Mini Make it: Paper straw letter art

There is a mini make for you this week, this simple to do, Straw letter art.  Its the perfect make for a little time out and to make for a children's bedroom or making a big letter word for decoration.

Make it: Mermaid Papercut with FREE PDF

We have a tutorial today for a present idea this Christmas for the mermaid fan in your life.  It really is a simple project to do and one that you can tailor to the person you are giving it to.

Make it: Paper Houses Advent Calendar

It is no secret that I love Christmas, everything about it, from the food to the shopping to the decorations. So today I am sharing with you the first Christmas 'make it' of the year - how I made our new Advent Calendar. I wanted to make one that I could fill up myself and that Steve and I could share, so a fun colourful house Christmas countdown seemed perfect.

You will need: 24 sheets of A5 white paper, a small box or packet to use as a template, a selection of colourful card, double sided tape, some stickers and embellishments, number stickers from 1 -24, 48 paper clips, sticky-tape, scissors, bakers twine and your choice of filling.

Step 1. First to make the paper pouch which will hold your treats, start by taking your A5 paper and folding it over leaving a 1.5 cm strip at the bottom, then wrap it around the small box (I used the box from the paper-clips) fold over the end and seal it with sticky tape.

Step 2. Slide the box out of the paper pouch and seal the joins with some washi tape. Repeat for each of the 24 days.

Step 3. Then you can make the houses to stick to the front of the pouch. Cut out some squares and rectangles big enough to cover the biggest side of your paper pouch. Then cut some triangles to create rooves and stick them to the rectangles with double sided tape to create the base for your houses.

Step 4. Stick your houses onto the paper pouches. Repeat this for all 24 pouches.

Step 5. Next, grab a bunch of stickers and embellishments and add some doors, windows or chimneys to each house, I added these little owl stickers too, aren't they cute!

Step 6. Arrange your houses in an order that you like and add your numbers, I used a selection of thickers stickers and wood shapes from my stash, but you could just stencil or draw the numbers on each house.

Step 7 & 8. Add two paper clips to the back of each pouch and thread the houses onto a length of twine.

Then you are ready to hang them on a blank wall with command hooks or just washi tape if you prefer. Oh and don't forget to fill them up with goodies ready for December the 1st.

I just love how mine turned out, if you have children or youngsters in the family I reckon this would be an awesome project to get them involved with, they could each decorate some houses and help hang them in number order, or mix them up to make each day harder to find.

What would you put in your advent calendar? I love the idea of mixing it up with sweets, wintry activities and little treats like Lego figures and nail polishes etc. I can't wait to start opening ours!

Sammy xxx

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Make it: Holiday Scrapbook Tutorial

For every holiday I have been on for as long as I can remember I have made a scrapbook when I got home to keep all the little mementos I have picked up and of course house all of my favourite photos of the trip. Why I choose to scrapbook instead of just putting the photos in an album is that I like to record my memories and highlights along with my photos. Also I love using fun papers and embellishments to give a flavour of the place I have visited too.

Hayfever Free Fabulous Faux Flowers

Clockwise from top left: Felt Bouquet / Paper Hydrangeas / Pompom Stems / Fabric Florals / Magazine Blooms / Felt Flowers / Polyester Peonies / Story Book Roses / 

I love a good bunch of flowers around the house, it makes the place feel so fresh and happy. I am however lazy... and a little cheap, I just hate that they die so fast. I love my succulents too but sometimes you just need some colour don't you think? Another issue for me is that our H is allergic and my Steve gets hay-fever! I am hoping these amazing crafty creations might just be my salvation. The links above take you to the tutorials to make all of these beautiful faux florals, a good compromise for my house hold, now just to choose which ones to make first. 

H and I are off to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A today, We are sooooo excited! Check out our Instagram as we will be posting live all day on our little London day trip. 

Have a lovely weekend

Sammy xxx

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Live it: Paperchase SS15 Event

H and I have worshipped at the doors of Paperchase Tottenham Court Road for more than 15 years. Four floors of stationary, pens, paper and gifts who would not want to be a paper chaser? You can imagine our delight when an invite hit our inbox to head over to TCR and view their Spring/Summer 2015 line and have some Christmas crafting fun, we literally squealed.

Last Tuesday evening we made our way up to the crafting area at the top of the store and were met by the PR and some of the design team. after a welcome drink we headed over to have fun with glitter with the lovely Martine Arty. They have a bunch of workshops going on in the lead up to Christmas at the flagship store, head over to the #imadethis page on their website for more details.

We got to make Christmas decorations, basically we got to play with amazing paper, glue and glitter for an hour, it was awesome! 

Then they let us loose on the new collections. The lovely Puja took us around and talked us through some of the pieces. We are so excited to get our hands on some of these goodies. We don't want to spoil the surprise as we will be doing a post all about the collections when they are released so we have just given you a little teaser below...

Cockatoo tankard and it takes two to Mango! Yes!

A trip to the store would not be complete without a little shopping spree, so we headed down to check out the Christmas goodies and picked up more than a few supplies to keep us going until the next time we come and visit.

We would just like to say a massive THANK YOU to the guys at Paperchase for having us along, and for the awesome goodie bag!

Are you a Paperchase fan? What is your favourite piece of paperchasery? Or piece of stationary that you last bought?

Let us know, as usual in the comments below or on twitter @livelovemake

H and Sammy xxx


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Love it: Hobbycraft Haul

If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen my receipt from my recent trip to Hobbycraft. 

Well, a few of you asked to see what I bought so I thought I would show you. We have never done a haul post here before, so let us know in the comments if you like this kind of post and we can do more of them.

Favourite Friday: Fabulous Feathers

1.Clay Feather necklace  /  2.Paper feather necklace  /   3.Leather feather necklace  /  4.Gold feather necklace  /  5.Fabric feather necklace

I love feathers, I work with them a lot at the Sew Crafty when I am making and adapting fascinators and hats. I love feather print fabric too, I bought this jumper from M&S last week and last summer I made some feather earrings to sell in the Craft Coop Pop up shop in Maidenhead. As much as I like real feathers, I love these alternatives I have found around the web. These are all necklaces made with anything but real feathers. I really love the fabric feathers, follow the link for a tutorial on that one, I am having a go at that today!

What are you up to this weekend? Lots of crafting planned??

Sammy xx

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