It’s been a little while since I was last here, but my hands have not been idle.

There has been lots of makery going on some with Niblet, most for Niblet, some for Christmas gifts and all for fun! I have split it into 2 posts as there is quite a lot and it may not all be of interest to you. Part 1 is mostly making, part 2 sewing.

Niblet is currently mad about Lego, but has (until next week, anyway) a limited amount of bricks for building stuff that isn’t in a set, so when he requests a Police Station or a house a lot of imagination is needed.

I decided to make a shoebox house for use until such time as his Christmas-birthday arrives and he is swamped with Lego. I picked up the fantastic brick and parquet flooring papers in the sale at Paperchase months ago thinking this day would eventually come.

I even took some pictures while I was making it (see…….I am getting better at this)

Next, he wanted to make something using pipe cleaners – not sure where that came from, but happy to oblige when he requests to ‘make’ something.

We looked through his craft/junk box  and he picked out a couple of green foil containers. So I suggested bugs/spiders and here is the result.

With Christmas coming up I decided I wanted to have a go at printing some wrapping paper. I saw something about using rolling pins for printing on napkins on Lena Corwin’s blog – an idea from her new book (on my wishlist). Fortunately, I remembered this project had also featured in Mollie Makes some months back, so rooted through my copies to find it.

I picked up some rolling pins cheap in Wilkinsons and decided to get some block printing ink from Fred Aldous (my idea of heaven in a shop)for possible use in a couple of projects, but unfortunately didn’t have quite all the right bits.

I came unstuck with the 6mm foam sheets (having not actually found the instructions before purchasing half the stuff) but improvised by sticking 2mm foam shapes together, luckily there were at least 3 (or multiples of 3) of all the shapes I wanted to use.

I then stuck these to the rolling pin randomly, waited for it all to dry and rolled out my ink. It was semi-successful in that I did manage to print something onto the paper, not quite what I had hoped but still.

The left hand paper looks better – I rolled different ways. I have wrapped my brother’s Christmas presents in it but, my god, it took days to dry.

Last week we got festive in the kitchen (well, dining room technically).We put together and decorated a gingerbread house.

I have never done this before and so my icing was probably not as stiff as it should have been, leading to lots of holding bits together for long periods of time (not ideal when trying to entertain a 3 year old). But we persevered and created a slightly wonky, yet rather delicious, house.

Part 2: Sewing will follow shortly

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