Valentines DIY: Origami Hearts

I thought I'd get started on some Valentines prep this week and share a little DIY with you! 

I love origami and making hearts fits perfectly as Valentines is only a couple of weeks away! These are super simple and you can make them in all different sizes. They would look great scattered on the table for valentines dinner or stuck to your present as decorations. 

Take a square piece of card or paper. Fold it in half along the diagonal, corner to corner. Do this both ways on your card so that it is split into 4 triangles.

Take the top of your square and fold it down to the middle line as you see above.

Next take the bottom corner and fold it up to the top of the opposite side.

Next up take one side of your card and fold it over so that the inside lies straight down the middle.

Do the same on to the other side so you have a pointed heart shape.

Then take each side of the heart and fold the points behind so that they are flat.

Finally do the same thing to the top points and there you're done!

I made these in all different sizes and I think they look cute decorating our office. I'll be filling our table with them on Valentines day and might just keep them up for fun afterwards!

I hope these brighten your table on Valentines day!

Katy xx

Advent Day 15: Kitty Christmas DIYs!

I decided recently that I wasn't going to spend a fortune this Christmas on toys for the cat. I'm a sucker and a total cat person so it's hard for me not to spoil Lux, I headed over to the ever useful Pinterest to find some ideas. (Find me here!)

I started with a little stocking! Super simple but cute and of course everyone needs a stocking at Christmas!

Then I grabbed some red felt from my stash and cut out circle shapes to make mice!

I folded the felt in half and used a simple stitch to sew the sides, stuffing a little bit with wadding before I finished sewing. Then I added a little tail by plaiting some thread and sewing it to one end. Quick and simple toy that you won't mind being destroyed in 10 minutes.

Then I riffled through my scraps of fabric and picked out some material. I drew the outline of a fish and used my pinking sheers so I wouldn't have to do any edges. I sewed two fish shapes together and then added some ribbon so you can drag it along.

Last but not least some simple pom poms with a long enough string to be dragged and dangled.

The easiest way of doing this is to take two fingers and wrap a large amount of wool around them. Once you have enough take a length of string and wrap it around the middle of the wool and put tight, slip the wool off your fingers and tighten the thread as much as possible so it is secure. Cut around the outside of the wool through the loops until you have a pom pom!

My little monster cat is definitely excited for Christmas, she loves to try and pull down the tree and all it's decorations or drag away the already wrapped Christmas presents. I hope your kitties enjoy these!

Katy xx

Advent Day 14: National Wrapping Day!

It's National Wrapping Day! I LOVE to wrap presents it's one of my favourite things about Christmas time, along with finding the perfect gift for friends and family.

Before I start wrapping I like to get the room all cosy, in this case I sat in front of our Christmas tree grabbed all my bits and bobs I need for wrapping and lit some Christmassy candles! And obviously I was joined by little black and white monster Lux. Who is trouble when you're wrapping, she likes to steal string and run under and over all my wrapping paper.

My wrapping style is very classic and simple, but best of all easy peasy! I've always loved to wrap things and it wasn't until the last few years I've refined my wrapping technique and learnt the power of brown paper. Don't get me wrong I'm all for colourful and interesting wrapping paper but my style in recent years has been brown paper and twine with simple reds, greens and metallics. They go with my tree and the Christmas colours we use around the house to decorate.

I thought I'd share my wrapping this year and a few easy things to do with brown paper to jazz it up a little!

So I have my basics, plain brown paper from IKEA and brown fawn printed paper from ASDA, scissors and clear tape. Other things you might want are; Washi tape, string, gift tags, ink and stamps.

My method is the simpler the better, not only is this neutral and goes with any decorations it's also slightly less gaudy than some of the wrapping papers out there.
For a lot of my wrapping I do simple brown paper with either brown twine or ribbon around.

On all of the presents I put tags so even though G will have 5+ presents and all of them will have tags so I don't get confused and give the wrong presents to the wrong people!
For the tags I simply grabbed some plain tags normally used for parcels then I used alphabet stamps to write Merry Christmas.

For other presents I took the brown wrapping and used my deer and tree stamps to print all over the paper. I try to stick with only one or two colours per wrapping so brown and silver or the deer paper with red tag! Other little additions I used are wooden letters! I just grabbed some thin thread and tied it onto the tag, I matched the letter with the name of the person who the present belongs to!

Any wrapping paper can be jazzed up with some ribbon and a little bit of Christmas cheer! You could add Christmas decorations strung around your present with some ribbon, wooden ones would look great and go with most wrapping papers. All different ribbons could look great but pom pom ribbon or ric rac would be super festive! Personally I love twine and old fashioned looking ribbons in natural colours.

I've popped some of my favourites down below the letters from Hobbycraft are the ones I've used on some of my presents!

Pom Pom Ribbon | Paperchase | £2.50, Wooden letters | Hobbycraft | £1.50, Wooden Decorations | £4.09 for 50,
Raffia String | Paperchase | £2.75, Bells | Hobbycraft | £3.00. 

I'd love to see how you wrap your Christmas presents!

Katy! xx