Even more decorations

This year I finally got around to photographing some of the handmade Christmas tree decorations I've made over the years for our family tree. I've focused on just the felt decorations this time, I'll also try and take some more photos of a few of the yarn ones as well.

I made a batch of these pretty white decorations back in 2012 (original blog post) inspired by the decorations shown in the Christmas 2011 Mollie Makes issue.

These delicate little bells decorated with buttons were made about 3 years ago, I made them from a pattern in one of my craft magazines but can't remember which one now!

I absolutely love this little felt gingerbread house decoration (original blog post) this one is from a pattern in "Fa la la felt" a fabulous book packed with beautiful felty Christmas goodness.

This little Christmas Scotty dog was made a joke for my husband (original blog post) - he had thought a 'Poinsetter' was a type of dog, so I made him this and told him that was what it was :-)

These stars are what I made and gave out to family last year. They turned out very pretty with some Christmas fabric from one of my sisters and a tiny wooden star button sewn on.

This snowflake bauble was from another year... I borrowed a friend's diecast machine and couldn't stop cutting out these pretty snowflakes. They were quick to sew on with a bit of silver thread and some little silver star sequins as well to add some extra sparkle.

These two gorgeous felt decorations are full of character and detail. They are both from kits by paper-and-string - she does such beautiful and well thought out patterns. (Original Christmas pudding post)

This simple and pleasing felt tree decoration is another one from "Fa la la felt" - I love the vivid pink with the green and the free hand swirls in contrasting colour on each side (original blog post).

This little stocking was a quick attempt at a Pusheen style decoration for my husband who loves the silly and cute cartoons... didn't quite turn out as well as I had wanted... would have been better out of the stocking and looking plumper.

These two felt decorations I made back in 2010 (original blog post) using a pattern in the December 2010 issue of Sew Hip magazine. I love the ric-rack detail across the middle and the little bit of embroidery at the top of the baubles.

Last one to share with you... these stars I made many years ago to decorate our first Christmas tree together - probably back in 2006. They are as simple as they look - just a simple star shape with some sequins added for a little bit of extra sparkle. The sequins catch the light from the tree lights and I love seeing them up on our tree each year.

I hope you've enjoyed looking at some of my past tree decorations - can you tell how much I love working with felt? I'll get some more photos taken of my yarny ornaments to share soon too :-)

After a bit more sewing I've finished my little deer decoration.

He has a very sweet little embroidered blanket/saddle with gold thread details. He also has a pompom collar with thread tassels attached.

I'm super pleased with him and he is now hanging happily on our very full Christmas tree :-)

Happy Christmas!

I've been trying to finish up this adorable little reindeer felt tree decoration, and I'm very almost there...

I'm a little stuck with the gold embroidery on his blanket saddle so I thought I would just share a photo of him unadorned as he is beautiful already.

He has been made from the lovely kit which came with issue 86 of Mollie Makes.

Crazy Christmas crafting

I've been a busy embroidering bee over the last two months making up a lovely stack of these Nordic style snowflake hearts. For each heart I free hand embroidered the snowflake before blanket stitching together and filling with stuffing.

I'm delighted with how they came out, these are on their way to new homes right now to help make lots of friends and family's trees a tiny bit more Christmasy. 

Felt fantastic

Look at what I got in the post this morning... a copy of Laura Howard's "Super-cute felt animals"!

I can't believe that I was the lucky winner of Super Cute Kawii's recent giveaway - thank you ever so much Marceline!

Quick making

Things have been very hectic here recently - I've been pretty busy since Christmas trying to get my two businesses up and running again after the holiday. In between looking after my two little cheeky monkeys I also sell Phoenix cards (www.phoenix-trading.co.uk/web/jessicafelton/) which as I love cards is good fun. I've also got an Etsy store for some of my crochet designs which I'm currently trying to get refilled (www.etsy.com/shop/prettycrochetthings).

So with all this 'work' type active going on quick and easy makes are all I've got time for. Luckily enough I've been stock piling the craft kits from my issues of Mollie Makes magazine. So here are my latest make - pretty little fox brooches with super cute faces, hope you like them :-)

Christmas tree decorations

 Every year I try to make a batch of tree decorations to give to friends and family - here are some photos of what I managed to make up this year:

First up I did some simple felt candy canes inspired by Bugs and Fishes lovely tutorial.

 

Next I made up a batch of simple stylised robin decorations (my own design)

These thread decorations were inspired by some pretty crochet baubles shown in this years Simply Crochet Christmas issue.

Lastly but most definitely my favourite would be these very adorable crochet snowmen. Loved making them - even thought the tiny tiny pom poms for the hats were a bit tricky! Brilliant free pattern available through Ravelry.

School's out for Summer...

So I needed a quick project to whip up for the 2 teaching assistants and the 2 teachers in Sam's nursery. I've had my eye on these 'Apple for the teacher' brooches for a future project and loved making them up - quick and simple :-)

Pattern is from Heart-Felt Holidays: 40 Festive Felt Projects to Celebrate the Seasons

Movember

Happy Movember everyone!

If you are visiting the UK this month and think there is a strange trend towards moustaches while you are here then let me reassure you that this is just for this one month and most of the men you'll see sporting moustaches are just trying to raise funds for male specific health issue like prostrate & testicular cancer.

This little felt moustache is from the book "Heart felt holidays" and was quick and simple to make. Perfect as a gift for any female friends who want to take part in Movember :-)

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween last night... we did, what with making Halloween cakes, wearing costumes and getting to trick or treat the neighbours. In fact we had such a good time I completely forgot to share this year's Halloween project with you...

Happy bats from Paper-and-string's super cute Halloween decoration tutorial. These little guys are great fun to make and make really lovely Halloween gifts.

Because I was crafting these in a last minute panic I got my felt colours reversed - the body should have been grey and the wings black... not to worry though as they still look like bats :-)

There was also a bit of Halloween baking taking place here too - we did a batch of scary ghost gingerbread biscuits to give out to the neighbours to say 'thank you' for our Halloween treats. I really liked being able to give something out to our neighbours and I'll definitely be doing this again next year :-)

So now we've scared all the ghosts and ghouls it's time to start thinking seriously about Christmas.... now that really is scary!


This post has been shared as part of Lakota's Ta da Tuesday.

October's decoration: Little birds

So sorry for the lack of posting over the last week - Tea Towers is in full party preparation mode as the big event is this Sunday and there is still lots to do.

Thankfully I've managed to make up all the party bags now and I'm really pleased with how they worked, love the look of the simple brown paper bags and I'm hopeful that their recipients will like the contents.

This is just a quick post with my latest Christmas decoration - yet another felt project from the wonderful "Fa la la felt". I took this project along to a new craft group this week and made a couple of the birds up to be sold in aid of The Christie, however the pattern really is very small so I copied it up a bit larger at home and made a couple more birds to add to my fast growing box of decorations. I really love the mix of blue & cream in these and again will have trouble giving them away.

September's decoration: Felt Christmas pudding

Wow - look how early I've managed to get this month's Christmas decoration done!

Once you've recovered from your shock at seeing this month's Christmas decoration complete I'll have to admit that the reason I've made this so quickly is that I won the kit in a giveaway and just couldn't wait to get started on it.

I'm a huge fan of the paper-and-string blog and I love all the beautiful felt products that Sarah sells in her shop so I was delighted when she let me know that I had won one. She usually runs one giveaway each month but as she was bringing out a new range of Christmas goodies she decided to hold a whole week of giveaways.

My favourite out of her Christmas tree decorations (part of her 'sew your own' range) was this little cheerful Christmas pudding - simple and very, very cute. I'm tempted to raid my ribbon stash and have a go at making a few more as presents, but this little guy will definitely be added to my own Christmas tree decorations as I just can't bear to part with him.

Her kits contain everything you need to make your own decoration (apart from a needle and the thread) even the stuffing! The ribbons and button included are just adorable and make the finished item extra special :-)

Pencil toppers - 2nd batch

After much cutting away at my stash of felt I ended up with a load of these little felt pieces - ready to be turned into cupcake pencil toppers.

The quick tutorial for how to make these is over on the Whimsy love blog along with a lovely collection of mushroom, owl & acorn pencil toppers that I was also very tempted to have a go at.

After a bit of a sift through my craft stash I found a few pink/purple sequins to use as sprinkles (Sam calls my sequins "secrets" which is sweet but confusing...) and I made a start.

Because these cupcakes use 4 pieces of felt (unlike the cars I made which only use 2) they were a bit trickier to put together, I found trying to line up both sides of the cupcake a little tricky but after sewing together the first couple I got the hang of it.

All of my pencil toppers have been sewn by hand as I'm definitely not good enough with my sewing machine to trust trying to sew such small pieces of felt, so they have ended up looking a little bit more 'homemade' than the ones on the Whimsy love blog. 

I'm really pleased with these and all ready to get cracking on more party bag projects :-)

August's decoration: Felt baubles & bells

These adorable felt decorations are so pretty that I really don't want to give them away. The pattern is from the Christmas 2011 issue of Mollie Makes and I kept as close to the colours they used as I could.

They are very simple to make - just two pieces of felt cut into a bell or bauble shape and decorated with chain stitch and 'lazy daisy' flowers. I embroidered both sides of my decorations which took a little extra time but I think it was well worth the effort.

Party preparations

My little boy is not going to be little for much longer - in only a couple of months he will be a staggering 4 years old. Because we've kept his past Birthdays pretty low key so far we really wanted to hold a bit more of a party for him this year and invite some of the friends he has made in our new Northern home.

We've been lucky enough to be invited to quite a few toddler Birthday parties so I've got plenty of ideas for how I want to organise it including what sort of games to play (though based on my toddler party experience it may be tricky to get all the little ones joining in - any tips?).

I've also been thinking pretty hard about the party bags - I want to give everyone some lovely things but I don't want to spend a fortune... so I'm going to try and craft my way through most of the contents in the hopes of keeping costs down.

So I've got two months to try and craft the contents of about 17 toddler & baby party bags, to help me in my quest I found a really great post on the Crafty Crow blog which links to a great range of tutorials for making party gifts (party favour post). There are tons of ideas to explore but to start with I wanted to try and make some felt pencil toppers starting with these super cute felt cars from One Crafty Mumma.

Aren't these little cars adorable - I especially love their little button wheels :-)

Right I'm now off to start cutting out a stack of ice cream felt shapes for the next lot of pencil toppers...

June's decoration: Felt hearts

After a day of unsuccessful crocheting I needed a break so I dug out my back copies of Mollie Makes magazine and found that I had marked these felt hearts as a quick project to try.

These hearts were very quick and satisfying... once I had cut out the felt heart shapes I started adding buttons from my stash and had a great time picking them out and sewing them on. Once the buttons were all on it was a very quick job to join the hearts with a running stitch, add a ribbon hanging loop and stuff them lightly.

Ahhh - feeling much better now, nothing like an enjoyable couple of hours of crafting to help you relax :-)

Loving Aranzi Aronzo

After spoiling myself a little and buying one of paperandstring's lovely felt rainbows I needed to find a couple of quick felt projects to justify my purchase... so out came my faithful copy of "The Cute Book" by Aranzi Aronzo.

Seeing as I already had a couple of requests for characters out of this book I started straight away on these. First up I made the serious looking guy you can see on the left. I love his stern expression and his little arms wide open - perhaps a hug would make him smile?

Next up we have the 'mature fish' who is for 'mature people'. She is probably the fiddliest felt character in the book having lots of tiny felt pieces that need cutting and sewing on. I do love her pretty flowers though and did enjoy making her. However, crafting in front of the TV in a hurry did back fire a little this time as I managed to sew her head on to her body the wrong way up... yes that big fin is supposed to be at the top! Never mind - I don't think the recipient even noticed!

March's decoration: Gingerbread house

This tasty looking gingerbread house makes me smile so much. It will have to stay as mine, all mine as I can't bear to give it away.

Very simple to make, a little fiddly to cut out the circular sweeties for the roof, but everything else was easy to do. Annoyingly though I only had enough of the gingery coloured felt to make one decoration so unless I get some more felt supplies in this will be the only one I make.

This is yet another of the decorations from "Fa la la felt", this book is fast becoming my favourite craft book yet!

Meet Terry the Terrier

Terry is one of the Aranzi Aronzo characters (his pattern is from the Cute book)

"Terry is a wire-haired Fox Terrier. Because he's a terrier, we call him Terry. His real name is Terrible, which sounds real strong and cool, but he's not really strong at all. Terry works fro Aranzi Aronzo. His little beady eyes are so cute."

Terry has wandered off with his new proud owner and left me with a couple of requests for felt fish, bye Terry, take care!

January's decoration: Maroushka dolls

Even though 2012 is still very young I'm already thinking and planning about what I want to have made as presents for Christmas. I'm going to try and make all my Christmas presents again this year and after the rush I had when I tried it for Christmas 2010 I think starting as early as possible can only be a good thing.

These lovely ladies are from "Fa la la Felt" (a fantastic book full of wonderful felty Christmas inspiration) and apart from some fiddily cutting out were simple and quick to make. I love their sleepy eyes and I'm extra pleased with how the simple embroidery I did on the flower centres turned out. More decorations out of Fa la la Felt will definitely be making an appearance during the year, the hard thing is going to be resisting making everything in the book!

Oops - I only just managed to get this post in at the very last minute, I'll try to be better organised for February's decoration.