Xmas Crafting

Evening All, Hope everyone has had a fab Xmas and those of you that were unwell over xmas are recovering quickly. As promised to some of my Crafty Buddys I have finally managed to upload my pics of some of my Xmas makes.

Unfortunantly due to my whole family falling ill and me hurting my knee due to slipping up in Ice and ending up on crutches Christmas didn't go to plan, hubby was laid up in bed with the flu, youngest had a nasty fever and tummy ach to the point NHS Out of Hours asked us to take him to the local hospital for a check up, so that was xmas morning taken up and my other two boys were unwell but were up and about. So rather tireing for me as I had to play nurse and keep MS and eldest entertained and keep the noise down lol. So needless to say we didn't get to use the table cloth or napkins :(

First up is the table cloth, I was lucky to have a friend who worked at the local laundry cleaning factory that I worked out and he managed to pick me up a plain white table cloth and some napkins. They are fab as the factory can't reissue them out as they have stains, even a spec on or sewing is slightly wrong so they go into a pile called ruins :) So basically I have done some good recycling :)

This project was very time consuming and sore on the hands as I decided to tie dye all the fabric. I gathered up the material and did alot of ties, then put all the fabric in for a spin wash which losened the ties so I had do a lot of retying and then put them in the washing machine Drum along with the Blue dye my middle son had chosen.

The table cloth didn't turn out as well colour wise but middle son was happy with it :)

To do the penguins I used a template from the Penguin Paper Chain pdf found here http://www.ichild.co.uk/tags/browse/106/Winter . I printed the template of the full penguin in Black & White and put the template under some plain white curtain fabric and traced the template using a pencil. I covered a half meter of the fabric with drawings of the penguins and then roughly cut around them and Fabric Painted each one using Black, Red and Yellow as my colours. Once I had all the penguins painted and they were dry I neatly cut them out and Ironed them to set the paint.

I then put the Table Cloth on to the Table making sure it look right as It was rather large and then fabric glued all the penguins on all around the edge and some dotted about in the middle.

Here's a closer view of the penguin :)

My Napkins on the other hand turned out really well, you can see where I tied, Just how I had hoped the table cloth would look but never mind.

I left the Napkins as was and just folded them several times and made Penguin Napkin rings using the Pdf Penguin Paper chain Black and White Penguin template again.

I drew round the penguins on to Black Card and then cut out the hat and scarf seperatly and drew round them on to Red glitter card and then for the beak and feet I cut them seperatly from the template and drew round them on to Yellow card and stuck them in to place. The beak I stuck on with 3d foam pads to give a bit of dimention. I only made five of these.

I added details using a Black permant marker pen and stuck the Penguins using double sided tape on to strips of Red Card which were looped round the napkin to create rings.

The finished Penguin Napkin Rings :)

Was going to make some xmas crackers but found some left over that I made from last year.

I made some Cakes and Mini Mince Pies with the boys a day before xmas eve and they turned out fab and tasty. My youngest loved making these and seeing him smile and wanting to get involved just made me feel all the more happier and I felt so sorry for him when we had ran out of ingredients as I'm sure he would of loved to keep making more.

He especially loved adding the stars to each of the Mince Pies.

And adding Icing Stars to the Cakes along with Cherries on the top :)

We also made a Christmas Cake using Tesco Xmas Cake kit which was really simple and quick to put together just took just under 3 hours to cook in the oven. So not good for the key meter.

And I decorated the cake with Ready Rolled white Icing and a ribbon and flower decorating kit which was the fiddley part. But the cake tasted good which is the main thing.

So there was my attempt at crafts ready for xmas. The Table Cloth, Napkins and Napkin rings aren't going to go to waste as my Middle Son's Birthday is coming up and he loves penguins and wants a Penguin themed Birthday so we will use the bits then. :)