Mother Day gift ideas:

So I thought you all might appreciate a few ideas for Mother's Day, I love to make my gifts because I think it's so much more personal. But I don't just restrict myself to the actual gifts, cards and wrapping can all be personalised too! I love to receive a gift that's so beautifully wrapped I can barely bring myself to open it, so I make sure that if I give a gift it's wrapped all pretty.

Here's some quick and easy ideas for presents and also for wrapping:

1. Cupcakes!

This must be one of the simplest ways to make your Mum something delicious and pretty. Try this recipe for Jammy Cupcakes and personalise with you Mum's favourite flavour of jam. 

2. A wall print.

Is there a quote your Mum loves or just want to tell her how much you love her? Try this wall print you can draw yourself for her. 

3. Hand embroidery.

My constellation embroidery can be personalised for you Mum too! Either choose her star sign or maybe her name and favourite colours, leave it in the embroidery hoop and she can easily hang it as a reminder of how much you love her. 

4. Hand painted plates.

Hand painted plates look wonderful and have that lovely handmade quality your Mum will love. Choose a pretty pattern, write her name or paint something she loves like a cupcake or a book. 

5. Personalised cards

Make your Mum a card, for these I dug out all my crafty bits and pieces and got creative. Hint: Washi tape is a lifesaver for jazzing something up! It'll go from simple to creative in just a few seconds!

6. Pin cushion. 

Is your Mum big into sewing try a home-made pin cushion, just grab 2 squares of fabric and sew along 3 of the edges, stuff full of wadding and sew the final side. Pretty, useful and simple! 

7. Pretty packaging. 

I'm posting my Mum's present home to her and wanted it to look pretty and inviting. So I grabbed a simple box and painted some polka dots on. 

8. Gift tags. 

Luggage tags can be a transformed into wonderful gift tags with a few simple ideas. 

Try grabbing some paint and roughly covering one side with a colourful lick of paint, once dry write on top of the paint for a cheerful tag. 

Or put to use that Washi tape collection covering tag with pretty patterns or edging with a floral flourish! 

Need more ideas? Well listen to your Mum, I'm sure she's mentioned things she'd love even if it's just a few nights off making dinner or time alone to relax with a book. 

What are you giving your Mum this year? 

Katy

Ceramic and Glass Painting

If you've been following me on Instagram (@katyepearce) you'll have seen my recent updates about my ceramic and glass painting.

This is something I've been meaning to do for ages and seeing as how I can never find affordable plates and dishes in colours and patterns I like I thought I'd give it a try.

I just popped to my local Wilkinsons and grabbed a couple of their 65p side plates, cheap and if I stuffed it up at least I hadn't spent a lot of money on them.

Recently I had a little order on Hobbycraft and ceramic and glass paints were something I purchased. I have the Marabu paints in Petrol blue and Mint green (my current favourite colour!) and a glass paint in gold glitter.

I had a little look on Pinterest for inspiration and came up with a few pattern ideas. Including a chevron style print, stripes and of course polka dots!

I thought you all might like a little update/tutorial on how I chose to paint my plates and glasses and a few hints and tips I learned along the way.

This was my first attempt, it's a little rough around the edges but I think it gives the set a little of that homemade goodness. 

After I finished this I got a little crazy and just kept going. So I tried to come up with more patterns and got painting. 

As I went on the plates got neater and I loved painting them more and more. 

I've just started on my first dinner plate and here's how:

These were my chosen colours, I love mint green at the moment and want to paint everything I own this zingy spring colour. 

I just picked up a pack of paint brushes from Wilkinsons to paint with, the only tip here is to go for decent paint brushes, you don't have to spend a fortune obviously but those cheap plasticy brushes you can get don't paint as smooth as some of the slightly more expensive ones. I think these were £2 for a pack of about 6 and definitely worth it. 

I paint my plates free hand and have found that so long as you take your time and have an idea in mind, even sketched out on a scrap of paper before you start working, you'll be fine. I did try painting with masking tape to give me straight lines and found that I could bleed slightly, if you look at the bottom right hand plate at the top of this post you'll see little spot like lines off of the stripes, luckily this happened all the way around my plate so it looks like I did it on purpose (Shh!). 

Just go slow and don't load your brush up with too much paint as the paint dries fast and it has a tacky stage which if you paint on can disrupt the pattern underneath. 

Once you've finished painting the guide says that you should pop these in the oven to set the paint. 

So you pop the plates in and set the oven to 170' celsius once your oven hits this temperature set your timer for 30 minutes and once this is over turn the oven off and leave your plates to cool in the oven as it cools. I wouldn't recommend taking them out still hot, not only will you burn your hands but the plates might crack and then all your hard work will be ruined. 

Next up in the ceramic painting saga is to finish off my dinner plates and make a start on some cereal bowls. 

Glass painting: 

I saw a post on Pinterest recently with Wine glasses painted with gold spots (another favourite of mine) so when I saw some glass paint on Hobbycraft I thought I'd give it a go. 

Again I popped to Wilko's and grabbed a set of four tumbler glasses for about 60p and got painting. 

At first I found it quite hard to work with this as it was so watery and needed shaking up every 5 minutes to make sure the glitter hadn't sunk. 

Although it took a while to get to terms with the paint I did eventually crack it, at first I used the lid to put some of the paint in as the glitter doesn't have as far to sink. Then I popped some on a piece of paper and this helped as it got just a little bit tacky so it stuck rather than slid on the glasses. 

The best way to do this is to just go for it, if your spots go a little off it's fine once you've covered the glass the effect is super pretty and the imperfections aren't even visible. 

Don't dot too much paint on at the same time over wise it'll run down the glass before it can dry, I do two coats and the first is quite light and mainly just to mark out where I want everything and then go back to make the glitter more prominent. 

They take a while to dry the recommended time is 30-40 minutes but I think they take much longer than this. I found it best to leave them to dry over night and they were perfect in the morning. 

I have a set of 4 finally completed and I'm going to do a set of wine glasses. 

Next up I think I'll tackle painted cutlery, Pinterest has been inspiring me plenty these past few weeks. Follow my boards here for some inspiration and you'll probably be able to guess what I'm going to next from all my posts. 

Katy