made dark chocolate truffles for friends and family and popped them into clear cellophane bags with a nice red ribbon. This year I'm going to take it a step further into festiveness, so on Saturday i bought a pretty lace heart stamp and some Stazon opaque ink in cotton white, which can be stamped on glass, plastic, vinyl, metal, leather, paper, porcelain.... well pretty much anything really. I'll post about the results after the weekend.

DIY Christmas Tags

Image from Decor8

I saw this image on Decor8 this morning and thought I would share it with all you lovely people. This is a very simple but pretty idea for creating your own DIY gift tags. Buy some white jewellery tags available from most stationers and a punch in the shape or your choice. Here they've used a pretty Martha Stewart butterfly but you can make them festive with a snowflake. A simple but effective way of making your Christmas pressies look fantastic.