Categories
Lunchtime Lusting

Lunchtime Lusting- Muji Christmas shop

You know I love paper. Another thing I love is Lego.

Now, I don’t quite know what this is- I haven’t actually read up on that part yet. But I want.

http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?V=1&Sec=21&Sub=94&PID=5488

‘Lego Bricks And Paper’ is all I needed to read on the Muji website for me to be intrigued. Basically, I think you get a special puncher thing and punch holes in the paper, then Lego brick it up…

 

Cool, huh? You can pick up a Christmas one for £19. I love.

I pretty much love everything in Muji; it’s all so simple. The toys are plain, delightful wooden affairs. Among my favourites are the horses merry-go-round and these slightly disturbing animal puzzles, which teach children the food chain… by showing different animals inside each other, according to what eats what.

                                                     

Whatever, they’re simple, colourful, fun and have a lovely homemade feel!

No room for a Christmas tree? Reluctant to opt for an artificial one? How about this wooden one from Muji?Completely festive, completely reusable- and you can hang the decorations where you like, meaning you can still feel like you’re decorating and personalising your tree. Winner.

Categories
Craft

Festive craft stall

Well. Erm. So… yeah. It was a bit poor. However, it was the general consensus amongst all the stall holders that it was a particular naff fair, no one was buying or indeed looking, and exhibitors weren’t making money. Good to know it wasn’t just us amateurs!

Categories
Craft

Over the weekend I made… a mess

As the craft fair is next Sunday, last weekend I took a few extra days so I could prepare without panicking. I set up a little ‘activity centre’, as my husband called it, and got to work. Basically I spent 4 days surrounded by bits of paper, card, envelopes, inks, pens, more paper, there was a ruler there somewhere (never to be found when needed), some silver thread, stamps and stencils, paint, and good old PVA glue.

 

 

 

I reckon I made good headway though, mostly my stock for the Christmas Craft Fair is done!

Categories
Lunchtime Lusting

Lunchtime Lusting- Birkmann Cookie Cutters

For a while now, the crew aboard The Craft Fantastic have lusted after these super cute V.I.P. Birkmann cookie cutters:

But now, as Chritmas is drawing near, our attention has been brought to these:

They are without a doubt the best festive cookie cutters ever. We want.

Categories
Craft Origami

Origami candy cane- gift tags

I’ve been busy busy folding and sticking this week.

These origami candy canes are simple to do and I think they look great. You start with a sheet of 2-colour origami paper, blank side up. Fold, crease and uncrease corner to corner, both ways, so you end up with this:

I’m afraid I’m using my old camera; aside from it not being very good, I keep putting it on the wrong settings!

Step 2. Fold the bottom corner up to a little way below the top point, like this:

Next, turn the paper over and fold up from the bottom… like this!

 

Then all you have to do is fold the top bit twice to make the hooky bit at the end:

 

Press the creases reeeeally well, so it sits as flat as possible.

Yippee! Finished.

Categories
Craft

Whittlebury Park Magical Christmas Fair

The Craft Fantastic’s next craft fair is:

Cards! Cakes! Christmas decorations! That’s us, that’s us!!

Categories
Craft Origami

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Started on the stock for the Christmas craft stall. Cards first!

Categories
Lunchtime Lusting

Lunchtime Lusting- Twinings Floral Melts

Mmm! Tea. Chocolate. Two of the best things ever. Twinings have just brought of these Floral Melt Chocolate Discs. They go with their equally exciting range of floral teas.

Tea and chocolates alike come in different flavours: Orange Blossom, Natural Jasmine, Mulled Spice, Rose and Natural Lavender. They sound delicious and also look pretty too, don’t you think? I may have to dabble in edible petals for my truffles, methinks. I’m fairly sure I saw edible rose petals and the like last time I was in St Giles Cheese (seriously awesome shop in Northampton).

The Twinings floral teas also happen to come in super pretty tins. Pretty pretty. I think that may be the word of the week! Check out the Mulled Spice tin to get you in the Christmas spirit (oh come on, it’s practically November now. Totally allowed).

Pret-ty!

Categories
Art Craft Inspiration

Weekly Inspiration- Anissa Lee: Hand Cut Paper Art And Design

It was a blog post on the awesome Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride (yes, I still look at it, even though I am married) that brought the marvels of Anissa Lee to my attention. And ohmygosh I love, love, love what she does.

Check out Paper Wonderland. I think this heart and rose dress is my absolute favourite.

Looking at the site makes me want to just sit and cut things out of paper with scissors or a scalpel. Which is kind of what I do anyway, only usually I’m doing origami or making cards or something. I want to cut out pretty things, like Anissa Lee. Or Rob Ryan.

Sigh! And this hand-cut paper bird card I found on Etsy puts my attempts at cut-out cards to shame…

Categories
General

Weekend baking- The truffle experiment

If you’re making truffles for someone as a gift, it’s probably not the best time to experiment. But that didn’t stop me.

I decided to make two different types; Amaretto centre, with ground almonds on top and plain milk chocolate filled ones decorated with a white swirl.

         

I put the white swirl in first, as the writing icing I was using was quite soft, and I thought the chocolate might help it set. It didn’t. Lesson learned!

After coating the moulds with melted chocolate, I made the ganache. To do this, I poured 60ml of boiling cream over 75g of well broken up chocolate and mixed frantically until smooth. Then I split the mixture in two and added Disaronno to one half.

I was using Wilton Candy Melts. They’re really easy to use and brilliant for coating and making solid chocolates. However, it turns out that if you try and make a ganache with them, they don’t really solidify. So I ended up making chocolates with almost-liquid centres. Which was unexpected, but really nice.

Results:

Need to practise neatening the edges, but I think they turned out pretty well.