Sammy's Handmade Christmas Tree 2016

Every year My Christmas tree has a theme, yes, I am not sorry, I am one of 'those' people. When we add kids to our family they will get to sort out the tree, but until then it is all mine. This year I was planning to go with a kind of winter forest thing, then I saw our friend Claire (aka Claireabellemakes) was bringing out some limited edition Christmas decorations and I had an even better idea. This year all the decorations on my tree are handmade by independent UK Designer/Makers.

Christmas Tree Festival

Normally this post is reserved for pictures of my Christmas tree and home decorations, however, This year we (Sew Crafty) were invited to be a part of the St Luke's Church (Maidenhead) Christmas tree festival! We headed over to decorate our tree last night and to see all the other trees of course. I thought I would take you with me.

The Church looked A-mazing filled with 49 real Christmas trees, it looked and smelled like the most beautiful Christmas tree party ever.

The trees had all been decorated by local schools, clubs, organisations and businesses. Some of my favourites were by our friend Head Candy who had decorated her's with some of her beautiful facinators and the Choo Choo Tree by a local preschool decorated with train tickets and pieces of a wooden train set.

The W.I. had made a lovely crafty effort with some cute crochet characters and Claire's Court School had used hand prints to make a friendship tree.

Our tree, of course, was Haberdashery themed! We tried to stick to our brand colour scheme which is yellow, aqua and silver grey, not totally Christmassy but I think it still worked out really well.

We filled clear baubles with sequins, threads, zips and buttons, and stranded pompom fringe and tape measures through the branches.

My favourite part of our tree is the star I made a from scissor shapes that I cut out of silver card with my silhouette cutting machine. Our Tree did look a little sparse compared to some of the others, but in our defence we had allowed for a much smaller tree than we got... I think we ended up with the biggest tree in the church, and it is on a pedestal right in the middle of the alter... no pressure!

I Love how it turned out and hopefully all the people who visit over the weekend will like it and all the other trees too.  Head over to St Luke's website so you can find out more about the Christmas Tree Festival, or check your local churches or community centres to see if is something similar near to you.

I hope you enjoyed that little look at our Haberdashery tree and the rest of the festival, have you put your tree up yet? Have you made any of your decorations? We would love to see them, post a photo on Twitter or Instagram and #livelovemake so we can take a look.

Have a lovely weekend
Sammy xxx


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Live it: Sammy's Christmas Tree 2013

I can't help it, I am a Christmas person, any excuse to put a truck load of sparkly stuff in my home!

I always love posting pictures of my tree, to me it means it's officially Christmas in the Claridge household. 

This year my theme is black, white and gold, I have my white tree from last year, but I limited my colour pallet, re-used a lot of decorations from my collection and added a few new home-made ones too. I made theses sparkly diamonds out of 5 gold pipe cleaners at 10p each, cheap and cheerful. 

I bought some rustic wooden hearts from Hobbycraft and painted them white with a different black pattern on each one, they make a great addition to the tree, and a bargain at around £1.75 each (including ribbon and paint)

The only ornaments I splashed out on this year was these little ceramic owls, they were £3 each from our local Shaw Trust charity shop, so they made me feel good as the money was for charity and how cute are they! The stars are another home-made addition to the tree, I used air drying clay and a cookie cutter. Then painted them white, with gold liquid leaf paint on the edges.

I am so happy with how my tree turned out this year, I love the way it glows in our lounge and I can't wait to put all our family and friends gifts under it on Christmas eve. Here is a quick look at some of the other decorations I have put up too. We have some paper snowflakes in the kitchen, as well as glitter stars over the mirror with a tinsel bauble garland. I made some extra clay stars and strung them up to make a garland over the doors in our lounge, I used some letter stamps to emboss 'wish upon a star' onto the middle, this may be my favourite decoration, I think I may make it a permanent feature.

This Christmas is going to be different for us this year as it will be the first one without my Grandpa who passed away in March. He was such a huge part of our celebrations and we will miss him loads, but I know he will be with us in our memories. He wouldn't have wanted us to be sad and miss him, so we are scheduling lots of games and movies to keep us entertained. In honour of G'pa there may even be some very bad carol singing. 

I hope you enjoyed that little peek at our decorations for this year, I would love to hear about your decorations, If you have posted any pictures, pop a link in the comments so we can head over and take a look. 

Have a magical, festive weekend

Sammy xxx

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Keep up with our Christmas antics on our instagrams... Sammy's and H's.

Love it: House of Fraser at Christmas

After my Ten Tips for Feeling Festive last week we had an email from the lovely girls at House of Fraser who offered us and you a sneaky peek at their Christmas decorations lookbook! 

We were not disappointed, how amazingly gorgeous are these images, they totally got my festive feelings going. 

 I Love this looking glass theme, quite similar to the colours I had for my tree last year with the whites, pinks, mint and soft golds.

 Reindeer are my absolute favourite animal this time of year and I know H is a fan of owls so this woodland charm theme is a winner for both of us. 

I love the really fresh, cool, crisp feeling of the natural accessories and all set with a background of white on white with touches of metallics, it sets a very elegant scene. 

 My theme this year is black, white and gold so this opulent Biba collection is right up my street.

These are my top five tree decorations from all the collections.

1. Silver Reindeer / 2. Wooden Star / 3.Black Jewel bauble / 4. Gold Scoop bauble / 5. Textured bauble  

You can view the full PDF here and shop online or in store for all these decorations at House of Fraser.

Which Christmas themes have you seen this year that you like, Do you have a Christmas colour theme, or is your decoration style more eclectic? Which are your favourites from these collections?

Sammy xxx

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Make it. Felt Photo Decorations

H came up with this cute Christmas D.I.Y. when we were thinking of something to make for all our friends who have had babies over the past year. She wanted to make a little something for all our new mum friends that they can hang on their Christmas tree, a little different than the usual 'baby's First Christmas' decorations that you find in the shops. So the result was these cute photo decorations. I don't' have any kids so I filled mine with pics of my loves, I even had one spare for Channing Tatum! 

You will need:

Scissors, Felt, Embroidery threads, Needle, Scraps of ribbon, White card, Pencil and marking pen and the photos you want to use

Take something round to use as a template to draw around, I used the inside of my Sellotape reel and draw a circle onto your card. 

Cut out your card with your paper scissors.

Take your felt and cut three layers big enough to comfortably fit your template on. Use your template to mark your felt a little larger than your card, then cut out all three layers where you have marked.  

Take two layers and put your card between them. With the third layer cut out a scoop at the top (that will be where you insert your photo) and the aperture for your photo to sit in, you can see I cut mine in a heart shape.

Use your embroidery thread to stitch around the edge of your aperture, I used running stitch, but you could also use blanket stitch.

 Pop your ribbon scrap in-between the two back layers to create a hanging loop.

 Pop all your layers together and stitch all the way around the edge to hold all the layers together. The closer to the edge you can go the bigger the photo you will be able to fit inside. 

I printed off some of my instagrams onto normal white paper and placed them into each of the decorations I made. 

This one of Steve and I fits so well in the heart aperture.

These are so easy and fun to make, you could make them with your kids, for your friends, or like me make a set for yourself with all the people you love in them. If you are making them as a gift you could embroider a little message on the other side, like a date or a name to make it extra personal. You can hang them on the tree or make a 'family tree' garland to hang up over your fireplace. 

I think they are adorable and will be making a set for my niece this year too.

What decorations are you planning on making this year? 

H and Sammy xxx

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Love it. Black and Gold

I have been obsessing on anything black and gold lately! In the spring it was neon pink and gold and as the dark nights have drawn in and my mind has turned to all things Christmas, black has found its way in to the scheme. I have been checking out Etsy.com for some gift ideas and have put together a little treasury of my fave black and gold items.

Doesn't it all look so luxurious and glam! I am going black white and gold with my Christmas tree this year, you know how I love a theme. You can see my last few trees here and last years one here.

You can check out this collection and purchase these items on my  Etsy.com Treasury.

How are you all getting on with Christmas gift shopping? Are you making any gifts this year? 

Have a lovely weekend

Sammy xxx

Love it: Sammy's Christmas Tree

It was my day off from the shop yesterday and finally had a chance to tidy the house and get it all decorated ready for festive fun! A few weeks ago I mentioned I was thinking of getting a new White Christmas tree, well she is up (this tree is definitely a girl) and looking lush so I thought I would take a few pictures to show you how well my sparkly pastel scheme worked out.

  

The dusky lilac, mint, antique pink and shimmery gold silver and pewter decorations make for a really pretty, soft focal point for our lounge, which my friends describe as having a 'batcholor pad' look to it, well I do live with a boy (the Husband) but this beauty definitely glams it up a bit!

I hope you all have your trees and decorations up and ready for all those yummy presents, I cant wait to hear what all my friends got from their loved ones. I am so looking forward to spending some quality time with my friends and family especially my Mum, I know that may sound strange to some of you that know that I work with my Mum every day at our shop, but it is so different when I get to relax and chill out with her, away from work. We are cooking Christmas dinner together again this year, I can't wait its going to be so lovely. 

lots of Christmas tree love, Sammy xxx