Simple Crafts

A craft for everything & everything in a craft.

Christmas Lanterns in Fimo

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Last week I took a version of the firework jar craft to our regular home education group. The kids have got fairly good at fimo crafts now and can produce some creative and individual pieces of work with them. I took a bag full of baby food jars, some large bars of soft black fimo and small bars of translucent fimo along with shape cutters of stars, holly leaves etc

As you can see, they all came up with something unique and the jars make very beautiful candle holders. As before, roll out some black fimo and cover the jar, blending the cracks to make it smooth. Ten cut out shapes in the black and gently remove the piece, replacing it with a translucent piece instead. Use a pencil to make holes through to the glass and fill with balls of translucent clay.

A clutch of these on the Christmas dinner table would be a beautiful, memorable table decoration indeed. Yet another perfect use for baby food jars!

Photo credit for my lovely friend at Le Ciel Rouge.

 

Melted Hama Bead Candle Holders

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Last week Maddy had a go making candle holders in Hama Beads, using jars and colours to reflect the changing seasons. You can see her efforts here; they’ve already been getting a good showing on Pinterest and I think they were very innovative.

Naturally I wanted in on the act as she inspired me to try using some of the special effect Hama Beads that have come out in the last couple of years.

These are made from red, silver or gold hama beads in the bottom of the jar. Then I added pearl hama beads mixed with clear ones and topped them with the same colour as the bottom. I had preheated the oven to 180c and popped them in for about 10 minutes. I kept an eye on them and pulled them out once they had melted just enough. The pearly beads really glisten and the clear ones add a sparkle too; they look a little like snow and are very effective.

One important thing to do is take them out of the oven carefully while still hot and press a tealight holder into the top to flatten it. However I’ve since found that pouring water and a little bit of white glitter into these adds even more sparkle and of course the water keeps the candle base cool and allows it to float on the surfaces lightly.

Full making details are over on BeadMerrily, where the original version was featured.

Christmas Pom Pom Swag

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This craft is one we did last year and put up at home; I think it was the thing that made me truly fall in love with the decorative power of pompoms. It looked beautiful, far greater than the sum of its £1.50 ball of yarn parts and was one of the things we put away to bring out again for this Christmas. There is something delicious about the mix of colours, the plump pom poms and the non-Christmas theme of it. It really added a chic touch to our very ordinary living room.

We bought about 15 colours of yarn, in big 200g balls of cheap acrylic; each pom pom was made by winding two colours together. The pom pom on each side contained one of those colours, which just gave it a nice gentle changing feel as it went along. Blues, reds, greens, yellows, purples and golds all seemed to work really well together. We used medium pompom winders and did both colours at once, so they were quick and easy to make. We threaded yarn on to a wide ended needle and doubled it twice, so there was a really strong core holding them together and then pushed the needle through the centre of each pom pom.

christmas pom pom swag decoration

This could easily be altered to suit any colour scheme, with metallic threads or other decorations dangled between. It was one of my favourite elements to our living room for all of last Christmas, so much so that I replaced it with a rainbow swag while we waited for the birth of our baby boy in January!

This craft was first featured on Patch of Puddles, our family blog.

Christmas Tree in PomPoms

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I know it’s a bit early for Christmas yet, but I thought this Christmas tree from last year was just too good to miss – and it completes my craft collection for trees for now 🙂 Last year we treated ourselves to a set of these pom pom makers and really enjoyed making Christmas decorations with them. My favourite was this little scene we created and the tree has ended up being a keeper. We love it.

christmas pompom treeThe tree body is made up of the largest 3 sizes of pom pom, tacky glued together. We wound the pom poms in 2 colours of green wool, nice cheap Robin DK wool from our local pound store. The tree is sat on a slice of loo roll covered in brown felt, the star is a tiny pom pom and then we covered it with lots of minute pompoms from our local supermarket craft section. It looked gorgeous all through Christmas. As you can see, the pom pom snowmen also really approved of it 🙂

Required: pom pom makers or card rings, wool, felt, loo roll, glue, decorations.

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Needle Felted Christmas Tree

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A few years ago the girls and I had our first experience of needle felting. It’s not a craft for the fainthearted since the needles are barbed, hurt if you stab yourself and break easily. That said, it has been a craft we’ve enjoyed at various times and 3D modelling is greatly enhanced by halves of tennis balls to hold the item in as you stab at them.

needle felted tree

This was a really simple Christmas Tree made out of scraps of felted wool left over at the end of a long day of needle felting. I balled all the green together and lightly stabbed it until I had the basic shape. I deliberately kept it lightly felted, rather than making it very solid, for the texture of a tree that I wanted. Then I fashioned a trunk out of brown, making it into a cylinder and considerably more solid than the green element and holding the two pieces together, stabbed it until they held into one piece. I did have to be careful of stabbing my fingers though! It’s been in our Christmas box for a couple of years now though and still looks very cute.

I buy my felting wool, when I can, from Sara’s Texture Crafts. She has a good range of accessories too and is very friendly. I’ve also just discovered World of Wool.

I have random Felting ideas collected on Pinterest.

Required: For this craft you need some felting needles and scraps of wool to felt. For more information on getting started, see the Felting Resources page.

Simple Craft Rating: 3/5