living on the crafty side of life

Christmas 2011

One last Christmas project for this year. I've made a new large Christmas wreath.

This large wreath has ribbon knotted around the large metal ring. 

With large jingle bells hung down in the middle of the wreath.

Another Ribbons Galore newsletter is now available to read with lots of new ribbons added to the store recently:

Ribbons Galore is now closed for a summer break. I'll be re-opening in January 2012.

To my blog readers and Ribbons Galore customers, I wish you a merry Christmas and a safe, happy and healthy 2012.

Cheers

Fiona x

christmas mini wreaths decorations intructions

I've received a few questions about the Christmas wreaths I made in my last post. Here's a few instructions, hope they help.

If you would like to make some of these weaths, I have kits available. They have the supplies to make 3 wreaths (3 rings, 3 jingle bells - one of each size, ribbon, bows and baker's twine). All you will need is the hot glue gun or other adhesive to attach the bows. The kits are $16.00, plus postage (Australia only). Send me a message or email if you would like a kit, and let me know what ribbon colours you would like, and I'll put the kit together for you.

Here's the instructions:

Start with knotting the ribbon around the ring like below. Halve the length of ribbon and place under the ring, bring the left side over the ring, the right side over the left ribbon and under the ring and through.

Tie each knot firmly. Then keep knotting around the ring as above. If you know macrame knots this one is the half square knot which gives the twisted effect, BUT you must keep the knots exactly the same all the way round.

Continue until you meet up with the starting point....

Thread one of the ribbon ends through the bell....

This is the step you can choose which way the bell hangs, down under the wreath....

...or in the middle of the wreath....

Loop the string or bakers twine around the ring, this is the hanging part of the wreath...

Tie a double knot to hold the bell in place....

Trim the excess lengths of ribbon from the knot....

Add the bows front and back. I used a hot glue gun to attach the bows. Adding the bows is not only decorative, but it helps hide the knotted ends of the wreath and holds this all in place...

Hope you enjoy making these :) Ribbons and bows are from Ribbons Galore (www.ribbonsgalore.com.au).

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

christmas mini wreath decorations

I've been making more Christmas decorations, this time, mini Christmas wreaths.

They are similar to mini macrame Christmas wreaths I used to make as a kid, I've just used grosgrain ribbon instead of macrame cord.

I've tied grosgrain ribbon around a metal ring using a half square knots, and added large jingle bells and grosgrain bows to embellish the mini wreaths.

And I've used a short length of bakers twine to hang each of them up.

I sold my first hand made items at the age of 10 to a gift shop in Mudgee. These hand made items were all little macrame Christmas decorations. One of the decorations was very similar to these modern-day ribbon macrame Christmas wreaths.

These are very easy to make... a great Christmas activity for the kids too.

Cheers

Fiona x

christmas star decorations

There's a traditional Danish Christmas craft of making flettede stjerner from paper. These stars make such beautiful Christmas decorations and are made at Christmas time by children and adults.

When I saw them I thought they'd look pretty made from ribbon, so I set about translating instructions, cutting and folding ribbon as you would the traditionally used paper.

Here's the results, lovely ribbon stars ready to hang on the Christmas tree...

I found through trial and error that you need to use a stiff or firm ribbon, rather than the softer ribbons. The striped grosgrain I have at Ribbons Galore worked perfectly.

When I'd finished folding the stars, I ironed the edges lightly to hold the ribbon in place. You could also use a little fusible webbing inside the folded edges to hold the ribbon. I then threaded bakers twine through the stars so they could hand on the tree.

This is a side view of the star...

So now for a few instructions. I found some instructions that were mainly in Danish, but use google translate, and you'll work these out. Here they are:

Flettede stjerner, this is the instruction sheet I used, it in a pdf format.

Flettet stjerne instructions on julidannevang.dk

Sofie Legarth shares how to make fabric flettet stjerne in her blog post.

Hope you enjoy making some yourself for Christmas.

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Fiona x

key rings at the ERYLDENE christmas fair

I have a friend who will be a stall holder at the Eryldene Christmas Fair this weekend here in Sydney (Saturday & Sunday 26 & 27 November, 2011).

She will be selling some of my Ribbons Galore handmade key rings amongst all her other lovely goodies.

New key rings are also available on the Ribbons Galore website, great teacher's gift or Christmas present :)

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

Ribbons Galore newsletter

I have just finished a new newsletter for Ribbons Galore.

You can download the Ribbons Galore newsletter or, view it online here:

Open publication - Free publishing

I loved putting this newsletter together after learning how to use Adobe InDesign recently. It has been a goal to mine to produce a little newsletter for Ribbons Galore, and here it is.

Hope you enjoy seeing all the new ribbons added to Ribbons Galore recently.

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Fiona

a little crocheting... making a large granny square rug

While at the Craft Fair in Sydney last June I spotted this gorgeous wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills. I fell in love with the colours of the Classic pure wool collection and decided it was time I crocheted my girls a little rug each, something they could snuggle under during winter (or whenever they needed a little warmth).

The wools below are being used for Phoebe's rug, the colours are... Seaquest (top), Periwinkle (mid left), Aster (mid right) and Musk (bottom).

I've made good progress on the giant granny square rug so far, crocheting when I'm waiting at music lessons, sports training and in the evenings, keeping myself warm while this little rug grows and grows.

I have to mention this great little crochet hook by Clover. That extra soft bit in the middle makes the hook very easy to hold.

Once I finish Phoebe's rug, I'll start on Emily's (she may not have hers until next winter). The colours Emily chose for her rug are similar to Phoebe's swapping the Aster for Celery (top ball of wool).

I first learnt to crochet when I was about 8 years old and have a few of my original crocheted granny square rugs still around the house. They are a VERY easy crochet project to take on.

Here are a few links to the ideas/how tos, should you need some instruction on granny square making:

• Joelle's Giant Granny Square on the Purl Bee blog
• The Granny Square Project on the Purl Bee blog
• How to Crochet a Granny Square (good step by step with photos)

Pinterest has some lovely ideas for granny squares large and small.

For now, I'll keep crocheting round and round the granny square until I run out of wool!

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Fiona

digital holga photography

If you love the look of Holga style photos but don't want to turn back time completely by purchasing the old-fashioned film style camera, you can purchase a digital holga lens adaptor to fit on your DSLR camera.

I recently purchased a Digital Holga Kitchen Sink Kit for my DSLR from HolgaDirect. It contains several lenses which all fit onto the digital holga lens adaptor (also included in the kit). This little kit was sent to me very quickly by HolgaDirectfrom Hong Kong.

Once the digital holga lens adaptor has been popped onto the DSLR (this replaces the actual lens of the camera) you can add one of the other holga lenses (like the fish eye, macro or wide angel lens). The DSLR camera then has no auto focus capacity, and you have to play around with your settings to acheive the right exposure for your photos.

I have only given the wide angle lens a test drive so far. Down at Balmoral Beach I snapped many photos experimenting with the settings. These are a few photos I really liked from all I took. Love the slight dreamy-ness of the images.

 

Now, these Holga lenses won't replace the real traditional cameras, but they are a good alternative if you want to play around with your digital photography creativeness. I really didn't want to go back to using a film camera!

While I was shopping at HolgaDirect I bought Emily a REAL Holga 120 Camera which she received this week for her 16th birthday. Emily really wants to experiment with the film format... looking forward to seeing the photos she takes!

Thanks for visiting!

Cheers

Fiona

PS I've created a facebook page for my Living on the Crafty side of Life blog, if you'd like to follow... click the button below. Thanks

 

mini bunting cake decoration

I offered to make a cake for Phoebe's soccer team last Sunday, with only a few hours to make, bake, cool and decorate the cake.

I decided I needed a simple, very quick and easy decoration for the cake and turned to my paper crafting skills.... to make mini bunting for the top of the cake.

To make the bunting, first I printed out the wording I needed for the bunting, cut it out (twice as long as I needed each letter). I folded each letter around the bakers twine, and stuck these together with a little double-sided tape. To finish I trimmed the bottom each of each letter flag with pinking shears for the zig-zag effect. Then arranged the spacing between the wording.

I doubled the bakers twine to give a little more thickness. This eco cotton cherry bakers twine is from Ribbons Galore. The mini bunting was tied to the wooden skewers (didn't have time to find anything else). And then the bunting was placed onto the iced and decorated cake.

 

I'll share the details of the cake. I used a new recipe for this cake. It's the rainbow cake recipe from the latest Donna Hay Kids Magazine (Annual 8, 2011).

You can find the cake picture on page 87 and the actual recipe on page 92. One big thing I did differently was to bake my cake in one large rectangle cake tin (22cm x 23cm cake tin), Donna baked her recipe in two 22cm round tins. I cooked my cake for about 20-30 minutes longer.

The cake mixture is huge, in my KitchenAid the mixture came to the top of the beater.

I tried to make one part of the cake red with the Wilton Christmas Red colour gel, but the colour still came out pink. Another third of the mixture is make into a chocolate cake mix (directions in the recipe) and the last third of the mixture is left uncoloured. The three cake mixes were layered in rows across the cake tin.

... and mixed together with a tooth pick and handy helper (who I'm sure was just waiting to lick the bowl!)

 

Ready to bake....

 

The cake was iced with a basic vanilla butter cream and decorated with red raspberry lollies (cause kids always like the lollies, even big kids in the U14's).

This is all that was left from the evening team gathering....

 
The cake this size served 30-35 people. It was a delicious cake, quite moist, I would highly recommend it... it will be going into my small but very trusted cake repertoire for reliable and delicious cakes.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x

homespun magazine

Ribbons Galore had some ribbons featured in the Window Shopping pages of the latest Homespun Magazine (July 2011). The whole section featured products with cute reindeer designs, many of them being of the Rudolf variety, for a Christmas in July special.

 
The ribbons featured are the very cute Ruldolf the Red Nosed Reindeer ribbons.

 

They are beautiful quality ribbons, perfect for all your Christmas sewing (even in July). I made a little carry bag/gift bag with the pink Rudolf ribbon last Christmas.

Cheers

Fiona