New Year Printables

It's almost the end of the year so here's some festive printables to help you get your party started. Click on the links below to download a free Hello 2018 image, January calendar and Happy New Year bunting. Scroll down for links to the free pdfs.

Click here for the pdf

Click here for the pdf

 

Click on links below for the pdf

HA
PP
YN
EW
YE
AR

Competition time again!

It's competition time again :-)

This week we're giving away a deer tote bag, two postcards, a fox embroidery and a woven wall hanging. To enter just subscribe to this blog (if you haven't already) then head over to the pinned post on our Facebook page and comment "done". You can like and share the post for an additional entry.

The winner will be chosen on Sunday 17th December at 7pm.

Good luck!

Driftwood Santa

I've seen lots of driftwood Santas on Pinterest lately so I thought I'd have a go at half-arsing my own.

You will need:

Driftwood (I get mine on Ebay)
Acrylic paint
Paintbrushes

Get some driftwood. Mine was about 8cm long

Paint a skin coloured oval shape on it

Add a white beard, hair and sideburns

Paint the top bit red for his hat and add a fat moustache

Give him pink circle cheek, a mouth and some bushy eyebrows

I drew the small details on with a brown fineliner pen because I'm rubbish at painting

He looks like he's seen something horrific. Poor pyschologically damaged Santa.

Add another layer of white to soften the pen details, colour in his eyes and you're done! You could drill a hole  in his hat and hang him up, if you can be bothered.
I cannot.

Upcycled Cardboard Tray

I was given a couple of cardboard trays and asked if I could come up with some craft ideas to repurpose them. This is my first attempt.



You will need:

Cardboard tray (you might be able to use a polystyrene tray but I've no idea if the clay will stick to it)
Air Dry Clay
Clay tools (I tend to use toothpicks and lollipop sticks)
Old pair of scissors or knife (it will get covered in bits of clay)
Wood grain impression mat (you can just draw the grain with a toothpick if you prefer)
Rolling pin (I use the inner tube from an old roll of foil)
Acrylic paint (brown, white)
Brown ink (optional)

Roll out some clay and press the wood grain mat on top. You can roll gently over the mat to get a more even impression. My mat was too small to cover all the clay so repeat this step until all the clay is covered.

There are lines between the edges of the where the mat was. We can disguise this later.

Lay the clay over the top of the cardboard tray and gently press into the corners. Try not to smudge the grain lines too much.

Trim around the edge with scissors or a scalpel. Wet your fingers with a little water and smooth the edges.



Use a toothpick to tidy up any gaps around the edge of the wood grain impressions and raw back in any lines you smudged when pressing the clay into shape.

 Leave it to dry overnight.

Or, get impatient, remove it too early and crack the edges. Balls.

As Bob Ross would say, we don't make mistakes we have happy accidents. The word of Bob is law, so behold my happy little accident.

When it's (finally) dry you can paint it. I forgot to take pictures of this bit because I don't know what I'm doing and shouldn't be allowed on the internet without adult supervision. I used dark brown acrylic mixed with water to get into all the grooves, then once it had dried, dry brushed a lighter brown over the top. Keep adding different shades of brown with a dry brush until your happy with the colour. I used some brown ink at this point to make it more shiny.

I found it really hard to take a clear picture so here's 3 slightly unclear ones :-)