Category Archives: Tutorials

Advent Calendar – Day Eleven

The Advent Calendar make today has me revealing my secret hoard of wrapping paper, well, a tiny bit. It’s too embarrassing to reveal all! I do love wrapping paper, but when it comes to using it I can’t bear the thought of the eager recipient tearing it off and discarding it, too eager to get at the gift to appreciate it’s beauty and preciousness! (I know, it’s me that’s getting precious!)

But this make means that not only is there no necessity for any reckless ripping, but both sides of the paper can be on show (another cause of head scratching, if it’s gorgeous on both sides which do I use? No wonder I end up with the brown paper!)

I bought this paper the November before last at the Pick’n’Mix Market and it’s been wrapped in tissue ever since..

the robins…

and the winter flowers and berries, which is by Emma Bridgewater…

I found a great little tutorial here on a Japanese blog called Mairuru which explains beautifully how to make gift bags. Apart from a slightly tricky bit of paper folding when you construct the bottom (which is fine if you concentrate hard and keep your cool!!! (I’m saying nothing!) ) I just used a hole punch so I could thread through the ribbon handles. It’s a very simple and satifying little skill which will come in handy for more than just Christmas.

All ready to be filled with all sorts of goodies…

Remember, that little grey mouse could be yours! Have you entered the Prize Draw yet? All the details are on Day Two of the Advent Calendar which is here. All you have to do is to leave a comment to say which way you follow Planet Penny, whether it’s on the blog, or Facebook or even Pinterest. And if you follow via multiple sources tell me that too, because then you’ll go in the Draw twice!

The little brown Mouse? Well he’s appearing later on in the Advent Calendar, wait and see!

See you tomorrow….x

Advent Calendar – Day Three

For the Planet Penny Advent Calendar today I’ve gone to a Christmas favourite of mine, Origami Stars. I first tried Origami when I was about 11. My mother found a book in the library, and thought it was a great idea as it didn’t require any cutting up of bits of paper. (She says I spent my entire childhood creating scraps of paper which were too small to pick up, and too big to be vacuumed. Nothing’s changed there then!)

The stars didn’t make an appearance then, but my lovely daughter-in-law, Celia, discovered them a few Christmases ago, and decorated the mantelpiece in their old house in Rouen, and they now remind me of the last Christmas we spent there together before she, my son and grandsons move back to the UK. Happy memories, and I’ve been making them every Christmas since…

What I love about them is that they are so simple to make, and yet can be made to fit in any colour scheme, from the wild and colourful to sophisticated and plain. You will be very surprised by my particular choice, given my love of colour but I really like them plain and white and simple…

The possibilities are endless when it comes to decorating ideas. They look good just in a glass jar, dish or vase…

…so pretty scattered over a red Christmas tablecloth…

In the past I’ve strung them together to make garlands, added individual strings to each little star to hang them in the Christmas tree branches and attached them to mirrors and windows with double sided tape. Made in gold and silver and glued on to a simple wreath they would look stunning and in bright colours stuck to the ceiling to a child’s bedroom they would look pretty any time of the year…

Tempted? Well, there’s a great tutorial here which will get you started, and before too long you’ll be churning them out in every spare moment!

And if you’d like a little colour fix, I found these on Pinterest. Aren’t they gorgeous? (no source I’m afraid)

If you missed yesterdays’s post don’t forget to join in with the Prize Draw, see this post for all the details of the prize. Just follow Planet Penny in some way, whether it’s by email sign up, or on Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter. Don’t think I expect you to do everything, and if you are already following, well thank you very much! All I need is for you to tell me somewhere in a comment during the Advent Calendar posts because that where I will be compiling my list of entrants from. Hope that make sense…

In the meantime, Have fun, and I’ll be back tomorrow!

A Pinboard for a New Term…

I don’t think it matters how long ago it is since you left school, the approach of September always feels much more like the beginning of a new year than the actual one in dreary old January! And it’s so much more full of hope and possibility, we could have an ‘Indian Summer’ to make up for the lack of a British one, the evenings are still light, and it just feels like an optimistic new start. So this has been a good time to get my little office up and running efficiently with pinboards, graphs and flow charts (pause to snort with derisive laughter!) and slowly, slowly get on top of the teetering piles of paperwork. It also means I can reclaim the studio space from being a dumping ground/spare room (thank goodness it was only Tim and I trying to shoehorn ourselves into the sofa bed!) It now looks too tidy to use, even Higgins is surprised…

…and here it is, I had to record it because it won’t last!

and in this one you can see the office at the end, it’s not ready for close inspection yet!

You might have noticed the old pinboard in the first photo, so full of stuff which had been there forever.

Very uninspiring, and in need of a makeover to celebrate the new look. It was even more uninspiring once I’d taken off all the tatty bits and pieces…

You can see just how long some things had languished there by the interesting shadow effects!

So this is how the transformation took place, a quick and easy project as it only took a couple of hours. All it took was some grey emulsion paint, I used a sample pot, and some white, I had plenty around as we’d been painting the studio. Fabric and Bondaweb the size of the board, ribbon and glue and a few buttons.

After giving the board a wipe I painted the frame with the grey emulsion…

Once it dried I gave it a coat of white. It doesn’t have to cover completely, just make sure that the brush strokes follow the shape of the frame. Once it was dry I sanded it lightly to reveal some of the grey undercoat and polished it with beeswax.

I then cut a piece of Bondaweb to the size of the cork area of the pinboard and ironed to the back of my chosen fabric, in this case some jolly red and pink spotty Ikea fabric, peeled off the back of the Bondaweb and ironed the fabric directly on to the cork area…

To cover the raw edges I used a woven ribbon…

..and found just the right buttons to trim the corners.

Did you notice the Dove Christmas decoration on the old pinboard? That got a new lease of life…

…and the pinboard was ready to use…

Trouble is, it’s far too pretty to fill with Post-It notes, receipts and appointments, isn’t it? So for now it looks like this…

…and I’ll probably have to buy another pinboard to use in the office! Ho hum…

New Crochet Bunting for Handmade Monday

There’s been a lot of weather about this week! Anyway, moments like this when you’re out for a walk make it worthwhile, even when it’s below freezing point. And no apologies for sharing another snowdrop picture, I’m getting a little obsessed by seeing things from a miniature dachshund’s viewpoint!

I’ve been happy and relieved that this week at our monthly Knit and Stitch meeting the little heart pattern was tested out by a relatively new crochet-er, and it worked ! (Bearing in mind I might have been crocheting for a while, but I’m a novice pattern writer!) Not only that, but having cracked the pattern, Carol went on to reinterpret the heart with crochet wire and beads, which is so pretty…

They look huge here, but they’re not much bigger than a 10p piece, delicate crochet jewellery.

My latest rainbow creation from my gorgeous cotton yarn basket is a new version of crochet bunting. I know the white Christmas Bunting is very popular but there’s been a lot of white around just lately, and I needed an antidote!

I’ll be posting the pattern in Tutorials very soon.

Which brings me to the fireplace. And the hearth rug. the scene of many a power struggle amongst the four legged members of the family. On the one side is Henry, who has been here for getting on for 17 years, who isn’t in the best of health, but who know exactly what is due to a senior citizen and is quite prepared to use all his ‘Grumpy Old Man ‘ tactics to make sure he gets his way. And on the other side is Higgins, who is absolutely sure that everything is all about him…

Today my sister arrived with a special present just for Henry, and I rather knew it was going to cause trouble…

A beautiful rag rug, exactly what a old and bony pussy cat needs…

um…hang on…

…that’s better…

But when a little chat about ‘sharing’ fell on deaf ears…

Higgins retired to the sofa…

Hang on, can’t you see him?

It’s a dog’s life…

But enough of all that. It’s Handmade Monday again, and it’s time to visit the lovely Wendy over on 1st Unique Gifts and find out what everyone else has been creating this week.

Next week I’m hoping to share a new idea with you, one you might just want to join in with…

In the meantime, see you soon! xx

A Snowy Handmade Monday

If my Silent Sunday photo was the day before, this was what those clouds were heralding…

(and if you look closely you can see someone has made a little bow wave!)

Funnily enough, after the early morning excitement, Higgins was NOT very enthusiastic about a walk later on in the day…

But he soon got into the swing of things…

…and definitely appreciated the coat in the end!

So there’s been a good excuse to linger indoors and do a bit more crochet. I had a lovely book for Christmas which is full of inspiring things to make…

…and had some fun with these…

and in the spirit of re-using containers, and as excuse to use this fab ribbon…

I gave a tin of Heinz Tomato Soup a whole new lease of life!

I started on a little something for Valentines Day…

…and if you’d like a pattern I’ll be putting one on soon.

I’d also like to share some other little handmade lovelies which although are designed for Easter, are much to pretty to hide away. One of the wonderful things about the blogging/making world is the new friends you make. People you would never otherwise have met. I had lunch with one of these friends last week, a couple of hours of frantic chatter, comparing notes and trying to fit everything in! Gabriella and I both had stalls at the Pick’n’Mix Market last year, run by another blogging/maker friend Lisa of Bobobun, you might remember this photo of the Moobaacluck Stall. So I was so thrilled by this present from Gabs…

I don’t think I have enough handles in the house!

So now it’s time to join in with Wendy’s Handmade Monday over on 1st Unique gifts, where you’ll find all sorts of yummy things going on! It’s well worth a visit!

See you soon xx

Cats and Crochet for Handmade Monday

It’s hard to believe that another Monday has come around again, and not only that, we’re at the end of January. How did that happen?

It’s been a very cold grey day here today, but we’ve had a couple of bright and sunny ones, and I’ve been out pottering, quite literally, in the veg plot as I’ve been rounding up all the plastic pots which were ‘going to come in handy’ and in fact have blown into various nooks and crannies, binning the broken ones and washing the useful ones and stacking them in the new mini greenhouse. I’ve started a diary of my gardening efforts which you’ll find via a tab under the header so I won’t repeat myself. Not much happening at the moment but hopefully there will be!

I found a cheerful bunch of tulips in the supermarket yesterday which have brought a ray of sunshine into the gloom today….

The big excitement of the week was a long awaited delivery. My very own rainbow in a box! I’ve got some wonderful new cotton yarn to play with. Not available in the UK just yet and I shall have to be a little secretive about it for the time being…

…but I can let you have a peek…

…do you want to see?

It’s so pretty. It’s a thinnish DK weight cotton with a beautiful sheen, and crochets like a dream on a 3.5 hook. I’m going to be doing lots of experiments with it over the next few weeks so watch this space…

And coincidently, the day before it arrived, I had an email from Jill, who writes the Stocki blog, about the Beautiful Blogger Blanket. I don’t know if you have come across it in your travels through the Blogosphere but you can find out all about it it here…

Jill was letting me know that my name had come up on the Beautiful Blogger Blanket Wish List, proposed by BebeRouge (Thank you BebeRouge, what an honour!) as somone she would like to see creating a square for the blanket. So this has been my very first project with this fab new yarn.

I will replace this photo asap when I have better light to do the colours justice!

I’m sorry I won’t be able to share the yarn brand just yet, but the pattern, which I have devised, will be available in the tutorials very soon.

I’ve had a little help with photography from Henry …

…whom I’m a little worried about at the moment. He’s been much brighter since he had his big operation last summer, and still rules the roost and keeps Higgins in order, but he’s never really regained the weight he lost despite having a big appetite. He seemed to be showing all the signs of having a thyroid problem but the tests have come back negative, and he’s lost a little more weight. He’s under observation, and we are keeping our fingers crossed, but he still likes to be involved in everything that’s going on, so that a positive sign. (Oh, and note the socks. A sign of how busy I’ve been, socks still on the needles, and I’ve hit the supermarket!)

And while we’re on the subject of cats, I’vew been working on samples of needlefelt animals for my next course at The OutHouse Studio and this is the first one..

And finally, I had to show you this. Higgins in his favourite spot in the sunshine, in a good vantage point to shout abuse at passing tractors, bicycles and joggers. (Note the chewed remains of a ball, and the stolen flower pot, great fun to steal that when I was trying to stack them up)

And now the back view, not easy to maintain ones upright watchful position without the aid of a box…

…and eventually it all gets too much, and you have to let things slide…

So all that’s left is to hand you over to Wendy over on 1st Unique Gifts where she is hosting this week’s Handmade Monday and where you will find lots of other handmade goodies to see.

Have a good week,

see you soon! xx