Free make for April

I felt like it was time for a change from the mini bunting tea light holders I put together when I had my crafternoon at the beginning of March.  I wanted something more spring like and hit on using a left over paper napkin I had put on my Easter mood board.

up-cycled jam jars

I haven't tried sticking paper napkins to glass with a glue stick before but it seems to have worked!  The smallest of the three took the longest to do as I thought it would look sweet if I cut out some of  the flowers.

pink roses

For the largest -an old mayo  jar, I roughly traced bird shapes from the Sania Pell book ""The homemade home", I thoroughly recommend  this as an excellent source of inspiration and great detail on how the projects can be achieved.

Spring birds

I found this a little more challenging than the roses as the layers of paper separated so I decided to go with that and flipped them over to make a "facing" image.  Each of the bird shapes are a little different as I didn't want them to be too uniform.

And the last one was the most simple, I just cut a length of the napkin and wrapped it around the final jar and tied it off with a bit of paper ribbon I had salvaged from Christmas day.  I put a couple of loops of this around the necks of the other two jars to finish them off.

Wrapped jar for Spring

I have arranged them on the mantle ready to use this evening although I must remember to add batteries to my shopping list as some of the twinkle lights are not very bright.

Spring mantle

When I set up the twinkle lights I try and maximise their output by using the glass jars and the mirror, I have used one set of lights between two jars draping it over the top of the battery operated candles.  It may look  little odd in the day light but it works really well in the evening with the big light turned off.

On the whole I am very pleased with the result, I did have to remove any excess glue from around the shapes but it rubbed away very easily and left a nice clean finish.  I made the mistake of trying to do this straight away but it tore the paper so my advice would be to wait until it has dried.

Total cost was zero, the napkin had sat in the corner of the dining room since Easter and was in danger of ending up in the recycling, the paper ribbon was salvaged so just the cost of the glue which was probably less than a penny.




A quick update on the Navy skirt, I have changed patterns, when I went to cut it out I realised that because of the pockets it would be too confusing for me to work out how to taper between the waist and the hip as well as adding the pocket so I have gone for a much simpler design.  As usual with my sewing I am spend a fare amount of time thinking about it and faffing around instead of getting on with it, somethings never change.  I am hoping to get it done this week,  so long as I don't get distracted!


Have you had any free makes lately? or are your energies being directed towards your sewing ?

Friday crafternoon

After my lovely relaxing weekend in Norfolk I seem to have lost my mojo a bit and have been feeling a little bit blergh, disinterested, not with it.. So I thought I would treat myself a little Friday crafternoon and came up with another jam jar tealight holder design that used up a couple more pages from "the book"

recycled jam jars and old book pages

I didn't have a clear idea in my head of what I wanted to do so I just grabbed a couple of jars from my hoard and pulled out the washi tapes and my big tin of stamps, punches etc and started playing around with the stamps on the book pages.

Crafternoon supplies

The tapes never made it out of the storage jars, I was quite happy to convert the stampings into mini bunting

mini bunting

I played around with over printing, using bigger stamps but tearing the design into smaller flags and with the depth of print.

mini bunting T light holders

I had a few issues tying off the string tight enough and had resorted to a dab of sticky tape to hold a couple of the flags in place but this now gives the undulating line making it look more like bunting when it is hung out.

twinkle lights in jam jars

They ended up filled with the twinkle lights from Christmas rather than T lights as they reflect more light back into the room when stood in front of the mirror,


Another no spend make and my mojo is a little less faded.


What are everyone's weekend plans? It is Mothers day on Sunday here in the UK so I expect there will be plenty of pampering and treats around.  My daughter is away this weekend so I have already been treated to a lovely bunch of bright pink Lillies and and some delicious Green and Blacks chocolate.

Free make 3 -St Valentine's tealight holders

Love is in the air, not to mention the supermarkets and high street shops! the 2016 St Valentines shopping season has been declared open. This year I have lots of love but not much cash at the moment so the tea light holding jam jars are in for a make over.

I have created a mosaic affect using this selection of  this"decorative tape" I got from e-bay.
This was definitely a case of buyer beware also known as don't get clicky on e-bay!  I thought I was buying washi tape but what I got was a decorative plastic tape.  I was quite overwhelmed by the sheer volume of reels as much as anything and strangely there doesn't seem to be very much tape on any of them. I think I will be good for St Valentine's related tapes for a good few years to come!

I am guessing that most people do not have this kind of tape lying around at home but you probably do have a glue stick or sticky tape and an old magazine or flyer and this would work just as well and of couse this would make it free.  I just snipped a piece of tape off, then cut it down into smaller pieces and stuck them on haphazardly to form a rough heart shape. This may be easier to do with paper as you can try things against each other to see how they look before sticking it down.  I tried to put something in the middle like a heart of some words to act as a focal point and I overlapped some edges but also left a few small gaps.

I will be putting either tealights or twinkle lights in mine, but they would work very well filled with sweets or chocolates.

I am planning to use the same technique to make my Valentine's card and I will pop up a piccy once I have made it.


Do you celebrate St Valentines? or do you think it is just a commercial fuss over nothing? please share your thoughts in the comments

Free make 2 - Vintage Sewing pattern displays

With my thrifty January head on I was looking round for more projects that I could complete without having to spend any money.  I remembered some photo frame I had brought from poundland in the summer and wanted to fill them with a sewing related display so hit on the idea of displaying a couple of my vintage sewing patterns in them.

I don't have a vast collection of vintage patterns, in fact this represents two thirds of my whole collection!  The patterns are narrower than the width of the frames so I have inserted a small off cut of fabric down the side to fill the gap and also to represent a possible fabric to use for the the pattern.  I like this idea as it gives you a good visualisation of how a finished garment may look and I might adopt this for future sewing projects.

I was concerned that the frames looked very white against the aged paper of the patterns so I tried to distress one of the frames with a used tea bag, I am not convinced it is a good effort and looks more like I have split my tea so I will probably wipe it all off.  I am sure that there are products out there that I could buy to achieve a distressed or aged effect, however, I am trying to use what I have available.

My original intentions for these frames was to to remove the glass and replace it with cork sheeting so that I can use them as mini notice boards to pin up our tickets and mementos from out days out, so at some point these will be re-purposed.


I am calling this another January free make as this was all things I already had in but I would estimate the cost at no more that 5 or 10 pounds depending very much on the cost of the vintage patterns you use for your display.


Thanks for popping by and please share if you have any no cost ideas for aging the frames.

Free Make 1 - mini paper bunting

I should really have been cutting up T shirts to make strips for my rag rug but I have had this little make in my head since before Christmas and it just wouldn't sit back and wait its turn.

To make this mini bunting I have used pages from the recycled book I brought back from holiday that I am still finding ways to use up. This little project only used one and a bit pages so it hasn't made much of a dent on it!  This does mean that this would be a good project to use up any small pieces of nice paper that you have left over, I think my intention was to try use some of the off cuts when I was doing my Christmas wrapping but it ended up as no more than a thought.

This is how I did it

• Take a book page and fold it in half long ways

• Cut down the fold

• Fold each piece in half long ways again

• Cut or tear into small flags about the size of the top of your thumb

• Glue the bottom edge but ensure the top is not stuck down as the thread needs to pass trhough here

• Cut a little "V" shape into the bottom

• Thread onto string, you can play around with the spacing and take some off or add more if needed.

• Hang on the edge of your shelf edge, mantle piece, mirror frame or any where you want.

Initially I put this up using blu-tac and it looked pretty bad especially as it seemed to draw attention to the parts of the shelf where I had made a bad attempted to do some "distressing".  A quick look on Pinterest  and I saw a couple of posts for mini bunting using washi tape and it was a good excuse to crack open the pack of washi tapes I has received for Christmas.

An easy, quick, free make as I didn't pay for the book, the string is recycled from my Advent calendar project, and the glue is of no real cost. I am pleased with the result and now just need to make another string for the next shelf down.

I am intending to feature a few "free makes" in the coming weeks as money is always tight in January and February just when we could do with a bit of cheering up, so keep checking back.