A Photo Rug

My husband is eminently practical and super efficient. So much so, that when I was asked to describe him as an object at our wedding celebrations I decided on one of those sporks with a knife edge (or a sporknife as they're sometimes called). You can see one here. And if you're wondering, he described me as an ice cream cake. Because I am not, practical or efficient.

So I was pretty excited when he told me that the Christmas present he made for me was not practical and he had no idea how long it was going to last. I was also pretty excited when I opened it up and this is what I saw:

In order to make it, he started by laying out the photo sleeves in an "explosion" (his word) layout.

Then, where each of the photo sleeves lays, he shaved the carpet with scissors so that they would lay flush.

The first one, he sewed in...

...but it took way to long, so he switched to glue. A photo mount spray glue to be specific.

Last step, to slide the photos into the sleeves.

He was right. It's not at all practical. It feels weird to walk on, and even weirder to lay down on. But that's beside the point because I love it. I plan to use it for a while and then maybe get a tapestry thing to hang it on the wall. I think it's great!

I'm nuts about you

While searching for ideas for Christmas presents for my family, I came across this: a gold and silver plated keyring made with an eye-bolt and nuts that comes in a nice little gift box labelled "I'm nuts about you". How sweet and sappy! Two problems: first, it wasn't homemade; second, inside his pocket, rubbing against the keys, that gold and silver plating isn't going to last too long. So I decided to make my own, only a little more colourful. And as it's our first Christmas together, I also put together a matching photo frame. Altogether, the photo frame and the keychain cost only slightly more than if I had just bought the gold and silver-plated keychain!

I painted the bolt and all the nuts with Tamiya acrylic paints, which I picked up for less than £2 each. I picked all the 'clear' colours they had available: blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. They were brilliant!

The photo frame I got from a charity shop, and the glue I used was UHU and it worked great.

I know it's super sappy to actually put the phrase on the frame, but in this relationship, I don't tend to be the sappy one, so I knew my husband would appreciate it.

Here's it all finished and wrapped under the Christmas tree:

The key chain was meant to be in the little black box, but the orignal box got crushed in my suitcase, and the one I replaced it with was too small. Also in the black box is a poem I wrote.

I know the paint will rub off the keychain just as much (if not more) than the gold and silver plating, but it just so happens that while I don't have any gold or silver laying around to re-plate it, I do happen to have 5 little jars of paint.

Templates for pinhole Christmas cards

In case you didn't want to go to all the work of creating your own templates. These are all for 6 x 4 cards.

Pinhole Christmas Cards

First step for a homemade Christmas: homemade Christmas cards!

I saw this on pinterest and I thought to myself, "I can do that" but I'm not a huge fan of hearts, and it was November, so I 'Christmassed' it up a little bit. 

• All you need are some blank cards, some templates, a pin, a sweater and a cutting board. 
• Wrap the sweater around the cutting board, otherwise your pin holes come out really tiny (but I suppose you could add that into the design) and it's a lot more work. I used an old sweater just in case, but it wasn't harmed at all. I also tried using a cardboard box, but it just kept collapsing on me. 
• Place the template over a blank card or two. I found that pushing the pin through more than 3 cards (or 2 cards and the template) made my hand cramp up quite quickly.
• Then just simply make holes in the card. Following the template, put holes closer together for "darker" parts and farther apart for "lighter" parts. For me, that was a lot more difficult than it sounds, but everyone knows I have limited spatial awareness.

The finished product:

I wrote a short Christmas message in the white space in red and green pens and that was that! A bit time-consuming but for me it's worth it when the cards were opened and I got to hear, "Oh, wow, did you make these?"

Homemade Christmas

For our first Christmas together, my husband and I decided to do homemade gifts, in order to save money. All said and done, I don't know if we saved any money, but we did put together some pretty amazing presents. 

Stay tuned for pictures!