Christmas time is here - How to craft some quirky Christmas cards

Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you have a lovely time with your loved ones - 

enjoying being together, enjoying a lovely decorated house, lovely food and well thought out presents.

I had to do some major Christmas shopping to do before Christmas Eve, that’s why I’m running a little late with this blog post.

While we’re talking about Christmas shopping, do you find it hard to be all secretive about the good things you just bought? When I buy a present, I want to give it to the concerned person right away. “Last Minute” Christmas shopping is definitely the right for me; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to cope with all the suspense.

I want to show you how I made my handcrafted Christmas cards this year. I definitely needed a quick crafty fix to make me feel Christmassy for the time leading up to Christmas.

As you can see again, I can't help going for bright colours. With six hours of daylight, I don't feel like the traditional dark green and Santa red. I need something more quirky and fun.  

You need:

- Cards and envelopes made from recycled paper

- Burlap like fabric

- Felt scraps 

- Pritt stick 

- Scissor

How to do it:

1.     Cut out lots of little dots out of the felt scraps.

2.     Then cut out the Christmas tree out of the burlap like fabric. It helps folding the fabric in the middle when cutting to make both sides of the tree similar looking.

3.     Glue the tree shaped fabric onto the card using a Pritt stick. Don’t use fluid glue as it will make the card go wrinkly.

4.     Then start arranging the different coloured felt dots onto the Christmas tree and glue them on with the Pritt stick. Different colours set a different tone as you can see in the below example. 

If you have an idea on a quick crafty Christmas project you want to share, post the link and I have a visit! :)

Fall Lanterns - This little light of mine

A few days ago, on the 11^th of November, people in different countries were celebrating St. Martins Day. This festive day remembers one of the most famous Christian Saints, the bishop Martin of Tours, who lived in the 4th century, who is a patron for the children and the poor.

He dedicated his life to Christianity, first by living as a monk and later on by serving as a bishop. He continued to live a very simple and humble life which inspired many people of his time. 

The legend says that while he was in service for the roman military but already believing in Christianity, he helped a beggar during a snowstorm by sharing his only belonging, his coat. He took his sword and cut the coat in half and gave one half to the poor man. Later in the night he dreamt of Jesus, who revealed that the beggar was actually himself.

 This festive day of St. Martin became the marked beginning of harvesting. People also started to do a fasting period after St. Martins Day which later was later shortened and which was named Advent by the church.

St. Martin doesn’t seem to be a festive day here in the UK, but I remember celebrating it when I grew up in Germany. As kids, we used to go with paper lanterns through the streets at night and singing songs about St. Martin. I loved to carry that little light though the darkness and to see so many others crafted lanterns from my friends. The air was getting colder and you could see your own breath creating a in a little white cloud when exhaling. 

In nursery school we would build a lantern as followed:

-          Round cardboard box from the supermarket (normally for camembert cheese)

-          A 4 transparent paper to decorate

-          Metal wire

-          80 cm long wooden stick with a little hook on one end

We would then decorate the transparent paper in different ways.

-          Paint on leaves and use them as stencils to print onto the transparent paper

-          Paint onto the transparent paper with crayons and melt the wax with an iron

-          Cut out shreds of different coloured tissue paper to glue onto the transparent paper.

We would glue both ends of the transparent paper together, which would create a cylinder shape.  Then we would glue the round cardboard lids onto both ends of the cylinder to make a bottom and a top for the Lantern. Obviously we would have to cut out a circle of the top so that the candle doesn’t burn through the cardboard. Then you would bend the wire, and fix both ends onto the lid of the lantern. Finally you have to hang the lantern via the wire onto a little hook fixed to the wooden stick.

 My lanterns are made slightly different. I bought a transparent hard plastic sheet from paper chase (roughly £2). I cut it into shape (80 cm long, 20 cm high) and decorated it with coloured transparent paper. From my experience it’s not as easy to get here in the UK, so a good alternative is coloured tissue paper, which you can get in any craft shop.

It’s not yet Advent, so I prefer having a little fall lantern in the living room that creates a cosy atmosphere. Steven discovered a 3 hour video of a burning fireplace on YouTube which we like to watch on our Xbox. Hopefully we will be able to have a real fireplace one day. But what is better on those long dark nights then having burning candles and a fireplace in the living room. 

What do you do to decorate your home to make it cosy in those dark days leading up to Christmas? Please share :) 

Coat of arms - The secret of our ancestors

The coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield, which was originally used by medieval knights to cover, protect and indentify the wearer. The design became a unique symbol to an individual person or family.

I found myself searching for clues of my family name in the internet. There are lots of websites that provide information on the origin of your family name. More information can be purchased together with little souvenirs or a print out of the family history. I don't know how reliable those websites are but they information provided looks intriguing.

Since I started watching the TV programmes "Who do you think you are?" and "Finding your Roots", I am curious to find out more about my ancestors. Both series investigate the family history of their famous guests with traditional genealogical research, though the series "Finding your roots" also uses genetic research to determine hidden cultural origin.

It's not about the life of people, who found their way into History books. It's about the people, whose stories have been forgotten, but who achieved incredible by trying to survive - History becomes all of a sudden very vivid and personal.

A story that impressed me very much is the family history of British actor David Sachet, shown in the 5th series of the British version of "Who do you think you are?". He discovers that his paternal ancestors were actually Russian Jews. Due to imminent persecution, they had to flee Russia over the Turkish border. From there they had to travel via Prussia, South Africa and France, to finally arrive to the UK, where they were able to settle down. During this journey they had to change their names a few times to hide their Jewish origin, which finally resulted in the French sounding surname "Sachet".

I need to make my project one day and search on websites like ancestry.com or myheritage.com for more information on my family tree. Those websites have access to an online database where billions of historical records worldwide (birth, marriage, death, census, military and immigration records) are uploaded, which makes it comparatively easy to trace family history. 

For now, I made it my project to sew a family banner with the coat of arms of my boyfriend's surname.

I was searching for clues on mine and Steve's surnames, when I found to my surprise an entry on his surname on Wikipedia. His name has apparently Irish origin and is closely connected to the history of Ulster. To have a Wikipedia entry on your family name is really cool, so I had to honour it by sewing a banner with his coat of arms.

Here is a list of what the symbols could refer to:
The Lion represents a great Warrior or Chief.
The open red hand is a symbol of the Province of Ulster.
The crecent is the hop of glory or the sign of the second son.
Red is the colour of a Warrior and symbolises Military Strengh.

There were two things in the process of crafting the banner, which were new to me.

First one is a technique in embroidery called couching, in which yarn or other material is laid across a fabric material and is fastened in place with small stitches of the same or a different yarn.
I used this technique to frame the banner with a grey woollen threat, which would contrast the white ground fabric and the ruby coloured motives.

The second technique was making a tassel. It's a lovely creative ornament which is similar to the making of a pom-pom. If you are interested to know more about the how-to, here is a link to a YouTube video tutorial.  

I hope this little excursion to history was inspiring and maybe make you want to learn more about your ancestors and family tree, too.

What has a rainbow drop got to do with Gabrielle Roth?

I guess it's nothing really, but finding a headline that covers both of my topics of the day is not that easy. If you have any better ideas or suggestions, leave a comment! 

A few weeks ago, I discovered that the dancer and musician Gabrielle Roth, who created the 5 Rhythms in the early seventies, passed away in October 2012. That made me remember her dance seminar of which I was present for in Hamburg, in 2002 with her son Jonathan Horan.

The seminar started on a Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday evening. My friend Anne, I and some fifty other people danced through the whole weekend. No judgement of dance moves just the freedom of expression through my body and the bliss of forgetting myself in the rhythm of the music. 

Gabrielle Roth dreamt of becoming a dancer since she was a small child, but the experience of going to a catholic school where the nuns condemned the body as a source of pleasure and the experience of a strict ballet teacher who punished her for every wrong move, made her abandon her dream when she grew older.

Eventually, she became a masseuse in the retreat centre Esalen, which focuses upon humanistic alternative education like psychology, meditation, yoga and spirituality. One day, Fritz Pearls asked her to teach movement classes. She was surpised to discover how many of  her students were stiff in their motoric, afraid of letting their body move freely. In an exercise she asked the participants of the class to lie on the floor and to shake their hips.This simple but challenging excercise released surpressed emotions in a lot of the participants who had to start sobbing. 

Gabrielle discovered there, that the body can't lie; "put into motion, and the truth kicks in".

She realized that emotions, which have been denied, are trapped in the memory of our body. By bringing the body parts into motion, different emotions can emerge and confront us with the neglected truth of our body. All she wanted from this time on, was to "seduce people back into their body". 

Over time she created the 5 Rhythms which are connected to our emotional landscape:

Flowing - Fear

Staccato - Anger

Chaos - Sadness

Lyrical - Joy

Stillness - Compassion

All together are called a "wave". Dancing through the wave can help us to re-connect us with our soul. 

We dance through the different emotions until we come to rest in stillness. Like in meditation, we focus on our breath and our heartbeat. 

The 5 Rhythms are a powerful exercise. Although there are a lot of trained 5 Rhythms teacher everywhere in the world, there is a easy exercise that you can do at home and which can teach you to free your body. 

In the book series of the "Peaceful warrior" by Dan Millman, the writer suggests 25 very basic and easy to follow fitness exercises. Like in Yoga, he points out the benefits they have on our emotional and energetic body. One exercise is called "free motion" and he recommends doing at least this exercise daily if you don't have time for the other.

The instructions are the following:

- Take at least 30 seconds for this exercise

- Let your body flow in a continous motion

- Be relaxed, aware and breath deeply

- Move in different level of height: close to the ground, stretch to the side, stand on your tip toes.

- Move without thinking or planning what to do next. Try new movements, vary them.

This exercise is supposed to strenghen creativity, spontaneity, grace and confidence. I try to include every part of my body during this exercise. In autogenic training you have to move your consciousness from one body part to another (e.g. hips, thighs, lower leg, ankles, foot and toes) in order to relax, I try to do the same, but instead I try to include them into the motion (roll my neck, bend my back, stretch my arms).

Now, to something totally different. In case you were wondering, what I was up to the past weeks: voilà!

The name for this crafty project is called Rainbow drop. I am always amazed how sunlight and rain can create something as beautiful as a rainbow.

The explanation of the phenomenon: the rainbow is caused by light being bent when entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it. The observer sees the layer of reflecting water droplets in front of him (with the sun in his back). All rainbows are full circles, however, the average observer on the ground sees only approximately the upper half of the arc.
The rainbow has always had an interesting role in our culture (e.g. religion or mythology) and is used as a symbol in our society (e.g. peace symbol).

My idea for this project was not to simply do a cloud mobile but to reference the magical aspect of the sunlight, which can create a rainbow with the sparkling sequins on the frame and the rainbow drops
I choose not to use the spectrum colours of a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), but to choose a colour palette (pink, orange, yellow, mint, turquoise) that has a bright and cheerful character.

The Cloud is made of wire (pipe cleaner wrapped around it to enforce the frame). I cut grey felt into long stripes and sew them together with the sewing machine, winding it around the carcase. I then sewed the sequins onto the felt with a transparent plastic thread.

The raindrops were an easy project compared to the cloud frame. After cutting the rainbow drop shapes out of the felt, I decorated them with colour matching sequins. I sewed the matching felt sides together and stuffed it with a bit of wadding before sealing the loophole.

The tricky part was to arrange to drops, that they would hang evenly in one line. It is definitely easier if you have the mobile lying on the floor, and knot the thread to the raindrops first. Like that you can rectify with the length of the thread before tying it to the cloud frame.

Something I am really chuffed about is the winner of the Eurovision Contest 2014: Conchita Wurst, I just love her!

I would love to fight for the right to grow a beard, but some things in life are just unfair ;-)

Filou, the flounder

I can re-assure you, Filou is still alive. I haven't eaten him, I promise!

How it all started: I love flicking through the cooking books of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Not because I'm looking for recipes (you know that cooking is not my favourite past time, although eating is), but rather to enjoy the lovely illustrations. I particularly like the book "Hugh's Three Good Things", which has previously inspired my vegetable bunting. 

I have to write a little bit more about Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall as he is such an inspiring person. In 1999, the London journalist moved to the countryside of Dorset, to film a TV show about how he dealt with becoming a self sufficient small holder in the series "Escape to River Cottage".

 Along the way he shows how he deals with occuring problems due to his own inexpericence, gives insight in country life and  introduces the local farmers.

As the TV Series becomes more popular, he started expanding his adventures - included fishing, foraging, going on mushroom forray, seasonal farming, chicking holding, cheese making, bread baking, preserving, home brewing and much more. Besides his cooking books he has another more specific series of books "River Cottage Handbook No.1-10", in which he lets specialists detail about their own area of expertise (e.g. bread baking, brewing). 

He now supports many campaigns, like Hugh's Fish Fight (saving certain areas in the sea for fish population recovery. By the way, Tim Mälzer is a huge supporter of this campaign in Germany), Chicken-out Campaign (to stop chicken from being reared in cages for egg production or fatting them to sell the meat), the Land Share Project (to re-purpose unused land for allotments) and much more.

I respect Hugh as he is a man of simplicity who likes to share his gifts with others, is happy to trade knowledge and talent, he enjoys engaging with the community and promotes healthy living, and all in all he's very down-to-earth. It always inspires me to see what a single person can do to help others.  

Coming back to where I started ... I saw the quirky drawing of a flatfish in one of Hugh's cooking books, and so I decided to sew one just for the fun of it. 

I finally got round to using the embroidery foot of my sewing machine to embroider the felt patches and to create the textured scaling of the fish. Unintentionally, the embroidered scales created bubbles, which although probably wrong, I think looks great.

Another premier was the "quilting" of the fins and tail of the flounder. I stuffed the pre-sewed fabric with wadding and embroidered it with a wave like pattern.

I used up nearly all of my fluorescent NEON thread which I bought at Lidl, so I was very happy when I discovered, that Hobby Craft now finally stocks the NEON thread from Gütermann. I could stare for hours at my new NEON threads, my little gems.

What do you think of the new NEON threads from Gütermann and for what sewing project would you like to use them for?

Paper Cutting - please cut here

The past weeks have been a bit tough on me. Due to commuting I wasn't able to do much crafting. When I finally had the time, crafting felt like working from a to-do list. It actually felt like duty, not a pleasure. How can you share joy in a blog if you don't enjoy yourself?

But Happy Days! I'm now waiting for my new part time job to start, which will be just around the corner. I enjoyed a few days off and I've recharged my batteries. Now I am slowly starting to get creative again and playing around with ideas.

When I can't do crafting, like the past weeks, I tend to buy craft books as a surrogate (although it works only as a 5% replacement and then I get jealous of the cool stuff other people do).
The past few weeks I piled up a nice collection of "Mollie Makes Specials" and Sewing books like "50 Fabric Animals" and "So Pretty! Felt" which I now flick through in enjoyment and am inspired.

What I learned so far of myself is that I like to sew or craft things based on my own designs. It would be easier to learn sewing techniques by following tutorials but I find following a tutorial 1:1 is sometimes a bit boring as there is no place for spontaneity or creativity.

Unfortunately working from my own designs makes the process predestined for mistakes ... And correcting them can be quite time consuming e.g. Yesterday I worked on a table runner with geometric felt shapes but then it reminded me of the scarecrow in "Wizard of Oz" and I had to stop sewing. I blame the square patches for it.

The photos in this blog post show some paper cutting I made in January. Paper Cutting is a fun technique and easy to do if you don't have enough time for more complex projects. As you can probably imagine, it was the perfect occasion to use my old favourite NEON coloured paper again. Below you can see a list of my Paper Cutting Designs, in chronological order:

- The little hut in the woods

- The Palace of the Maharaja

- Family Welcome Sign

- Matryoshka 

Paper cutting has a really interesting history as it was first documented in China in the 6th century. From there it spread out to other cultures and countries which evolved their own technique and style. Paper cutting experienced recently a revival in modern art. Contemporary artists (e.g. Mia Perlman, Rob Ryan, Béatrice Coron) and their works are introduced in the inspiring book "Paper Cutting" by Chronicle Books, which I can't recommend highly enough! It's beautiful! 

Once upon a time

The past weeks have been interesting for me. I've joined "The Big Blogging Bootcamp" with Elizabeth Sellers - her blog Rosalilium - in the beginning of January. Besides learning a lot of new stuff and being able to ask questions. It's great to meet some many other keen bloggers who are interested to share and to exchange experiences. 

Another change to come is my new part time job, which will hopefully give me spare time again to follow up creative ideas on sewing and crafting.

I received some great Christmas presents: a light box (inclusive daylight lamps and a tripod) and a graphics tablet. Maybe you notice that I'm trying to figure out how the light box works for taking photos. The graphics tablet is a more complex thing to discover, but it essentially works like drawing with pens. The difficult part is to figure out all the functions on the drawing program, like the freeware GIMP. 

The following months, I would like to write more about the book "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.The book is actually a 12 week course in discovering and recovering your creative self, consisting of a weekly task list and weekly essays. Additionally you have to write a morning journal and go regularly on an artist date to fill your creative source. I read the book when I was twenty years old, recommended by a creative friend who got the book recommended by a creative friend and so on. Since that time the book proved itself to be a great support on various occasions, like a good friend who whispers words of encouragement in your ear when you need it.
* You can find now a complete online course on Julia Cameron's website, have a look.

Have you had a book in your life that inspired you and changed your creative life? Have you read "The Artist's Way" yourself and what are your experiences with it?

What about some pretty Winter Decoration for the New Year?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a good start to the New Year 2014.

I had an amazing Christmas this year with my family staying over. We crafted and decorated the house with festive paper chains, candle lanterns and Christmas tree decorations. My boyfriend cooked a festive meal on the 25th - turkey with roast vegetables. I do have to admit though, that I'm not much of a Christmas pudding fan. 

I had also tremendous fun buying gifts for everyone. My brother really enjoys watching British comedies, such as "Black Books" and "The IT Crowd", to name a few. It was recommended that I get him Channel 4 classic "Green Wing" to go with "Spaced" that I'd already bought. I hadn't seen it before and was a bit baffled when I started watching it yesterday. I began to second guess if he'd like it? Luckily he loves it, and he advised me that he thought that it would take me about 8 episodes to get used to the humour. We shall see.

"Spaced" on the other hand... I can really relate with the character of the artist Brian. I think it is the best parody of an artist ever made. This strange man - who lives on the ground floor of this apartment house, trying to be creative and to express his troubled emotions, epic - I would highly recommend it!

We got rid of our Christmas tree quite early this time, because we have a small house and it was nice to get the space back, especially for crafting. We still have some decorations remaining including some silver sparkly twigs, decorated with handmade felt baubles. 

You will need:

- Twigs (you get the sprayed ones from the florist, or you can spray them yourself)

- Felt (a good way to use up some felt scraps)

- Various pearls and beads

- Fabric scissors

- Pearl cotton embroidery floss

- Needle

So here is a quick How-To:

1. Cut out little circles of the felt scraps in various sizes and colours. 

2. Thread the needle and pick up a bead to fix it with a knot to mark the start.

3. You can add some more beads or start threading the felt circles. To achieve the form of a bauble, start     

    picking small circles moving to bigger ones and then picking smaller ones towards the end again.

4. When you are finished threading, fix the pile of felt circles with a bead and a knot. 

5. Make a little loop out of the rest of the thread, to have a little hook to hang up the felt bauble. 

I wish everyone a happy new year for 2014, may all your wishes come true!

A new approach: the Christmas Wreath

I am so excited that my family will come to the UK to celebrate Christmas with us. That will be the first time, that I will host Christmas at my home. Luckily Steve is a great chef, which will save us from any dissappointment of me cooking. I am now all about decorating the house; we even bought a real Christmas tree, which fills the living room with the scent of pine twigs. 

There are some differences in how Germany and the UK celebrate Christmas. The best known one is probably that in Germany presents are given in the evening of the 24th, where in the UK it's in the morning of the 25th. Germany versus UK, it's Christmas markets, Vanillegipferl, Stollen, Advent Wreath versus Christmas crackers, Mince pies, Christmas jumpers and Christmas pudding.

One of my current craft projects is a Christmas wreath. This popular Christmas decoration represents the everlasting life given by Jesus. In Germany it is more common to have an Advent Wreath, which has four candles, each representing an Advent Sunday. Each Sunday a candle gets lit until Christmas has arrived. 

Besides the traditional colours of green, red and gold, it recently becomes more popular to have a colourful approach on Christmas Decoration with pastel shades and neon colours. A shopping tour to Paperchase inspired me to do a Christmas wreath myself, using sparkling sequins and Scandinavian design. 

 What you will need:

- Black jewellery wire (0,6 mm/10 m)

- Clematis willow wreath (40 cm)

- Pierced multicolour sequins

- Wire cutter

Start by threading the sequins on the wire. You can pick each sequin with the wire cutter and twist the wire until the sequin seats tightly. Leave 5 mm space before twisting the next sequin. 

You can divide the wire in parts of one meter lengh. Now it is easy to wrap the sequined wire around the willow wreath. To avoid loose ends just twist the ends of the wires together, where they meet. 

You can decorate the wreath with a ribbon bow and hang baubles, Christmas figures, jingle bells or a written blessing in the centre.

For the final touch I decided to sew a white dove, a symbol of peace (the dove that returned to Noah's ark with an olive leaf). I made it out of white felt and embroidered it with pearl cotton (pink, orange, turquoise) and some lovely ribbon I found in my favourite sewing shop Naden und Faden (Needle and Thread) back in my hometown Lübeck in Germany.

I hope you all have a lovely time decorating your homes for Christmas and getting excited of spending some lovely time with your family and close ones! Countdown is running! x

What's his name, Mr. Bauble Bunting or Mr. Potato?

I made this little Soft Toy as a birthday present for a friend. I gave him the name "Mr. Bauble Bunting" inspired by christmas baubles and bunting. It's a catchy name that resulted in my boyfriend singing his name in Jamaican reggae style (and became a tune that sticks to your head!). 

Since the actual Birthday party, Mr. Bauble Bunting had a name change, because everyone called him Mr. Potato man. I guess this name does fit much better!

One of my favourite parts in the process is picking the colour scheme. 

The felt is available in so many wonderful bright colours, which makes it fun to experiment with.

My choice of a 5 colours scheme was: yellow, pastel green, pink, orange and turquoise.

You will need:

- Felt (5x different colours)

- Plain fabric (I used Lenda Beige from IKEA)

- Pearl Cotton thread or a fabric pen

- Pencil

- Scissors

- Cardboard for the stencil

- Pins

- Sewing thread / needle

- Ribbon

Quick tutorial

1. I made a stencil out of cardboard and marked the shape onto the fabric with a pencil. Then I 

    cut around the shape creating a 1 cm boarder to have some overlapping fabric for when 

    sewing the back and front together later in the process.

2. I cut a few felt triangles from each colour and placed them on the fabric. Then I fixed 

    triangles of the same colour in a row with needles (when attached like this, you can sew 

   easily over them with the sewing machine).

3. I sewed twice over the row of felt triangles. 

4. Then I repeated the procedure with the next row of felt triangles...

5. ... until the rows were complete. 

6. I drew the face with a fabric pen and then stitched the lines with the indigo pearl cotton 

    thread. I cut out two little circles of the pink felt to use as cheeks and hand sewed them onto 

    the face.

7. I used some ribbons for the hair and sewed them to the fabric pointing inwards.

8. I fixed the overlapping felt with needles, so that when I sew the insides together with the

    sewing machine, they won't be caught in-between the seam.

8. Then I turned the toy inside out and stuffed it with wadding. 

One of my favourite moments when making soft toys is the moment when you finally can turn the inside out. Then you finally get to see how the idea works out, and how the soft toy comes to life.

I guess it's up to my friend to get to know him better, she has him now - so I can't tell you much about this guy. 
I will ask her though next time I see her how he's doing :)

Have you ever made a present, where the recipient of the gift saw something else in it and named/used it differently?