Easy DIY Snowmen.

Hello my lovelies!! It’s less than two weeks until Santa Claus comes! Woohoo! Who’s excited for Christmas? I know I certainly am! I love the food, being around family and friends and of course the decorations. Which brings me to today’s post, easy DIY snowmen decorations!

I’ve made for several years now as decorations for the festive season and as gifts for the people I care about. These can be used as door stoppers or just as a festive ornament for the wintery season!

Oh, and did I mention how cute they are? Here’s the cuteness we’re dealing with:

See what I mean? A D O R A B L E .

So, onto what you need to make them:

• White socks (Mens sport socks are great – mine are Tescos basics)
• Embroidery or thick thread
• Fabric or socks that you don’t mind cutting up to make a hat and scarf!
• Buttons
• Rice or lentils
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun (not necessary but faster then sewing by hand!)
• Any other decorations!

Now that you know what you need, let’s get into the steps to make one!

Step 1 . Fill one of your white socks with rice or lentils. (I did two cereal bowl fulls).

Step 2 . Double up your sock with another and tie the top to keep the rice in. Then cut the excess sock off the top.

Step 3 . Grab some white thread and double it over, and tie it around your snowman’s body to create its neck and tie it off.

Step 5 . Next up is eyes! Grab black thread (or whatever colour you want!) and sew on some eyes, and if you want you can even add buttons or beads for the eyes!

Step 6 . Time to add a nose! Pick an orange bead or thread and sew on the nose.

Step 7 . Guess what? There’s only 3 steps left! Pick a sock that you want for the snowman’s hat, put it on the snowman’s head and decide how tall you want the hat to be and cut off the excess.

Step 8 . Time to sew up the top of the hat! Sew it together however you like and you can add any accessories to it if you want, I’ve added a pom pom to this one!

Step 9 . We’re on the final step! Time to make the scarf. Cut a sock (or whatever fabric you want to use) into a long strip and glue the edges down facing the middle with a hot glue. Next fold the strip in two (horizontally) and wrap them round your snowman. Depending on the scarves length you can either tie it or glue it down.

Step 10 . Viola! You have a snowman! Repeat these steps and you’ll have yourselves a family of snowmen in no time!

Here’s all of the snowmen I’ve made over the years for decorations and a few I’ve made recently as gifts!

And those are my snowmen! Featuring a Snowlamb because why not!? What’s your favourite snowman of the bunch? Let me know in the comments! Have you made any Christmas DIY’s? What’s your favourite decoration/gift to make?

And with that, I hope you’re all having a very happy Christmas so far and I’ll see you next week!

Love,

Easy Halloween Brownies And Pumpkins.

Hello my lovelies! How’s your week been? We’re slowly getting further into October which means we’re beginning to see Halloween decorations everywhere! And it feels like we’ve got ages until it’s actually Halloween, but just like Christmas it’ll creep up on us and before we know it, it’ll be here.

So, I decided I’d show you some quick and easy Halloween decorations, in the form of pumpkin carving and some yummy brownies! And to prove these are actually quick and easy, I did these in the space of 4 hours!

First up we’ve got the brownies. These are something anyone can do when you’re short on time and they’re really easy to do with kids. You can make them from scratch, or just use a box mix from Tesco like I did; it saves time and money! After baking them, the decoration was simple, some melted white chocolate, a bit of chocolate buttercream and decorations you can pick up with the box mix!

One thing I did with my brownies is add some orange zest and extract to give them something a bit extra. Here’s what they look like, basically, just chuck a load of spooky decorations onto the brownies and you’re good to go!

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Here’s how I decorated them!

Now, onto the pumpkins!

These were super easy to make; you can do the classic face, cute face or you can use a stencil to do a more intricate design! And of course since stencilling makes it easier to do more complicated designs, I had to do my teacup!

And guess what, I’ve included two stencils for you to download and try for yourself!

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Cute huh? Who said Halloween had to be scary anyway?! Here’s how the octopus looks carved!

Another very quick way to jazz up your pumpkin is by adding costume accessories to them! Here I added a day of the dead hat and mask and used a melon baller to create eye’s. Top tip, for scooping out the middle of the pumpkin after getting rid of the seeds, I’d definitely recommend a melon baller, I found it surprisingly easier than a spoon! And it’s great for getting perfectly circular eyes!

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And voila! You’ve got yourself some cool pumpkins that’ll impress and some yummy spooky brownies! What’s your favourite way to decorate pumpkins? Last year I painted mine! (You can take a look at them here.) Let me know in the comments!

Have a great rest of your weekend my lovelies!

Love,

Easy DIY Coasters.

Hello my lovelies! The heatwave is slowly starting to fade away a bit now, and I am so so happy about that! I’ve been feeling incredibly creative over the last few days and I’ve also been organising and de-cluttering my stuff. And this led to me finding loads of lollipop sticks that haven’t even been taken out of the packet. Whilst I was sat there drinking my tea trying to decide whether or not I should keep them, inspiration hit! I haven’t actually got any coaster sets, which is funny considering the amount of tea I drink!

And that led to this post, this week I’ve put together a super quick and easy coaster DIY you can do yourself at home.

So…

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Lollipop sticks
• Hot glue gun
• Sharp scissors
• Sand paper (or a good nail file will work)
• Paint
• Paint brush

Step 1 :

Cut the curved edges of the lollipop sticks off using the scissors (only do this if you want straight edges).

Step 2 :

Hot glue gun the sticks into a square shape using small dots of glue so it doesn’t go everywhere.

Step 3 :

Add in a middle stick on one side of the square, then add in four more sticks to that same side as the middle stick with equal spaces.

Step 4 :

Next add in a middle stick on the other side going the same direction as the other sticks. Then add another middle stick going the opposite direction onto that same side along with two either side of the middle stick going the same way as the new one.

Step 5 :

Just flip it over, let the glue set and voila! You have a simple palette style coaster!

Step 6 :

If you want a pop of colour, grab some acrylic paints and add on a design. You can free hand it like I did or use masking tape or stencils.

These can be made in whatever shape you want, whatever colour or pattern you want! I just love how quick and easy they are to make. In the photo below you can see an un-decorated, mint green and pastel pink coaster I made.

And that’s it for today’s post! These make a great gift, you can make them for yourself or you could just make them because its fun to do! I like playing around with shapes, designs and colours. These are so simple, and can look quite expensive in my opinion!

I also like that you can get everything you need cheap online or in places like Hobbycraft, sometimes even places like Poundland! 

What do you think to these? Would you consider making them? Or have you made something similar before? Let me know in the comments!

Also, to keep up to date with what I’m up too during the week you can go follow me on Instagram, I’d love to see all of your beautiful faces!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Love,

Unique Fashion.

Happy Saturday lovelies!! This heatwave is certainly going on for a bit longer than I’d like! Do you like the heat? Or are you more of a autumn/winter person?

Anyway, on to the subject of this weeks post: DIY Unique Fashion! I couldn’t decide what to call this post for ages and I think that title sums it up the best. I toyed with DIY Fashion, Personalised Clothes etc. but unique fashion fits better.

Where did the idea for this post come from? Well.. as you know, I love wearing whatever I want, no matter what other people think; and because I’m a creative I often dream up outfits in my head with pieces I don’t own or that would cost way too much money that I don’t have.

And voila! The decision entered my mind that since I have some sewing skills I could probably create some of these pieces myself.

First up I had to decide what I wanted to make, and for my first project I chose shoes. Floral embroidered ones to be exact. I got the idea for these from seeing some checked vans when out and about shopping, those shoes take me back to my teens, everyone used biros and sharpies to draw the check pattern themselves haha.

So to start, I had to work out what shoes to buy as a base, and I figured some cheap converse would be a good plan since there’s loads of fabric to work with. I got mine from Primark in the end because they’re cheap and cheerful and if my idea went horribly wrong then I wouldn’t have wasted a load of money.

Then I ordered myself an embroidery starter pack from Amazon. If you’re wondering which one, you can find it here. It cost about £16, and it came with everything I needed. One thing I will say with this set is that the needles aren’t massively strong so I bought some extra needles which worked a lot better with the thicker fabrics.

Now, if I was smarter, I would’ve drawn out the design I wanted to create. But I decided to just wing it and see what happens. If you aren’t sure what design you want, I’d suggest drawing it out first to be safe.

Then comes the fun part! Time to start sewing! If you’re struggling for ideas on what you want to sew or how to sew certain stitches, there’s hundreds on embroidery tutorials on Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube.

My trainers took me about 2-3 weeks, and that was by working on them on and off in the evenings. Then I got myself some weatherproofing spray and gave them a good covering.

And after all that, I’m super happy with my results!

I love my trainers, they’re unique and no one else has any like it! Plus I have the satisfaction of knowing I made them, and you know, you gotta celebrate your successes no matter how small!

Onto my next 10 minute project that anyone can do, I had a pair of dungarees and I kept envisioning a pretty sunflower on them, so that’s exactly what I did. And it took no time at all. All you need is a needle, some embroidery thread (or even thick normal thread would work to be honest) and some interfacing if you’re working with stretchy and flimsy fabric.

Interfacing is something you can buy in two forms, iron on or sew on. I use iron on interfacing for clothes and adding small designs onto things, but if you were to make your own handbag for example, you’d probably use sew in as it tends to be a bit thicker.

And here is my super cute dungarees! It’s such a small simple thing to add, but I feel like it’s brought a bit of new life to them.

Tips for starting a creative project:

• Plan what design you want to do/what you want to make.
• Do some research into different techniques.
• Make a list of everything you’ll need.
• Make it in your own time.
• Take progress pictures if you’re making it over a long period of time. (It’s always great to see how much you’ve progressed!)
• Wear whatever you’ve made with confidence.
• Celebrate your creativeness!

And that’s about it for today’s post! I love being able to channel my creativity into my style, and I’ll definitely being making some more changes to my clothes to make them unique. And I can’t wait to wear these shoes out and about to show them off! And as for my dungarees, well I’ve got visions of wearing them with either a bottle green, red wine, mustard or deep purple coloured jumpers in autumn/winter. After all, I am a winter gal at heart.

What do you think to my dungarees and trainers? Let me know in the comments! Has this inspired you to make some of your own personalised clothes/accessories? It’s really rewarding and therapeutic to do. Perfect for days when its pouring down or something to do whilst you lay in the sun.

If you’re out in the sun today make sure you’re keeping cool and hydrated, and wearing sun cream! Have a great weekend everyone, see you next week!

Love,

Easy DIY Chocolate Truffles

I had a long look on the web at loads of different chocolate truffle recipes, and when I came across this one from BBC Good Food, it looked so simple I had to give it a try. And I found this one easy..ish. So here’s the thing, I thought I could get these made after work one day in a few hours, oh boy was I wrong! You definitely need an entire day to make these in my opinion, or maybe I over estimated my chocolatier skills haha. Either way, I’d recommend doing these on a day where you’ve not got much planned. Basically I made all the mistakes possible so you don’t have to.

So here’s what happened when I tried making these. I thought it’d be a good idea to try this using less than 70% cocoa chocolate as its cheaper, 70% cocoa chocolate is pretty expensive!! And I thought that if these go horribly wrong then at least I haven’t wasted a load of money, and good chocolate. Instead of making just dark chocolate truffles, I also tried this recipe with milk and white chocolate, now I know what you’re thinking, milk and white chocolate haven’t got as much cocoa in it as the dark, especially cheap chocolate! But I thought that if there’s any chance of making a few flavours then i’ll just give it a go now so you don’t have to.

Well, what worked? The dark chocolate truffles turned out fairly well considering I’ve never made truffles before, and the milk and white chocolates well.. the were a disaster! On the plus side, I did find that using this recipe but with milk chocolate does create a fairly yummy chocolate sauce, just not truffles. I might have worked if I had picked milk chocolate with more cocoa in it, but never mind!

I will say that I found shaping my truffles hard, I think I left my mix in the fridge a little too long! So I’d certainly call my truffles rustic looking.. You’ll probably have more luck than me!!

Here’s the recipe –

You will need:
300g good quality chocolate – dark (70% cocoa solids)
300ml double cream
50g unsalted butter

1. Chop the chocolate and tip into a large bowl. Put the cream and butter into a saucepan and heat gently until the butter melts and the cream reaches simmering point. Remove from heat, then pour over the chocolate. Stir the chocolate and cream together until you have a smooth mixture. You can add any flavourings at this point. Cool and chill for at least 4 hrs.

Melting the butter and simmering the cream

Broken up chocolate

Pouring the hot butter/cream combo over the chocolate

Mix until it’s all smooth!

2. To shape the truffles, dip a melon baller or teaspoon in hot water and scoop up balls of the mixture, then drop the truffles onto greaseproof paper. Or lightly coat your hands in flavourless oil (such as sunflower) and roll the truffles between your palms. You could also use a piping bag to pipe rounds onto greaseproof paper.

(Forgot to take photos of this bit! Sorry!)

3. Coat your truffles immediately after shaping. To coat in chocolate, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Melt 100g milk, dark or white chocolate for 10 truffles. Allow chocolate to cool slightly. With a fork, pick up one truffle at a time and hold over the bowl of melted chocolate. Spoon the chocolate over the truffle until well-coated. Place on the baking tray, then chill.

Pouring over the chocolate and adding stripes!

Into the fridge to cool

4.Store in the fridge in an airtight container for 3 days, or freeze for up to a month. Defrost in the fridge overnight. Keep in the fridge until you’re ready to give them.

Here’s what mine looked like! They tasted pretty good even if they did look ‘rustic’ haha!!

These chocolates are great for presents, if you’re better at shaping and covering them than me! They’re good even for events or just as a treat whilst you’re watching a film. I hope you enjoy!! Let me know how yours turn out in the comments below!

Love,