Ready in time...

A little surprise for when the girls get home tonight.
I spend the better part of this morning crafting this advent calendar.
The only thing left is finding the right spot to hang it.
Can't believe we're starting to count-down this weekend already...

Wishing you a great weekend!

xo, P.

Folded leather basket :: a minimalistic DIY

I love minimalism, as I truly believe less is more.
I have always loved geometry.
I love figuring out how things are built.

Lately I have been drawn into building shapes, going from something flat to something three dimensional and functional with the least steps involved. The teddy bear key chain is one example.

So, when I came across this fabulous basket and DIY on Pinterest, I couldn't get to my craft's table fast enough. In no time, I made a bunch of leather mini baskets based on the same principle, but instead of using a hexagon I made use of squares. And leather - what else!?



This is an easy and fast craft, which requires minimal supplies:
a (small) piece of leather, a hole punch, rivets and rivet setter, a cutting tool, and a ruler and pencil.

Now if you don't have access to leather, try using heavy weight felt as in the original tutorial, or use foam sheets. Or with the holidays just ahead of us why not try making some baskets out of nice and heavy card stock, replacing the rivets with eyelets or brads. These baskets would make perfect packaging for those homemade cookies.

Before you get started and especially when using precious materials like leather, I recommend making a paper version first, just to make sure you got the dimensions right.

I made two sizes of baskets:
- a 15 cm square results in a 7 x 7 x 4 cm basket
- a 10 cm  square results in a 5 x 5 x 2,5 cm basket

To give you a rough idea: one of the larger baskets is holding (part of my) washi tape collection and the other one a bunch of large paper clips. The small one holds quite an amount of small paperclips. 



Instructions:

1. Make a paper template or download the template here.
2. Cut the leather and make the diagonal incisions as shown (for a 15 cm square, cut 6cm diagonals; for a 10cm square this would be 4cm diagonals)
3. Punch 4 holes as shown in the picture and template.
4. Set rivets (I found the table corner to be very useful for this, but make sure to protect your table appropriately). Shape your basket by inserting the two remaining flaps.

// Happy Holidays //

I planned a couple more posts but I have too much on my plate right now to make it work.
So, rather than getting frustrated, I decided to sign off for the year.
Take care, everyone!  Enjoy the holidays and...
hope to see you back here soon!

Cheers,

Pascale
xo

Handmade holidays :: a DIY wreath

With only one more week to go before X-mas we felt we needed a little more deco around the house to get into the mood completely. The idea for the Christmas balls we got from the latest issue of Whip up's Action Pack. We made a whole bunch of them using fabric scraps, sequins, yarn, my favorite baker's twine and some lace we still had lying around. Three were used to decorate a (store-bought) wreath. The balls were attached using a hot glue gun. We tied two pieces of fabric scraps in a bow for the finishing touch and - Voilà!

Christmas tree free holidays

We decided not to buy a Christmas tree this year but to come up with an alternative.
And this is what our alternative tree looks like: white semi-sparkly (semi because about 50% of the sparkles rubbed off already, but wiping down sparkles is nothing compared to cleaning up pine needles...)  branches picture (store bought, which is silly, I know, but we have no garden and I can't myself running through Paris with pruning shears without getting myself into trouble).



We decorated our branches with homemade salt dough ornaments. The idea for the salt dough ornaments I got here. They were fun to make and cost next to nothing. A fun detail: we only had organic flour, which makes these ornaments totally ORGANIC!  How about that?!



We used cookie cutters, red inked stamps and lace for  the decoration of the ornaments and my favorite divine baker's twine for hanging them.



The pictures are of poor quality because they were shot at night and I still hate using a flash. They're not crisp and sharp as usual but a little blur suits the subject, I thought...

Easy X-mas cards

Tonight little H. and I made a bunch of X-mas cards for the children at the local children's hospital - a great project initiated by a class parent.
We came up with several homemade cards. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take pictures of them before they went in an envelope, except for this one, which I made earlier in the day. Very easy to make if you want to give this a try. All you need is a piece of vellum, some colorful sequins, card stock, some contrasting thread and a sewing machine...

Some of our other cards included fingerprinted moose and snowmen to which details were added using a felt tip marker (look here for inspiration), and a very cool Keith Haring inspired Christmas tree with presents and stars by little H.