Valentines wooden heart ... ...

This is a quick and easy to make valentines gift, all you need is some sticks, glue (a glue gun is probably best) something to help you make the shape (I used a large  cookie cutter) and some ribbon or string to hang it with.

You don't have to use a mould, but it is much easier to keep it all together while you work out how many sticks you need, I also found it handy to have a mould when gluing it together.


 This is what you are aiming for (or similar) -

The big stick is  apiece of pear wood

 It's up to you how you go about making this, I used a larger stick for the middle of the heart so that I could add mine and my wife's initials, big softy that I am :-)

Basically all you do is fill the mould (cookie cutter) with sections of stick the same length, I made mine about an inch long, it doesn't have to be too precise.

The sticks and cookie cutter -

Already glued but you can see what I did.

Another picture to show the thickness -

I used some eucalyptus sticks, but anything will do.

You can glue the sticks as you go, but I found that it was easier to glue the sticks with them already in the right shape, I kind of cheated by squirting glue from the glue gun into the gaps on what was the back of the heart, that way you don't see the glue from the front, keeping it in the mould makes it much less fiddly.

I wanted a larger piece of wood in the middle so that I could add a little extra to the heart, making it a little more personal. I drew our initials in pencil on the thicker part so that I could use my pyrography tool to burn the wood, if you don't have a pyrography tool you could use a soldering iron, or you can paint it, or use pens, it's up to you.

Pencil outlines - 

Not the neatest of writing.

With the pencil lines burned into the wood -

Now it just needs something for it to hang on.

It's done, well almost now it just needs something, like a loop of string, or in this case ribbon so that it can be hung on a wall, and for that all you need to do is glue the ribbon/string onto the back of the heart.

And you should end up with something like this - 

Easy peasy.

There you have it, a great handmade valentines present, takes hardly any time to make and costs next to nothing, but it's not about how much things cost, it's about the effort you put into it, the effort and though that went into making a very personal valentines gift for the special person in your life, it has to be better than getting a bunch of flowers from the local garage.

Thanks for reading.

Homemade French knitting doll ... ...

Me again, I've been knitting (again)


For Christmas one of the things my daughter got as a stocking filler was a little knitting doll (French knitting doll) I've seen these before, as I'm sure most people have, but in all honesty I've never actually attempted to use one, so the other day I had ago.

My daughters knitting doll -

She likes it a lot by the way.

It's not as difficult as I thought it might be, apart from the wool sticking to the inside of the doll it's pretty easy to use, although I'm not entirely sure what we'll do with all the knitted tubes, I guess we'll find a use, I've thought I might be able to use them in the garden some how.

I have found a use for the smaller tubes made with the actual knitting doll, it would seem they make good snakes :-) it's just a shame I'm not that good at this kind of thing.

Aaarrrhhhh snake ! -

Sort of snake like (ish)

My daughter is currently using it as a draft excluder for her dolls house.

Now as usual after using the knitting doll, I started to wonder how easy it would be to make my own, so that I can make larger tubes, this normally happens with a lot of things, I play about with them and then I start thinking I wonder if I can make one of these ?

As it turns out they are very easy to make, and you can use more or less anything tube like, I roughly turned a piece of scrap plywood into a circle shape on my lathe, then I cut the middle out, for the pegs I used some thick garden wire, so the pegs wouldn't bend very easily, and I pre-drilled holes all round the plywood circle them glued the pegs in.

This is what I ended up with -

Complete with knitting.

Not sure why I spaced the pegs in the way I did.

Pretty simple really, the principle is the same as the actual knitting doll, the main reason I made this one is that I intend to try knitting with string and thin wires, and I didn't want to break my daughters one.

I mentioned earlier that you can easily make one of these with more or less anything tube like, and so I thought I'd make another just to prove it.

For this one you'll need an old plastic bottle, some plastic plant labels and some sticky tape. Basically you just need to cut the top and bottom off the bottle, and then stick the plant labels round one edge, the more labels the more stitches.

Ingredients -

Ooops I forgot a picture of the sticky tape.

I decided I wanted 8 stitches so I cut my 4 labels in half, then taped them round one edge of the tube I'd made out of the bottle.

Like so -

Easy :-)

And that's it, one homemade (in about 10 minutes) and it works just as well.

I thought I'd try it out -

Kind of like a spiders web.

You don't have to sacrifice any pant labels either, just use some pencils or tape a few bits of dowel around the bottle, or what ever you use as a tube, the point is that you don't always need expensive equipment to have a go at some crafts, you can more often than not make some of the equipment yourself, you don't actually need anything to knit with, you can just use your fingers ;-)

Thanks for reading.

Weave your own web for halloween ... ...

With Halloween just around the corner I thought I'd share something we did last year, but have expanded a little on this year.
Last year we did a load of Halloween based crafts, conker spiders and such like, and we also made spider webs from pva glue that we stuck in the windows.

This is a really easy thing to do and all you need is a smooth flat surface, flexible if possible (I use a laminator sheet) as it makes it easier to get the web off once it's dried, pva glue and you can add glitter as well.

It's really easy to do, but it will take about 24 hours for the glue to set completely.

This is what you end up with -

The picture doesn't do it justice.

To make your own webs all you need to do is draw a web shape on your smooth surface with the glue.

Drawing the web - 

Web weaving.

Start by drawing intersecting lines, until you have as many as you want, this depends on how big the surface is and obviously how big you want it, I find a tube like the one in the picture is best as it is easy to draw neat lines with it, and this would be better for kids to use.

Easy really.

Once you have enough lines, I find 4 is enough, this will give you 8 spokes to your web. Then all you have to do is draw a line in a slight curve in between each spoke, and keep going until you have filled it all up.

Like so -

Complete with purple glitter.

And that's it really, you can add glitter, or leave it plain and you can use paint to colour the glue, but you'd need to get all the glue out of the tube and then put it all back once you've mixed in the paint, I guess you could also use a piping bag for this as long as you don't mind having to throw it out after, but use a fine nozzle.

You can make a web like the one above and place it anywhere on a window, if your surface was nice and flat and smooth the web should stick with no trouble, I find the laminator sheet is handy for this for a few reasons, one being it's nice and smooth and you can move the web out of the way of little fingers while it dries, and with a flexible surface it's easy to peel the web off once it's dried.

Here's another one, this one is for a corner of a window - 

We used silver this time.

Complete with bat :-)

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween.