Sleigh bells, Christmas lights and homemade gift tags....

Well it is nearly Christmas (although I haven't started counting how many sleeps left, not yet anyway!) and it is time to decorate the house with everything red, green and gold! I like to bring the outside in so we have a real Christmas tree which we keep potted up in the garden for the rest of the year, I am going to make a Christmas wreath for our front door, along with pine cone decorations and lots of holly berries.

I have loved watching Kirstie's Homemade Britain, and in particular I really enjoyed the Christmas special. I have decided to make my own gift tags for Christmas pressies so took her idea and changed it slightly. I picked up some Fimo oven bake clay and some red acrylic paint from HobbyCraft and dug out the cookie cutters and the rolling pin. I also found some old stamps to print some pretty patterns on the stars and little Chritsmas tree shapes. After cutting and stamping I put them into the rayburn for about 30 minutes to dry out. Once cooled I painted them with the red acrylic paint - not too neatly as you end up rubbing most of it off. Once dry I used a damp cloth to rub away the red paint, leaving some red in the pattern I had imprinted - add some ribbon and there you have it - homemade gift tags!