gift idea

This is such an easy make no artistic ability required!

You will need

-Beer bottle caps

-Tiling grout

-Magnets

Mix up a small amount of grout as per instructions on packet or you can buy ready mixed.

Carefully fill a cap with grout.

Place a magnet in the centre and gently push it into the grout.

Leave it to set hard for a couple of days.
If the grout is a little proud of the magnet smooth it down with fine sand paper

This is a quick and easy gift idea to make, well put together! All you need is a beer glass and two pairs of socks, a black pair and a white pair. For the white pair I bought sports socks, turned inside out, the texture resembles bubbles perfect for the beer's frothy head. Now all you do is roll and manipulate the socks into the glass until you are happy they look like a pint of Guinness.

*To avoid disappointment, for the recipient, include a bottle of beer as part of the gift too!

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.

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.

This is an idea for a Mother's Day. I am always on the look out for interesting shaped glass storage jars in shops, charity shops or at car boot sales. The jars make lovely containers for home made treats like Rocky road, fudge, cookies and chocolates, it just makes them more of a gift. This idea is of the non fattening variety, buy a bag of night light candles, the scented kind would be good, and fill a jar with them, tie a ribbon around the neck for the finishing touch.

With all good intention I wanted to do this post before christmas, but events and time got the better of me. In general I think it's quite hard to think of a gift for a teenage boy/man (unless it's an expensive gadget!) never mind to make one. But I was pleased to see, there is a current trend for surfer, tribal style wrist wear.

To get started you will need

If you haven't tried crochet but would like to, this is the perfect project to begin with, it only uses two basic crochet stitches.

Chain, ch - Wrap the yarn over the hook and draw the yarn through to form a new loop.

Double Crochet, dc (US single crochet, sc) - Insert the hook into the work, yarn over the hook and draw the yarn through the work only, yarn over hook draw the yarn through both loops on the hook.

In charity shops you can often see a pile of doilies languishing unappreciated in with the linens, it's a shame as obviously a lot of time and effort went into hand crocheting these cotton doillies. Pondering their plight I had the idea of up-cycleing them into jug/bowl covers, to keep flies off food and drink in summer. All you do to give them a new lease of life is attach, by sewing, glass beads* around the edge. 

This is how I made a passport cover following the basic removable book cover tutorial here. I chose small floral print fabrics instead of the normal plain red, white and blue for the Union Jack flag. I didn't neaten off the edges, of the applique, I wanted to leave them frayed to give a softer effect. To emphasise the frayed edges after I had sewn the shapes down, with a straight stitch, I washed the material.