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,

Easy Christmas Nails

Merry Christmas everyone! Christmas parties are in full swing and that means not only am I looking for outfit inspo on Pinterest and Instagram, but also Christmassy nails that you can actually do yourself at home. So I decided to try a few of the designs out for myself to see what ones are actually doable for all of us at home!

1 . Classic Red and Gold.

These were simplest to do, just paint your nails red, let them dry and then add a simple tree onto either your ring finger or any other finger you want to stand out! This one can be done with any colours too if you’re not into red nails!

2 . Candy Cane Stripes.

It’s impossible to mention Christmas nails and not add some candy cane stripes into the mix. I did these by painting my nails white, then adding on the stripes with a small brush, if you’re a bit shaky when doing your non-dominant hand, get someone else to paint the stripes for you!

3 . Christmas Puddings!

These went pretty well, I didn’t have a green nail polish so the holly leaves on these ended up being a gold shimmery colour, but I think the glittery look makes these even more festive.

4 . Snowmen.

Who doesn’t think of snowmen when they think about Christmas and Winter time? This are so easy to do and only require 2 nail polishes at the very least! A white for the base and another one for the snowmen faces, you can use a different colour for the carrot noses if you want too. These are a classic for Christmas nails!

5 . Blue and White Christmas.

I think these are my favourite out of all the designs because it’s something I haven’t really seen that much and because even though this is one of the more complicated designs, it can still be done at home. Also, these nails will look elegant in any colour! For these I painted all the nails white except for the navy glitter one and then added all of the designs on with a small brush (any kind of brush should do the trick as long as it’s small! I use a tiny acrylic paint brush.)

6 . Pinky Nude Snowflakes.

These are another favourite of mine, when I think of pinky nude colours I don’t really think of Christmas; and that is what makes these perfect for the person who wants a bit of festive cheer that isn’t screaming at you in the face. For these I used the same method as the above nails!

Which nails do you like best? I think I’ll be going with the blue and white or pinky nude designs, I love the different patterns on the nails with a bit of sparkle! Are you planning on having your nails done for a party? Let me know what you like for your Christmas nails in the comments below!

Merry Christmas lovelies!

Love,

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Easy Halloween Pumpkins And Snacks

Hello lovelies! Halloween is fast approaching; which means we’re all thinking of cool decorations and snacks that we don’t see everyday! And this often means searching the depths of Pinterest for hours on end finding some pins which don’t look impossible to do at home.

So I’ve decided that I’ll put together some pumpkin decorating ideas along with two quick and easy things you can do for Halloween snacks!

Let’s get into it!

Snack first; and because it’s Halloween, that means sweet treats! So I decided to make some cute mini shortbread skeletons and mini meringue eyeballs! They’re pretty quick and easy to make and only took me about 30 minutes from start to finish.

How cute are these am I right?!

On to making them! You can buy a simple shortbread mix from most supermarket nowadays so that’s what I did as I was short on time.

Here’s the steps:

1 . Make the biscuit dough (you can use any biscuits you like).

2 . Roll out the dough out on a lightly floured surface, making the dough roughly 5mm thick.

3 .  Using a cookie cutter the shape of a person (pick whatever size you want!) cut out as many people as you can. You can always use any small pieces of dough left to make an extra biscuit for when you have a cuppa later!

4 . Bake the biscuits for however long your biscuit recipe requires and leave to cool.

5 . Once the biscuits are cool, using whatever colour icing you want, pipe on a smile, or funny face (it is Halloween aft0er all!) and the rest of the skeleton bodies!

6 . Once the icing is dry. Eat!

For the meringue eye balls:

1 . Buy some meringue kisses and some googly eye cake decorations.

2 . Make up a slightly on the thicker side icing with just water and icing sugar.

3 . Dip the googly eyes into the icing and stick on top of the meringue peaks! Done! Nice and simple.

Now, when it comes to Halloween, one of the first things we think about is sweets, costumes and of course, pumpkins. And I don’t know about you, but I love picking and carving pumpkins.. however, I’m not a massive fan of the mess that comes with it.

So this year I decided I would look into some other ways I can decorate some pumpkins, without all of the mess from carving huge ones.

Here’s my pumpkin display:

These didn’t take very long to do which I was quite surprised about! The pumpkins that took the longest were the ones that required paint, but even then they didn’t take very long.

For the painted pumpkins I used cheap Tesco water based paint as a bottle of these are £1 each which is a bargain! I also used a sharpie for the calligraphy on the large pumpkin, that one is my favourite.

Decorating the painted pumpkins were my favourite to do overall, because I love to paint anyway. The multi coloured pumpkin was decorated by squeezing paint over the top of it, a bit like how you would chocolate drips on a cake, and I simply layered up the different colours until the top of the pumpkin was covered and the paint were dripping down the sides. I suggest doing this over newspaper or some kind of wipeable surface as it gets pretty messy! I left mine to dry over a few days and the paint ran down to the bottom leaving a cool pattern.

For the biggest pumpkin, I mixed a mint green colour because I wanted the calligraphy to really stand out against the paint. Because pumpkins are pretty shiny, I ended up applying three layers of paint, but it didn’t take very long as I used my hairdryer to speed up the drying process a bit! Once I was happy with the colour of the pumpkin, I lightly drew out the ‘trick or treat’ and then filled it in with a sharpie!

The last pumpkin I painted was a tiny one, and I realised that I like the simple look of the painted pumpkins so I painted this one black and then splattered white paint on it which I think looks pretty elegant.. especially considering it’s a pumpkin!

I bought a bag of cobwebs and spiders which I used for the only pumpkin I fully carved, and I think it worked quite nicely. I actually carved this pumpkin from the bottom, because I think it looks nicer than the open top, and you can hide your carving marks. I also found a cool tip for making your carved pumpkins last longer, which is by brushing the carved areas with vegetable oil! I also stuck some spiders on the top for eyes, because I hadn’t seen anything like that done before and just thought why not.

I will admit, I think I like these two pumpkins nearly as much as the painted ones; not because they’re elegant, because they certainly aren’t that! But they are cute and pretty funny. I recommend that you have a sharp knife for cutting a mouth for these because these small pumpkin/squashes are very hard to cut! I bought some cheap vampire fangs and used peppercorns for eyes on these, all I had to do was cut a section large enough for the fangs and made some indents for the eyes and tadaa! Mini silly pumpkins!

What are your favourite ways to carve and decorate pumpkins? And what are your favourite sweet treats to make at Halloween? Let me know in the comments!

And lastly, Happy Halloween lovelies!

Love,