Christmas is coming, the pickledweasel's getting fat...

I need to stop eating honeyed salted cashew nuts, or I'll not fit into my nice new Christmas skirt tomorrow :( Things are Christmas a-go-go here in the pickledweasel household, despite me having a throat infection and munchkin getting over a stinking cold. We've been making Christmas decorations:

And cards:

And hair slides for Christmas parties:

And the icing on the cake, a man-bag for mr pickledweasel:

We decided to just spend £10 on each other this year (excluding presents for munchkin), as we're a bit short after the loft conversion. The bag came in at about £7.50, although that's kind of cheating because I calculated the cost based on the material used, so the whole yard of the amaaaaaaazing coffee cup fabric cost £6.60, but I've calculated it as £3.30 because I used half a yard. And I'm not including the £8.00 postage because it came from America :D Any ideas what I can make from the leftover half yard?

The denim was an offcut from Abakhan. The slider and the d-ring were actually a bargain - I've yet to find reasonably priced ones online, especially sliders, does anyone have a secret magic website that does bag making haberdashery at sensible prices? Anyway, I found this bag for £1.25 from our local Winners:

And cannibalised it. I'll use the zips and the canvas for a pouch I'm making for my sister-in-law, so it won't have died in vain :) I've not done much more Christmas making, just a hat and snood set for my neice - photos of her modelling it to follow - and I've made a mountain of gingerbread to give to friends and family using this recipe.

So here's wishing you all a very happy Christmas, and hoping you have a lovely day with family and friends. I'll just be on this big comfy chair over here, with a scarf round my neck, a hot toddy and this family sized bag of cashews :) x x x

Crafting with Munchkins - Scrappy be-jewelled trinket box

This is something me and Munchkin did when we were stuck at home in the snow. Munchkin has about a squillion hairclips, and the little tin I used to keep them in was getting a bit full. We bought her some new shoes in between Christmas and new year, and the box they came in was a perfect size for decorating. The rest of the stuff was things I already had - fabric from my scraps bag, some felt and some cabochon jewelly things that I didn't really know what to do with.

You will need:

• A box with a lid


• Scraps of fabric, long enough to go over the top of your box


• Scissors


• Glue - pva is probably best


• Felt


• A marker pen


• A sparkly jewel


• A munchkin

Cut your fabric into long strips so that they will go across the width of your box lid. Mine were about an inch wide, and I used pinking shears to make them look a bit prettier :) If your munchkin is big enough they can do this themselves, but I pre-cut mine.

Stick your strips across your lid. Munchkin chose which ones she liked and then we stuck them on together but if you're a control freak if you'd like your box to be very tasteful you could just give your munchkin a selection of nicely co-ordinated strips and let them chose what order to stick them in.

Trim the sides of the box lid so that the strips are all neat.

Stick some strips on the two short ends of the lid so the whole lid is covered. At this point you could leave it as a nice, tasteful box. OR you could bling it up a bit :)

Put your Munchkin's hand on some felt and draw around it with a marker pen. This was the most difficult part of the whole thing, and as you can see from the photo, it took several attempts :)

Cut out the hand shape, and stick it on to your lid.

Stick your jewel on to a felt finger. You're done! Fill the box with hairclips / treasure / tiaras / priceless plastic jewellery.

Crafting with Munchkins - Wallpaper Flowers tutorial

I'm making these pretty wallpaper flowers for my storytime craft at work in a couple of weeks. We're a bit short on cash due to some budget cuts, so I'm having to scrabble around in the craft cupboard to try and use existing resources, and scrounge materials where ever I can. I contacted a local independent painting and decorating shop to see if they had any old wallpaper sample books they no longer needed, and a very friendly shopkeeper was only too happy to offload 5 huuuuge books, and had lots more in the back office but I couldn't carry them all :)

Wallpaper has endless possibilities for crafting - it's durable, has cool patterns and textures, and can withstand copious amounts of glue. I thought I'd be better off asking a little local shop for old sample books rather than a big DIY chain, but I guess there's no harm in ringing up your local B&Q and seeing if they can help.

You will need:

• Wallpaper with a flowery pattern, or failing that, coloured / textured wallpaper you can cut into flower shapes.
  
• Sturdy cardboard, preferably corrugated (I used a cat food box, the sort that has those foil pouches in)
  
• Glue
  
• Scissors
  
• Straws (If they're bendy, cut the bendy bit off)
  
• Tape

Start by cutting out your flowers. If your munchkin is too small to manage scissors, get them to choose the flowers and you can do the cutting. I tried to get a photo of Munchkin choosing a flower, but she was in a major strop this morning. But this is the flower she chose, honest!

Now cut some discs of sturdy cardboard to mount your flowers on.

Stick your flowers to your discs.

Stick your straws to your flowers with tape.

You're done! And now find the best way to display them. I used a jam jar and filled it with those little glass nuggets, and then pushed the straws in. I cut the straws to different lengths so you could see all of the flowers. If you haven't got glass nuggets you could always use that pile of pebbles that your munchkin collected from your last visit to the seaside that's gathering dust in the bathroom :)

Now I just need some stories about flowers to go with my craft activity for storytime. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Crafting with munchkins - some inspiration

Kitschy Coo recently had a very interesting discussion on her blog about crafting with kids, and the perils that lie therein. She kind of stole my thunder *shakey fist*, because I had been all set to write a hilarious post about the joys of gluey fingers and marker pen on the coffee table, but she did it a lot better than I ever could :) For my views on the subject, scroll down the post and have a look at the comments.


So instead I'll try and give you so many amaaaazing websites about crafting with little ones that you'll run out RIGHT NOW and buy some stickers and glue and glitter and poster paint. Go on, there's bound to be a 24 hour Tescos not too far away :)

The Crafty Crow is a brilliant source of craft ideas, and is very conveniently organised by age group, from 18 months up to 12 years. The halloween section this year was fantastic, and gave me loads of simple stuff to do with my storytime group. The blog doesn't feature the tutorials in full, but has an image of the end product with a link to the site it came from. Saves you trawling through Google looking for 'Homemade Bathtub Paint' :)



Bloesem Kids: Bookhou Crafts is the kids crafts section of Irene Hoofs' pretty blog. It's so beautifully designed and calming to look at, you might even forget the glue on the sofa :) There are four contributors (all with fantastic blogs of their own), each taking it in turns to post a project. The photography is lovely, the projects are delightful, and there's not a glitter encrusted child in sight. As well as crafts for children, there are crafts for you too, like new ways to display the endless streams of paintings from nursery, and a brilliant book of textures for little sticky hands to explore.



This next one's in French, but the photographs for each project are so simple and self explanatory, that it doesn't matter if the only French you know is, 'Ou est la gare s'il vous plait?'. Julie Adore Dimanche is the crafting adventures of Julie and her cute-enough-to-eat 2 year old daughter. I am loving Monsieur Enlacet, who can help a child learn how to tie shoes, and the Mer Salee is very pretty.


Finally, Kids Craft Weekly is a fab little newsletter sent by email, full of stuff for you and your munchkins to get stuck in to. You can sign up here, or view back issues here. Each newsletter has a theme, which you could easily tie in with other stuff you do that week - so for example along with making some rockets and aliens from the space themed newsletter, you could also visit a science museum, find some books about space in the library (Aliens Love Underpants is one of my favourites), and watch Wall E on dvd.


So what are you waiting for? Clear the furniture, make sure the cat's in a safe place, and have the industrial strength cleaner and bottle of gin on hand for later. My best tip for a stress free session is oilcloth. The biggest piece you can afford. You can spread it out on the floor or drape it over your table, it's waterproof, wipe clean, and if you buy the heavy duty stuff it should last for a long time. Happy crafting!



P.s. The artwork in this post, 'Quality Street Wrapper on Fire', 'Aggression with Crayons' and 'Glitter Glue versus Biro' are originals from the new autumn exhibition by Munchkin, and have been reproduced with the artist's permission.