Today’s make for the Advent Calendar comes with a puzzle. Anyone who has visited Planet Penny for Open Studios will know that we’re in a very rural location. Passing traffic tends to be dogs and their walkers, horses and their riders, tractors and assorted farm vehicles and the odd car. (Invariably being driven far too fast given the narrowness of the road!)
We have our bins near the road to save the morning panic of remembering it’s bin day and having to scurry around in a dressing gown towing it to the road. But I never imagined this would mean that someone would stop off and deposit something in the bin whilst passing by. So I was very surprised one day a few months back to go out with the recycling, open the bin and find lying on top of the cereal boxes and newspapers, two music books…
They were perfectly clean and dry and came straight in to the studio go on the shelf as ‘Something-which-will-come-in-handy-sometime’. But it continues to baffle me. They’re are not dated, but the music, the look and the prices mentioned makes me think they could be anything up to 70 years old, and I just can’t imagine the scenario of riding past on your horse or tractor, or walking past with your dog and having an urgent need to dispose of the music books you just happened to be carrying on your person!
Anyway, they have come in handy for todays piece of Christmas Crafting.
I know quite few people make beautiful things with upcycled books, but I really struggle with cutting up or dismantling them. So I made a scan of one the pages of music and printed it on each side of a sheet of paper and used my big paper punch to make a collection of paper circles…
(I like the fact it comes from ‘The Sleeping Princess’ in this Pantomime season!)
Then I just stitched them together on the sewing machiune leaving a little gap of stitches in between to make a simple paper garland…
That’s a really simple idea, but by putting three discs together, stitching through them all and fanning them out you have a really pretty and stylish tree decoration…
…and as we put our own tree up this afternoon I was able to put it straight to good effect…
A number of these hung together on a twiggy branch against a white wall would look simply stunning…
The bidding has closed on the mini Christmas Jumper Auction and the little green jumper will be wizzing off to the lovely Joan who made an extremely generous donation of £20 towards the Save the Children charity. Thank you so much, Joan, I’ll be in touch.
And I’ll be back tomorrow too…! x
Don’t forget to call over to Handmade Monday to find lots of other Christmas makes, and if you haven’t entered the Prize Draw you can find out all about it, and the fab prizes on this post…