My craft room

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I rearranged my craft room (actually it's more like a craft corner). So I just wanted to show you an instagram shot of what it looks like now. It's a bit more messy most of the time. But i'm in love with this long table, mini drawer and an extra shelf. The space I had before was probably ten times smaller. I have no idea how I managed to work with that.

Christmas home

Last weekend i've started decorating our apartment with Christmas stuff.

I bought this white Christmas tree a couple of years ago. I thought we might not have snow for Christmas so i wanted lots of white inside our apartment. There was plenty of snow last two winters, but this time it seems that we might not have any.

I got these lights and the little candle house last week. I just got this idea that i want to have lights inside something, and once i saw this glass house i realized that it's perfect for my white theme.

This year we have a real advent calendar with little gifts. We had only chocolate ones before.

This year i wanted to add some red to my Christmas decorations, so i got this "Christmas star" flower.

The white fake "Christmas star" flowers and glittery decorations are from last years.

We always have some extra ornaments, because our tree is so small. This time i wanted to display them somehow, so i put them in a big jar with some tinsel on the bottom.

More Christmas Decorations

I bought some modeling clay and made more X-mas decorations. I used cookie-cutters for the shapes, acrylic paints and lots of glitter for decorating. Instagram pics again, sorry for that. I get so tired after making these that i don't feel like getting the camera out and going trough the whole process of taking and processing pictures. But i will definitely have a list of everything i have for sale for the Christmas poetry event with proper pictures once everything is ready.

Flowers

With all the birthdays, women's day, Easter and other spring celebrations there were flowers in our apartment all the time in March and April.

I got so used to having flowers around that it looked totally empty when i had to take them away. So i decided to save couple of bouquets. I've held them hanging from the ceiling for about a week to dry.

And now i have them back in their vases! Not as fresh as they were but still beautiful!

Origami garland

After i've got the Origami book i've been making origami from time to time, placing one as a little surprise gift in most of the packages shipped from Jozik records. One day i came up with an idea to decorate one of our doorways with origami birds hanging from the ceiling. But i didn't have much time to concentrate on making many of those birds, i made one or two from time to time, and most of them ended up in packages with Jozik releases.

Today i finally made enough birds for my garland.

Then i found some colorful felted balls i bought one day in Sinelli

I added them to my bird garland. It came out really sweet and colorful.

Birds for my sister

Last week i went to Murmansk again. I took my color paper there to make some origami for my sister.

Her room is very colorful, so i thought they would look very good flying under her ceiling.

She is a biology student, so she started classifying them according to their habitat and choosing a good place for them according to it. Maybe she could even make some kind of a food chain out of them :)

DIY Xmas garland

Sorry i haven't been blogging for a long time. Most of this time i spent on our new release i wrote about in my last post as well as preparing some nice stuff for tonight's poetry evening which i'm gonna write about in my next post. I also had to find Xmas presents and other stuff for my relatives in Murmansk (we're going there for the Xmas holiday!!). In between those things i had time to decorate my apartment a little and make two nice Xmas garlands:

For these garlands i needed:

- strong white thread

- different wooden and/or shiny beads

- craft paper with nice patterns

- fabric with a nice pattern

- shapes for gingerbreads

- carton

- scissors

- liquid paper glue

- glitter

- all kinds of shiny stuff that can be added (golden stars, little bells etc)

I used gingerbread shapes to cut out animals, flowers, bells and angels out of carton, fabric and craft paper. Fabric shapes were glued on both sides of each carton shape. All the shapes were hung on the main thread with the help of the beads and normal white or red sewing thread. For the beads to stay in one place on the main thread, i've brought the thread twice through each bead. All the other glitter and shiny stuff was hanged in random order between the shapes.

This is the only Xmas decoration Notka cannot reach and ruin. She eats my Xmas tree and plays with the lights :)

Paper bowl

I've been so frustrated with throwing away so much paper recently. I have membership cards for couple of shops and with those cards i get a bunch of magazines every month. Most of them i go through only once and then they go to paper recycle box. Some of them i don't even open.

One day i thought i should try making something out of them, so that they work at least to some purpose. Especially that i like crafting.

So i started of making a paper bowl:

I only needed a glue-gun and one Stockmann magazine to create a bowl like this. But it was still lacking something, so i got out my paints and made it much more colorful:

I enjoyed making it a lot and from that moment on i am not throwing away a single magazine or newspaper. I am working on more bowls like this but i'd also like to try making something else. I have couple of ways to make paper baskets in mind, but i would appreciate any other ideas coming in!