Paper Cutting

Good morning! How lovely and sunny is it today?!

I was even up earlier than usual (mostly due to dog sitting this weekend and having to let the dog out early!) but seeing the sunshine just makes you that bit happier doesn't it!

With my recent house purchase going through I've been trying to keep myself busy without spending a lot of cash, those bills are flying out of my account so finding cheap things to do is essential at the moment.
Having already bought the starter kit from Paper Panda a few months ago I've been making things for friends and family, and wanted to branch out to a few other templates, and so I picked up her '20 to make' book from Amazon for £3.99.

The book actually should cost £4.99 according to the back, and with Amazon you can get free postage too so what's not to love!
What I was most interested in was the content of the book itself, having seen a few snaps on the Paper Panda Facebook page I was intrigued. Not all of them will be suitable for me but for less than £4 I was sold.

In the original starter kit there were a few gorgeous templates that I practiced on to get my skills up to scratch. It's not a difficult hobby but practice definitely helps and you get used to how much pressure you need to apply and how often to change your blade.

Here are a few I did for practice:

I love the one above, I am hoping to find somewhere to put it in my new house!

Next I started making my way through the book. A colleague has a young daughter and I agreed to try out the Unicorn template, it looked a bit small and fiddly but definitely a new challenge and the finished design looked so pretty. Here are a few progress shots:





I love how quickly you can start and finish a design when you have a template for it!
This looks so pretty and I managed to finish it in 2 evenings after work, it really doesn't take that long.
She will be putting a purple colour in the background for her bedroom.

For my mum I made the owl design - we have a bit of an owl obsession within our family and this design is really cute, I really like the heart on the owls chest and the little snail on the branch too! The little details make the designs so much better. I'd love to be able to make my own templates!

Speaking of which, I have recently drawn out my own template for my kitchen. I am obsessed with tea and Alice in Wonderland and wanted to combine the two in my own design, making it quite simple but pretty with lots of details, what do you think??

I still need lots of practice with cutting straight lines and working out how to create objects without cutting them out entirely. The hardest part is keeping all of the design in one piece!

As a first go I'm pretty pleased but I think you can always see more errors in your own designs than other people can, hopefully when it's on the wall I won't be able to notice them so much!

My next project will be to create something similar to the image below, I want to buy a map and cut out the following quote in a similar style of swirly writing. It will be a challenge to get the writing onto one piece but once that is sorted hopefully it will be easier.

I've been really getting into papercutting recently as its a really therapeutic hobby. Cutting things with a sharp scalpel does wonders for your sanity!
I'd love to do more but creating templates is quite difficult, finding them online and paying for them to be emailed to you is much simpler.....but sometimes you need a challenge don't you?

And its also great to have something completely personal to you. Have you tried papercutting? Do you like making your own designs or objects for your home?

Do you have any ideas or templates that you've seen?

I'd love to try out some different ones, especially for weddings or new babies!


L xxx

Last Minute Crafty Christmas Ideas

Hey All

I cant't belive it's Christmas in three days! I wanted to share a quick and easy present idea I gave to the other half and his parents. I always find buying for someone else's parents one of the hardest presents to buy, especially as I've only met them a handful of times.

Back in July we went out to celebreate his parents birthday's and induldge in a few cocktails. They both kept to drinking the same cocktail all evening so I decided to make them personailised cocktail kits of these drinks.

This is an easy present to make for someone but it can get pricey dependingo the drink you make and can be better to do it for a group like I did as some items then fell into the communal kit. Items I included in the communal bag were:

• cocktail shaker
• sugar syrup
• lemons
• lemon juice
• soda water

I decided I wanted to go for a rustic look and not like I had just bought the stuff and shoved it in a bag so I decided to get plain glass bottles, luggage labels and as many little jars as was reasonable to put things in. I also opted for 500ml glass bottles as it worked out cheaper for the main alcohol. A litre bottle would have significantly raised the cost per kit. TK maxx is great for cheap kilner bottles but I found a great alternative in Clas Olshen. The500ml bottles were £2.99 and on 3 for 2 as they had Merry Christmas on. Ikea and asda do ver reasonabley priced litre bottles.

Sugar syrup was someting I made as it worked out cheaper. I bought a litre glass bottle for bout £2 then used a 500g bag of sugar. To make it I measured out the sugr in cups then added half the amount of water, melted over the stove then reduced down for 5 mins.

The last part was assembley. I washed and sterilised the bottles then filled them added the luggage tags wit what the cocktails were and how to make them.

I always think a personalised gift goes down well. With the alcohol make sure you shop around. It makes such a difference. Plus by making 500ml cocktails you start a little bar for yourself with leftovers.

Do you make presents?

Love M

xxx