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Earrings made from felt are light to wear and can be embellished with embroidery and beads to make unique jewellery.
Because wool takes dye so well you can obtain colours from muted to bright making felt the perfect background to achieve any look you want, be it subtle or vibrant.
Embroidery threads come in sumptuous hues too not to mention the variety of glass beads you can get to add texture and sparkle. The mixture of wool felt, glass beads, embroidery and your imagination you can create little works of art.

In the winter we feed the birds in our garden and inadvertently an opportunist squirrel that persists in running off with whole fat-balls! With freezing temperatures and snow on the ground, the birds need a bit of help when their search for food gets more difficult.

So I set about making pine cone bird feeders, for that I needed:

Large pine cones

String for hanging

Butter/fat, I had some at the back of the fridge that was past its sell by date.

Wild bird seed

This is a homemade gift that ticks all the boxes, charming, useful, quick, easy, low skill level and you don't need expensive equipment. The creative bit is to find a receptacles for your candles, look for vintage teacups, jugs, small bowls etc. in charity shops, have a rummage! They would not only make a lovely gift but also perfect for a vintage style wedding reception or decorate a party table. For my candles I chose little teacups, a small jug and a tumbler made from thick red glass.

It's so easy to turn old scrabble tiles into fridge magnets, like my beer bottle cap fridge magnet tutorial.  
Mix a small amount of tile grout, fill the cavity on the reverse of the tile, push in a magnet and leave to dry. I bought my 'spare' tiles from a stall holder,Curiosity Cupboard 
at a Craft and Vintage fair held at the St Albans Town Hall.

Plastic beads that is, and plastic soldiers and werther's originals in fact anything really.

When I ran craft workshops I bought a lot of plastic beads, very useful for children's crafts, but what to do with them now. Well I saw a lovely idea on a Craftster forum for making light catches for the garden, it looked easy and it was.

When I saw a tutorial for a bride and groom cake topper, made from a clothespin, on the website Brooklyn Bride , it was so cute I had to give it a go and make some! I have designed and made my own pom pom fairies , but they were made from the one piece wooden pegs now I have to try a two piece!

With lots of animal hats in the shops I thought I would create one like a bear. I could have knitted one but I decided it would be interesting to try and customise a plain shop bought beanie. I bought a hat from a discount store for a £1, and with a couple of buttons, oddments of wool and scraps of felt I fashioned me a bear hat. I made three pom poms, two for the ears and a smaller one for the nose. I cut two circles from the scraps of felt, these go behind the buttons so need to be slightly bigger than the buttons. When I was happy with the position of the features I sewed them on.

What you will need to make a lantern

I bought a pack of polystyrene eggs (£1) to decorate for Easter. I used a wooden skewer, stuck through the egg, to make decorating and drying easier but I actually liked the idea of an 'egg on a stick'. To decorate the eggs I used tissue paper and paper napkins, stuck on and coated with a 1:1 ratio PVA and water solution. Once the eggs had dried I removed the skewer and added curled parcel ribbon, holding it in place by pushing the skewer back into the egg. I think the egg picks would be perfect in the garden as markers for an Easter egg hunt or just grouped in a vase.

With my lanterns being featured in St Albans Quarterley it has prompted me to re visit this idea for Mother's Day, this would be a companion to go with the tea lights in jar gift idea. You will find the basic lantern tutorial here. In the photographs you will see I have used a mixture of glasses and jars for the lanterns. Some of the jars, the round ribbed ones, once contained scented candles.