Pressed Flower Ornaments

Pressed Flower Ornaments

This past summer I began a love affair with pressing flowers. I wasn't sure what I would do with them all, I just knew that come winter they would bring me joy to craft with. Now that we are in the midst of a real deep freeze, it was such a treat to peek into the books where they lay waiting and gently reveal the delicate little flowers I had collected. Perfect for creating these pressed flower ornaments! If you have some kicking around and want to create some too, here's how it goes...

You will need:

1 cup baking soda

1/2 cup corn starch

3/4 cup of warm water

rolling pin

round cookie cutter or cup for cutting your clay circles

pressed flowers

mod podge

paint brush

string

To begin:

Follow this tutorial to make the white clay. 

Cut out your clay with a cup or a round cookie cutter.

Poke a hole where your string can go through. 

 Bake at 100 degrees C for an hour. 

Choose your flower layouts.

Add a layer of mod podge to the front of your ornament and place your flower(s) on top.

Gently paint a layer of mod podge over top of the flower and ornament. 

Be sure to make sure your holes don't get clogged with mod podge and if they do poke it out with a needle.

String your ornament...

hang on your tree...

and sit back with something to sip, while you admire the little faces of summer looking back at you!

 Wishing all a peace & joy filled time of preparation for Christmas.

With love

Roving Angel

Each Christmas we have a family tradition of placing an angel on our tree, to represent each of our loved ones that have passed away. There has become a real reverence for this tradition with my daughters and they never seem to forget year to year, which angel represents which one of our loved ones. I enjoy having these little angels on the tree, reminding me of the connection with those we love who are no longer with us. 

This past year my dear friend lost her mother. I decided to create an angel for her tree, in honor of her loss and as a reminder of the love that lives on.

Here is how this little roving angel is made

To create you will need:

A wooden bead

Pipe cleaner

White or flesh colored roving

Colored roving

Sparkly string

Needle felting needle (not necessary but it helps)

To Begin:

For the head and arms: fold a pipe cleaner in half.  Attach wooden bead to the kink and bend each arm in the opposite direction. 

For the arms and hands: starting at about 1/2 inch from the end of one arm, wind a thin layer of roving onto the pipe cleaner, working towards the direction away from the head.

Once your roving holds on to the pipe cleaner, fold about 3/4 inch  of pipe cleaner back towards the direction of the head. Continue winding over this fold and towards the direction of the head.  Be sure to use flat layer of roving, so your hand looks nice and even. 

For the face and body base:  Make a hole in the middle of a  flat layer  of roving and pass the angel’s head through the hole.

If you want a smooth and nice “face” be careful with arranging your roving flatly and tightly on the wooden bead  Take two small strips of roving, tightly tie at the neck and the waist.

For the sleeves: wind a flat, thin layer  of roving starting at the cuffs and work in the direction towards the head on both sides.

To dress your angel: take new piece of roving about 7″ long. Make a hole in the middle and pass the angel’s head through the hole.  Fold the roving tightly over the shoulders and down around the body.

Use a small thin piece of roving to wrap around the angel’s waist. Spread the roving evenly around the white skirt.

For the hair: fold a piece of roving in half that is twice as long as you wish the angel’s hair to be and place on the angel’s head and needle felt it a bit to hold in place.

You may also want to braid three pieces of thin roving to create a braid and then needle felt that onto the hair. 

For the halo: twist a piece of pipe cleaner into a halo shape and wrap with a thin layer of roving.

Tuck it into the back of the hair and needle felt the hair around it to hold in place.

For the wings: take a 5 inch piece of white roving and lay flat. Tie a thin piece of white roving in the middle and then "fluff" out your wings to the shape you want. 

To tie on your wings: wrap the string around the waist, cross over in the back, come over the shoulders and cross in front. Then tie at the waist. Take the ends of your string and go behind the waist once again. Tie a knot and then use the remaining ends to create a loop to hang it with.

That's it! You now have an angel.

I found creating this with my dear friend and her loss in mind the whole time, felt like a special way to connect with her grief and to offer my love. 

May you have many angels around you in this season and always! 

With love

Toadstool Ornaments

Head on over to the Kids CBC parents website to see how to make these

 adorable Toadstool ornaments!

Super easy to make, and I must say that our Christmas tree looks positively enchanted with these delightful toadstools on the branches!

Shanti and I will be featuring some of our crafts over there a few times each month!  

What are you waiting for…get crafty!!!

(see…I told you they were enchanting)!

Simple Straw Angels

A long while back I bought a bag of "straw"…hoping that it would inspire me to create something.  

It was while looking at an ancient craft book that I came across instructions for some "straw angels", so I decided to take something old and put a bit of a "me" spin on it!

To make one you will need:

lengths of straw

embroidery floss

one pipe cleaner (for body and halo)

wooden bead

glue

and paint to paint the face

There are quite a few steps involved, but these are really simple to make…trust me on this!!

*Before you begin you need to soak your straw…

place it in the sink and cover it with  warm water for about 4 hours.

(clockwise from top left)

Cut 8 pieces of straw 3 inches long…mark each of these pieces in the centre with a pencil...

String a needle with your embroidery thread and push it through at each pencil mark...

Now take your thread, pull it tight tight tight…you want your pieces to fan out

*these are your "wings".

Tie a double knot...  

Then get your other pieces ready for the body…you want 10 6-inch pieces

(clockwise from top left)

Gather your straw in a bunch and tie the pieces in the middle with embroidery floss...

Straw by straw fold the top half over the bottom half…hold the bundle together tightly...

Insert your pipe cleaner into the hole in the centre of the straws...

Glue the bead onto the pipe cleaner

(clockwise from top left)

Lift up a few of the pieces of straw you just folded over and slip in your "wings"

Now take some embroidery floss and loop it right underneath the "wings"

Tie it tightly…the bottom straw will flare out…this is your dress…you want as much flare as possible.

You can now bend a few pieces of straw to make arms…you will have to glue these into place.

The last steps are to paint on a simple face…hair if you want…and glue on a little "halo", 

(fashioned from a sparkly pipe cleaner)!  

Tie a piece of thread around the angel's neck to hang her off the tree…in the window…

where ever you feel you need a pretty little angel to keep watch!

Wishing you all peace, love and craftiness during the holiday season!

Peas In A Pod Ornament

With the season of Christmas crafting in full swing, we decided to make some ornaments for our tree. I love how the milkweed pods are still able to peak their heads above the snow in winter ~ perfect for gathering to craft with!

I was inspired by seeing these little peas in a pod and thought we could do something similar with the milkweed pods we had gathered. 

To create you will need

Milkweed pods

Green roving

Green paint

Green sparkles

Mod podge

Ribbon

Dish soap

Container or a "felting ball maker"

To begin, paint your milkweed pod.

Once it is dry, paint mod podge on the back and shake on the glitter!

To felt your little peas you can follow this super simple tutorial or if you have one of these nifty gadgets around, it works great to. So easy!

Once your peas are felted you can glue in your little sweet peas. 

 I used a hot glue gun and tucked my ribbon to hang it with, under the top pea. 

There you go! Sweet peas in a pod ready to grace your tree. 

Happy Christmas crafting friends!

Advent Sticks

It's that time of year again…the year we meet as friends to assemble our Advent Sticks, 

(baskets…hangers).  

This year our good friend at the Knitty Gritty Homestead instigated the creative madness…

we had taken a year or two off, but after last night…never again!!!

There were 5 of us, so we each took on the task of creating by hand 3 items each 

(times 5…one for each person).  

The extra gaps we fill in with stickers…candy…coupons for "things to do"

As the handcrafted items were revealed there were squeals of JOY from the mums…

"ooooh"ing and "ahh"ing at each handmade goodie!

These are some of the goodies in our Advent Sticks this year!!! (other friends to participate were creative co horts Wabi-Sabi Wanderings &  Embracing the Now  & of course my co blogger Shanti!!)

Each goodie is lovingly wrapped in tissue paper…of all colours…

then if using a stick it gets tied on parcel by parcel..

This year some of the mums just put their parcels in a basket…each day the children get to pick one parcel to unwrap…oh goodness…our nature tables will be GORGEOUS!!!!

(We joke that we do this as much for us, as for the kids)

And here is a sample of the finished product…

I did mine on a coat hanger this year…I stretched it out and kept the hook on top…

makes it easy to hang somewhere in the house!  

After losing my mother earlier this year, I have to admit that I so look forward to creating new traditions with my family of friends…and keeping beautiful old traditions like this!

Wishing you all a beautiful weekend FULL of creativity and JOY!

A Winter Peg Family

We just got a HUGE load of snow the other day...it inspired us to hunker down and start creating!!

Let the winter crafting begin...

I know it's not "officially" winter yet, but the hats and scarves are all out, and there's snow on the ground...aside from that we're just waiting on the calendar to make it official!!

In the meantime here's a sweet little winter peg family craft...

To make your own you will need:

Peg people in various sizes

Acrylic paint in whatever colours you wish

Wool felt

*you can use regular felt, but I just LOVE wool felt

A super duper small paint brush

Glue gun and glue

So here it is step by step...

To begin paint on sweet little faces and a circle on top of the head, (the hat).

If you are intimidated by this my biggest word of advice is use a small small brush...like with 5 bristles on it...practice making your dots on paper, then move to your doll...practice really makes perfect!

Then to make it look like a hat I did a white rim with little ridge lines...

Next step is to paint their bodies...I diluted my acrylic craft paint in some water...makes it go on like a water colour.

Then cut some small rectangles for scarves...fringe the edges with your scissors, and I also cut very small circles out of felt for the tops of their hats.

One trick I started doing is to take a red beeswax crayon, or a pencil crayon and paint a small circle of "pink" on their cheeks.  I find this just makes the little peg people come to life!!

And that's it!  Put them around a pine cone "tree" and the kids are ready to play!

(or if you want to be totally crazy, you could put a little eye hook in the top of their little peg people heads and voila...winter tree ornament!!)

With love, 

Simple Autumn Leaf Crowns!

While out under my mighty Oak tree in the yard we were inspired to crown an Autumn Queen!!  

If you recall many many years ago, (when Matilda was almost a year old), we made LEAF CROWNS!!  These were made with the green green leaves of summer, but it also translates so well to Autumn leaves.  

Follow the tutorial here, but use the beautiful, vibrant leaves of Autumn to build a simple crown that will inspire hours of imaginative play!

Also visit dear Shanti's beautiful Autumn crown creations here

Errrr...I think it's fair to say we all know who the pint sized Queen of this castle is!

Happy Autumn!