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!

Beckoning The Fairies...

In our love for the fairies, we were inspired to create a little home for them... with high hopes that they felt so welcome that they decide to stay!

With magic in the air, we set off into the fairy filled hills and forests to collect our fairy garden supplies.

We found and dug up some delicate mosses, a baby maple tree, little fairy flowers, sage and grasses.

We lovingly transplanted them into a big pot of soil, watered our new garden and then began to dream up how we could make it a home.

We crafted and arranged until we wanted to move in ourselves!

Let's take you on a tour...

We offered them 

 A (shell) pool of water for them to swim and cool off in...

 little toadstools and a wee ladder for them to climb up and sit with the robin eggs.

A living room set for tea...

and a crystal cave, with a roaring fire and two stone chairs, for them to warm themselves at.

A little sink for washing...

and a wishing well to wish at.

An acorn swing in a pussy willow tree and yellow flower moss in a walnut shell, to help them feel right at home.

For the fairy babies we made a walnut cradle. We lined it with pussy willows and asked their bee friends to be the baby guardians.

We made an acorn mail box and wrote a teeny tiny letter to await their arrival.

We  found & planted them some wild strawberries and gave them a wee wagon to pull their juicy treats in.

We "planted" some puff trees we made for them (dandelion clocks, preserved on twigs), thinking these seemed to come from the fairy realm. 

We made them a cozy bed with pussy willow pillows and a feather birchbark blanket...

and just incase they felt so at home that more babies came, we also made a little milkpod cradle....

and walnut, dragonfly cradle to await the babes.

A  little lamp to light up a birchbark book full of magical stories.

A little cove of flowers and a butterfly friend.

Finally, we set them a table of flowers and nectar...

 hoping they would soon be gathered here together.

We stay close by our fairy garden and watch for signs of their approval and presence. Many butterflies, dragonflies and bees seem to enjoy hovering and hanging out amidst their new little home ~ we like to imagine that this is a sure sign that the fairies are here and have come to stay.

We are linking up our fairy garden with the other fairy lovers out there, over at the Magic Onions. Head on over and check out all the fairy love!

Thank you for taking the time to tour with us, on our fairy home creating adventure.

*Fairy dust to all *