Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, and I hope 2014 is a happy, healthy and peaceful year for you.

Thanks for visiting my blog through 2013.

Cheers

Fiona x

 

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merry christmas

I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy and safe 2013.

Thanks for dropping by my blog in 2012. In 2013 I hope to share more ideas and crafty-ness with you.

RIBBONS GALORE NEWS:

Thank you to my customers for visiting and shopping at Ribbons Galore throughout 2012.

Ribbons Galore is now closed for a Christmas/summer break. The online store will remain open during our break and you can still place orders. Orders placed during this time will be packed and posted from Monday 21 January 2013.

2013 will see Ribbons Galore open with a brand new website. I've had the website and online store completely rebuilt with many new features and I look forward to sharing it with you when Ribbons Galore reopens later in January.

Cheers

Fiona xx

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:

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

Cheers

Fiona x

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merry christmas

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.

Edited in 2014... If you would like to make some of these weaths, I have kits available. They have the supplies to make 3 wreaths (3 rings, jingle bells, 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 available at Ribbons Galore.

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

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Edited in 2013... If you would like to make some of these weaths, I have kits available. They have the supplies to make 3 wreaths (3 rings, jingle bells, 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 available at Ribbons Galore. 

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

Edited in 2012... If you would like to make some of these weaths, I have kits available. They have the supplies to make 3 wreaths (3 rings, jingle bells, 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 available at Ribbons Galore.

Instructions can be found in the next post... or click here :)

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

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

mini gingerbread houses and christmas truffles

Here's a couple of little handmade goodies I have made over the last few days.

Mini gingerbread houses. I wanted to make some little houses as gifts this year. After searching around for some house templates, I found these cute little houses by Megan Rearon of the Not Martha blog. Megan made her houses small, so they perch on the side of your hot chocolate mug. Megan's Gingerbread house template makes tiny little houses. I enlarged her template 140% to make my little houses below. (I didn't cut the little slots from the sides, leaving the sides of my houses whole). The houses were decorated with royal icing and sweets, then wrapped in celephane with a ribbon.

 
 
 
 

Christmas truffles. I don't make truffles very often, but this year I wanted to make some rum balls. Again I went searching for recipes and found a rum and raisin truffle which appealed, as well as a couple of other recipes. 

 

Wrapped in celephane and tied with Ribbons Galore ribbon :-)

The truffle recipes I made are:

• Chocolate rum and raisin truffles (the ones covered in coconut) from Taste.com.au.
• Rich chocolate and Kahula truffles (covered with cocoa) from Taste.com.au also.
• Plum pudding Christmas truffles (in the green wrappers) from the Cadbury website.

I hope you have a very merry Christmas. Thanks for visiting my blog over the past year.

Cheers

Fiona x  

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a quick christmas bag

Christmas crafting has been a little lacking this year, so far. There's lots going on for end of school year stuff, including Phoebe's year 6 graduation dinner, which I've been quite involved in. I'll share some of the projects I've been working on for the dinner very soon. 

I did find time a couple of weeks ago to make up this little bag with some gorgeous new ribbon I'm now stocking at Ribbons Galore, rudolf ribbon.

 

This little bag is going into our shoe box for the Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child.

Emily has been sewing for Samaritan's Purse as part of her service component of the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award this year. We visited the Samaritan's Purse office in Sydney earlier this year and it was so nice to hear about their activities. They mentioned that many children don't even have a carry bag for their school books so they love to have a bag included in the shoe box. Hence the bag above, it's big enough to fit the shoe box in so our child will be able to carry their box home, and the child who receives it will, hopefully, be able to use it to carry their books in the future.

Samaritan's Purse has operations in many places around the world, please visit their site, and help if you can. We love putting together the shoebox gift and sending it on its journey!

Thanks for visiting.

Fiona x

 

baubles now available at Ribbons Galore

Baubles are back in the Ribbons Galore packaging store. Available for pre-order now.

 
Three bauble sizes (60mm, 80mm and 100mm) are being offered during the pre-sale period.

Please see the Ribbons Galore Packaging store page for all the details.

Pre-order period ends 23 July 2010.

Look forward to you visiting the store soon.

Cheers

Fiona