Some crafty pictures from Christmas 2009...

Clockwise from top left:
A snowman cheeseball made with herby cream cheese and decorated by Freja.
Some presents with more Felt and Stitch poinsettias, ready to be sent to my Gran and Peder's parents.
A peg bag for my Mum made from one of Freja's baby dresses.
The felt balls for the kids.
Bookmarks drawn on upcycled linen napkins by Freja, for her Dad and Grandpas.
Crumbly semolina mince pies made with Auntie Pams's recipe and my mincemeat.
Peder's Swedish knack.
A wrap around apron for my Secret Santa.
A little purse for my Secret Santa.
A Warm Fuzzies felt cupcake pincushion for Mum and a felt tissue pouch for me, for inside the Jack Horner Pie.
A present for me! A lacy Baktus scarf knitted by my Mum.
My Mum knitting me another Baktus scarf.

Crackers

So, last week someone made a comment about Christmas crackers on Facebook and I realised we didn't have any. What to do? They are not very common over here and I hadn't noticed any out and about in the stores. I had a little browse online and came across Olde English Crackers where they also sell the components for making your own. There you go, I could make some! I just ordered the snaps because I was pretty sure I could rustle up enough other supplies to cobble something together.

So first, the contents. We needed jokes, hats and presents.

Jokes were easy thanks to Google and this 50 guaranteed hilarious* Christmas cracker jokes list. I just printed the list out, selected a joke for each of us and cut them out with pinking shears, just to make them a bit fancy and all.

Next, hats. We all have rather large heads, or thick hair, or a combination of both, in this family, so those paper hats that come in the crackers seem to be too small for the adults and way too big for the kids. I measured all of our heads and was going to make some tissue paper crowns but then I figured if I was going to cut them out and glue them I might as well cut them out of felt and sew them, then we can use them again. I used some red craft felt that I had and decorated each one with a different trim.

For the presents Freja and I swung into a Hallmark shop and picked up some very cheesy mini snowglobes for my Dad and Peder, and I sneakily bought a princess keyring that for Freja that she was coveting. Magnus is getting one of his Matchbox cars from the toy box, my Mum is getting a silk scarf with holly and other Christmassy stuff on it that I'd already bought, and I made myself a very quick wool ball bracelet.

Here it is all laid out and ready to go:

And all rolled up together for each cracker, mainly so I could make sure I got the right things in each one.

I used the tutorial on the Olde English Crackers website although I didn't really use their dimensions. I used a mailing tube for the inside cardboard tubes because it was the only tube I had that was big enough to fit my chunky felt hats. The outer paper is some Ikea gold giftwrap from a few years ago and the stiffener in the ends is the heavy paper that Ikea uses in rolls of giftwrap instead of tubes. I added tags to each one so we know whose is whose, these were cut from leftover paper from our wedding stationery with little star-shaped holes punched for the ribbon to go through.

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, I just hope they BANG!

Balls!

It's been a bit quiet on the crafting front here recently with all the run up to Christmas stuff going on. I've still got a few more presents to finish off and I think I'm going to have a go at making our Christmas crackers this year. They are a bit tricky to find over here and I'm sure they can't be that difficult to make. I've got the snaps on order and I'm having a little think about what to put inside them.

These balls are presents for the kids for inside the Jack Horner Pie. I used the two remaining balls from when when I made my wooly dryer balls and used a combination of wet and needle-felting to add some colour to them.

I'm really enjoying playing around with felting and I'm expecting this book to be under the tree on Christmas morning, or a bit later as it has to come from Japan. I'm hoping the pictures are good because my Japanese isn't!

It won't be too long now until we can crack open a jar of mincemeat and see how that turned out, yum!

Christmas is coming...

...and I don't want to spoil any surprises by posting pictures, as most of what I've been making lately is for presents. I've been making a few more felt things and started doing a bit of 'regular' sewing. I've been trying out using proper patterns from books, instead of just winging things, which I'm really enjoying. It's nice that someone else has already done the thinking so all I have to do is cut out and sew, that helps when I don't get started until the kids are in bed.

Hopefully I will sneak in some time to make something for myself soon, otherwise I will post pictures of all the other things once Santa has been.