Do your bit to save the planet with this gorgeous recycled Christmas Tree craft activty! Collect unwanted magazines: craft, womens, airlines magazines etc. Also, ask your Avon lady to keep her outdated books for you; they are ideal if you want to make a small christmas tree for a table decoration. This is the perfect activity for inviting residents relatives to join in. Try it! Place finished Christmas Trees on mantlepieces, shelves, tables, reception areas, nurses stations and residents rooms….

Do your bit to save the planet with this gorgeous recycled Christmas Tree craft activty! Collect unwanted magazines: craft, womens, airlines magazines etc. Also, ask your Avon lady to keep her outdated books for you; they are ideal if you want to make a small christmas tree for a table decoration. This is the perfect activity for inviting residents relatives to join in. Try it! Place finished Christmas Trees on mantlepieces, shelves, tables, reception areas, nurses stations and residents rooms….

17th Annual FIESTA-WORLD CRAFT BAZAAR Saturday – November 21st (10 to 4 pm) Florence Filberg Centre (Upstairs and Down) Courtenays FIESTA-WORLD CRAFT BAZAAR is now the largest fair trade global craft fair in Canada. Organizations and businesses from eastern Canada, lower mainland, Gibsons, and across Vancouver Island will be coming together to sell unique and exquisite clothing and crafts from around the world! There will be something for every price range and person on your list. Theres …

When you see your friend wearing a necklace she has made herself or you see someone who has decorated her house with unique handcrafted items, you are jealous. However you think you cannot do so as you never done any such thing in the past. WRONG!
I am sure you have done some crafts at some point in your life. You may have made paper airplanes in school. You may have painted. You may have created decorations for the Christmas tree or Easter or some other occasion. You may have made a dress or a mask for Halloween. You decorated cookies for your child’s bake sale. All this qualifies as craft.
Life is busy and you probably have not practiced any craft for a long time. You think do not have time to learn a new craft. However, there are many good reasons why you should learn one:
- Crafting is a great stress buster. It engages your mind and takes it away from the problems of daily grind. It gives you an opportunity to channel your excess energy and help you relax. It will allow you to keep aside some time for yourself.
- Get your creative juices flowing. Everybody is born with some amount of creativity. It is a matter of cultivating it. As you master the skill and technique of your chosen craft, you will get more innovative. You will conceive and create new designs and execute complex ideas. This will enhance your creativity. You will be able to look at problems in your daily life with a new perspective and often find innovative solutions.
- Improve your self-esteem. You will create something new and unique out of some unfinished materials like wood or clay or glass with your own hands. This will give you a sense of accomplishment and pride in your skills. You would see an improvement in your self-confidence in a matter of short time.
- Save Money. Learning a craft will enable you to make gift items for family and friends economically. They will also appreciate a unique gift, made especially for them. Depending on your craft, you may be able to decorate your home on a strict budget
- Make money with your craft. As you improve at your craft, you will be able to sell your craft items and make money. You will get an opportunity to make a full-time or part time income with your handmade crafts.
Crafting requires a creative process as well as a skill. Not everybody likes everything. You may have to try multiple crafts to figure out the one you like. Start with a craft that you may have been exposed to already or one you thought you would like to learn sometime. If nothing comes to mind, talk to your spouse or your best friend. If they have a favorite craft you may want to learn a similar craft or complementary craft. This will give you an opportunity to spend more time with them as well as learn a craft. Another option would be taking a couple of classes for different crafts. Select two or three crafts that you think you would like. Take classes at the local community college or adult learning center. This will help you determine if you like to craft and learn its basic techniques.
Do not learn a craft just to make money. Learn it only if you enjoy doing it. If you have fun with your craft, you will create beautiful pieces that will give you and others pleasure.

To make a popup Santa you will need – 2 loo-roll tubes. One needs to be slightly bigger than the other, so that one can easily slide up and down inside the other tube.

The larger tube is the chimney pot. Cover this tube in paper or paint to look like a chimney pot.

The smaller tube is Father Christmas. Stick on paper or paint this tube to look like Santa Claus. Give him a long white beard and a bright red coat.

Stick on a strip of red paper around the top of the tube so that the paper over hangs the tube. Scrunch the top edge of the paper to form Santa’s hat. Stick a cotton wool ball on the top to finish it off. The glue helps to keep the scrunched up edge nicely in place.

Cut out two thin strips of card. Stick them on the side of Santa to make his arms. The turn over you make to stick on the arms acts as a hinge later. Santa’s arms will pop out of the chimney as Santa appears.

When Santa is complete and the glue or paint is dry, cover Santa in sticky clear book protector or clear selotape. This reduces friction as Santa slips up and down inside the chimney.

Put Santa inside the chimney. Put your fingers up inside the chimney to mover Santa up and down so that he appears to POP out of the chimney.

Popup Santa is great for ‘doing’ the actions to the song ‘When Santa got stuck up the chimney’

When Santa got stuck up the chimney,

He began to shout,

“You girls and boys won’t get any toys,

If you don’t pull me out!

My beard is black,

There’s soot in my sack,

My nose is tickling too”

When Santa go stuck up the chimney,

Achoo Achoo Achoo!

Another Christmas present video

To make a delightful paper mache Christmas dish all you need is…

Old newspapers, PVA glue, paints, scarps of Christmas wrapping paper, varnish and Vaseline.

How to do it…

Fist you need to find a nice dish or plate to use as a mould. Be warned, a large dish or plate will take longer to make. It may be a good idea to start off smaller. Saucer sized is great for a starter mould.

Sometimes the underside of the dish or plate can have a more interesting shape than the top surface. Bear this in mind when choosing a mould.

Cover the surface that you want to use as a mould in Vaseline. This prevents you from simply sticking the newspaper to the plate. It will make it easier to lift the paper mache from the mould at a later date.

Mix some PVA glue with water. One part glue to two parts water. Rip up small pieces of newspaper and dunk them into the glue mix, and apply them to the mould so that they overlap. Cover the entire mould surface, allowing the newspaper to over hang the mould, any excess can be trimmed off later. After the initial layer you can use a rush to paste the newspaper on, it’s a lot less messy.

After completing three layers of newspaper allow the paper mache to dry over night. In total the dish needs a minimum of about ten layers to complete this stage, again allow to dry over night.

Before you remove the paper mache from the mould, use the mould as a guide and rim a neat edge around your pot, cutting away the surplus over hanging paper.

Then you’re ready to prize the paper mache from the mould. It can help to run a knife between the paper mache and the mould. Be careful and don’t rush.

You may be able to feel a trace of Vaseline on the paper mache, this will spoil any attempts to paint the pot. To remedy this apply one layer of paper mache to the surface of the pot that was exposed tot he Vaseline.

Tidy the edges of the pot by sticking small rectangles of paper to over hang the edge of the pot and stick them down on the reverse side.

Now you’re ready to decorate the sweet or trinket dish. Here are a few suggestions…

Paint it a base colour and decorate the edges with drawn lines or draw some sprigs of holly. Find a centre piece image to stick at the centre of the pot from old Christmas cards or gift wrapping paper.

With gift-wrapping paper rip up small pieces and it apply it to your pot as if you were adding a layer of paper mache. Add a line of glue around the edge of the pot and apply glitter to make it really festive and sparkly.

Of course the pot doesn’t have to have a Christmas them. You could paint it and stick pressed flowers or leaves onto it.

Paint the pot a base colour and then ad blobs of paint to swirl around the pot to create an abstract design.

You could personalise your pot by writing on it ‘For Gran’ or ‘Special Mum’

Let your design dry over night.

Once you have decorated your pot, in whatever style you choose, It will need protecting. Apply a thin layer of clear varnish to the pot. It will need varnishing on both sides, and will probably require 2 coats. You can get quick drying varnish that saves time, you can also get spray varnish which wont smudge a painted design.

And there you are a beautiful little dish for sweets or jewellery. A cost effective Christmas gift idea.

In today’s economy, using the Internet as a means for income is a logical idea. Designing a personal website to sell handmade crafts from home is one way to get noticed and bring in additional income, since millions of people around the country shop online every day. They’re looking for goods, products and crafts.Those who make crafts find that the many resources on the Internet turn out to be very valuable as well as convenient. For more details www.greateducationonline.com Tools, beads in every color of the rainbow, design ideas and inspirations for crafts or other handmade items can be found on the Internet.Purchasing goods from a craft website allows crafters to save money, since its possible to purchase large or bulk amounts at wholesale price. Both men and women can find a multitude of resources to sell their homemade goods online as well.No matter what type of craft you design or sell, there is someone out there who will want to buy it. From crafters who create wood art to crafting jewelry by hand, listing it in auction sites or placing it online within your own personal webpage allows others to shop and purchase what they like.Many shoppers like to find unique gifts to give friends and family, especially around birthdays and holidays, and look online to save the hassle of walking around the mall and still not being able to find anything.In most cases, designing your own personal webpage to sell handmade crafts is free, but some of the more advanced sites will charge a fee for your domain name. Remember also that you may need to pay yearly fees for website registration.There are a few things to remember when designing a site so that customers find it easy to navigate, shop and pick up those wonderful handmade items you’ve worked so hard to create.The first thing to think of is accessibility. Since there are thousands of other pages selling crafts, you need to make yours stand head and shoulders about the crowd. It needs to be user friendly. Utilize optimized keywords and phrases to help search engines find you. Keep graphics and other extras to a minimum in order to cut down on load time.Graphic load times should usually be under 10 seconds to accommodate anyone’s Internet speed. For more details www.greatindustrialguide.com  The one thing Internet users hate the most is a long wait time for a website to load. They will promptly leave your page and move on to other sites.Keep the pages looking professional. Selling arts and crafts is essentially your home business, so make sure that your site looks well maintained and offers a good indication of the quality of your work. Add contact information so that potential customers are able to reach you and ask questions about crafts prior to purchase.Try and incorporate a way for customers to not only browse what you have in stock, but also to order and purchase online. Today’s Internet shoppers want to browse, shop, buy and pay for their goods at the same time, so offering easy and secure payment processing shows you are able to offer them full service for satisfaction.The final step to making sure your arts and crafts sell successfully on the web is to market and advertise your goods. With thousands of pages of competition, you need to make your site stand out and offer what no one else does.During the busiest shopping times of the year like Christmas, offer discounts or specials that allow customers to buy goods and receive a coupon or offer on something else. Those looking for a good deal will utilize your marketing techniques so that it ends up being advantageous to you.http://www.arts-crafts-for-all.comhttp://www.activities-little-fingers.com

How to create Hand Made Books with Old Christmas Cards

Oh no! I hear you cry! Not already, surely?

Sorry! But I did see my first chocolate Santa in the shops today (hiding sheepishly behind the chocolate pumpkins!) and I remembered how all the advance preparation I did last year left me more time than I dreamed possible for playing with the children and indulging my taste for champagne cocktails on Christmas Day. In fact, my freezer and I will become extremely intimate in the next couple of weeks as I start to put together all the Christmas food my family expects to have and squirrel it away until needed.

One splendid timesaver I’ll share with you is to prepare your roast potatoes whenever you get a spare half hour between now and the big day. No, I haven’t completely lost the plot, even though Christmas preparations have been known to have that effect. Just peel them, cut them, parboil them, cool them down under running cold water, allow them to dry off then whack them in a bag in the freezer and forget about them. On the day, just tip them, separated but still frozen, into your hot cooking fat and stick in the oven for an hour or so. Perfect. Do the same with the parsnips too.

I digress. The point of all this is to urge you to take the same approach to your Christmas decorations.

Shop bought decorations can be just fine but……wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could say “(the children and) I made them!” when visitors gasp in awe at your creations? Why decorate your place with the same Christmas decorations that everyone else has when with a little forward planning you can create something unique? Making Christmas decorations doesn’t have to be complicated or even madly time consuming – especially if you get cracking now and you have a guide to start you off.

Once you have made, say, a glorious Christmas wreath you have the skills to experiment and design your own.

Christmas Crafts is an eBook that takes you step-by-step through making a range of decorations from the wreath to candy canes, with comprehensive instructions and lists of materials needed. I discovered it last year and the children and I spent some happy – and sometimes highly comical – evenings as the nights drew in making boxes full of Christmas decorations. It became a real family affair and, in spite of the fact that we have more than enough now, I’m being pestered to get the materials ready again!

And I shall. We can always give the surplus away as gifts!