Celebrating Craftmas with Laura Ashley

I love getting crafty for Christmas. I have relatively low crafting standards at home, I’m content to make cotton wool snowmen with my 4 year old and other such delights. Sometimes it’s nice to do something for myself, so one rainy Sunday afternoon I found myself braced against the elements and heading to another wonderful Ministry of Craft event, this time in conjunction with Laura Ashley.

We were in the cosy upstairs of Rosylee Tearooms, 25 bloggers gathered for some Christmas crafting, or Craftmas if you will. We spilt into two groups and I started by making a large origami box. Using large squares of beautiful Laura Ashley wallpaper, intricately folded into a large-ish gift box with lid. We then created a large bow to top the box with, again out of strips of wallpaper. I chose a contrasting paper to my box. It’s really rather effective and I’ll be recreating this at home with some nice thick wrapping paper.

Once we’d completed our first craft task we were treated to a selection of canapés, my favourite were the mini tomato bruschetta, but there was something for everyone, even gluten free options.

Suitably fortified we moved on to the sewing machines, a personal fear of mine. I’ve not used one since school and even then I wasn’t known for my skills. I am a nervous machinist, hand sewing is fine though. Thankfully I was under the expert guidance of Jeanette from the Ministry of Craft and I was sat near Hollybobs who really knows her way around a sewing machine.

We were set to work making little drawstring bags to put presents in. Using Laura Ashley fabric we made little red sacks and decorated them with cute bunting. Jeanette soon got the measure of me and entrusted me with her unpicker, which was just as well as I managed to sew all the wrong things together. It was easy to use the machine, my problem was more a lack of care, attention and confidence. Regardless I managed to make a pretty attractive looking bag.

I was really pleased with my efforts, they may lack finesse but they’re not terrible. Spending another afternoon with the Ministry of Craft has done wonders for improving my crafting confidence, which is so important when crafting with the small boy. My New Years resolution is to find more crafting me time and to learn how to use my sewing machine!

You can read more about our craftmas afternoon on the Laura Ashley blog. I think a lovely time was had by all, thank you to Laura Ashley, the Ministry of Craft and Joe’s Bloggers for arranging it. It’s amazing what can be created from wallpaper and upholstery fabric!

Christmas Crafting at The Ministry of Craft Manchester

One of the best things about Christmas is it gives me an excuse to get my craft box out and create ~~wonky~~ rustic homemade items for our home. A few years ago I made cross stitch cards for everyone, I often think about making my own cards and presents but I lack both confidence and time, so it was nice to sneak off for an afternoon at The Ministry of Craft in Manchester, to indulge my crafty side and have a little bit of pre-Christmas me time.

We arrived at The Ministry of Craft in the basement of the Fred Aldous store in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. I’d never been before but it is heaven for crafters of all kinds. The Ministry of Craft is a lovely, peaceful room, fully kitted out for all of their craft classes. We were there to decorate Christmas stockings, drink coffee, eat cake and have a natter. Sunday afternoons don’t get much better than that.

The lovely Ministry of Craft team gave us a quick run through of what we were going to do. We were given basic Christmas stockings and we were going to decorate them with fabric and bondaweb, with optional hand stitching, buttons, gems and anything else we could throw at it.

I opted to cut out and stick on three blue stars, the larger of the three I spent some time hand sewing some detail on with silver thread, then I used some adhesive gems to pick out the corners of the star, I was really pleased with how it looked, even if it did look a bit ~~wonky~~ rustic.

Throughout the afternoon the Ministry of Craft team were on hand to talk us through whatever we were attempting. They were very patient and encouraging and made me really want to go back and try my hand at something else.

Proudly displaying our finished stockings

It was a really restful afternoon in a too busy month, it was so lovely to take some time out to spend focusing on a nice task, drinking coffee and chatting. We were invited guests of the Ministry of Craft and Growing Up Milk Info and I think we all had a really lovely crafty afternoon.

Mother’s Day Toddler Crafts

Like most toddlers our little one lives for a bit of gluing and sticking. If he’s given a piece of paper he’ll draw and colour, or cut it into shapes. Toddlers love all that stuff, and if you sprinkle it liberally with glitter then so much the better.

As Mother’s Day approaches we decided it’d be a nice thing for him to create a mini masterpiece for his Nan. We’d recently taken delivery of a fab activity pack from DoCrafts. The activity packs are brilliant, value for money selections of craft items. We got a general activity pack, but they also do seasonal ones for Christmas and Easter which are a really great idea, especially if you do a lot of toddler crafts.

We sat down and together we unpacked our activity pack. It was heaving with products to choose from and there’s a real variety of craft items, it costs £9.95 and the products inside are worth about double that.

We chose the coloured feathers, foam letters and the chunky pipe cleaners. From our own collection I grabbed a piece of green paper, some glitter and some pva glue. What you have there is the ultimate recipe for toddler joy.

We set to work, because this was a special picture for his Nan I did give him some artistic direction, mainly in the placing of the foam letters in the right order and the twisting of the pipe cleaner into a heart shape. Everything else was his own, pretty impressive work. I loved how he just tipped the glitter into the heart shape without prompting or suggestion. He chose the colour of the feathers and glued them on himself. In fact he glued everything on himself.

He was so proud of his little picture. I have tended to shy away from crafts at home because I don’t like the mess, but this has really encouraged me to do more with him, especially now I’ve seen how proficient he’s become with the paintbrush and glue as well as how much he really loved doing it.

I think we’ll have regular crafting sessions at home now, it’s fun, the look on his face and us working together on something was just joyful, and it’s not actually as messy as I thought.

Disclaimer: We were sent the activity pack free of charge by DoCrafts for review purposes, but it’s a cracking little bag of goodies, and these are our honest opinions.

Crafts: Glass Painting for the unartistic

Three million years ago I went to art college. People think this makes me some kind of Mancunian Monet but alas no, I studied journalism and thankfully never picked up a paintbrush other than to redecorate my flat.

Besides being able to draw a bit I genuinely have very little artistic talent. This doesn’t stop me from trying. I’m a firm believer in doing things you enjoy that you might not necessarily excel at. If you’re going to have a hobby it needs to be fun and enjoyable.

I like crafts. I enjoy drawing with my son and making things with him. I went through a cross stitch phase a few years ago which I loved, and last year I tried and failed to teach myself crochet. I was browsing the DoCrafts website and I happened upon the Aquaglass Glass Painting Starter Kit, I’ve always wanted to give glass painting a try so I ordered it.

It’s a cracking little kit which will go quite a lot way I think. It has a tube of black relief outliner and four little pots of coloured glass paint (red, yellow, green and blue) as well as a little paintbrush. It doesn’t come with an instruction sheet but it was easy to figure out.

Use the black outliner to create your design, once that’s dry then paint with the coloured paints. As it was my first go I chose a nice jar to paint. I thought I’d go with a really simple design and just paint coloured panels around the jar. This was quite easy to do, though my brushwork with the black paint was a bit splodgy.

My first attempt was not beautiful, but I’m quite pleased with it. I’m looking forward to trying my hand at glass painting a few other things, I reckon I’ll ruin a few more jam jars first until I get the hang of it properly. I’ve got some lovely plain candle holders which I plan to decorate.

I enjoyed doing it, it was nice to focus solely on a task and to not think about the million other things you have running round your head if you’re a parent. It was a lovely piece of me time and a hobby I reckon I could get into fairly easily and cheaply.

Disclaimer: I was sent the Aquaglass Glass Painting Starter Kit for free for review purposes. These are my honest opinions and I really enjoyed playing about with it.