Betty's Birthday Embroidery

My Gran (Betty) turned 92 the other day and I wanted to give her something handmade alongside the other gifts I'd bought her.  I usually give her jewellery I've made especially for her but as her jewellery box is overflowing these days, I thought I'd give her a little embroidery this time. 

This was a super-quick job, with the stitching completed in an evening and then the petals filled in with watered-down acrylic paint the next morning as I was in a rush to finish it!  I'd love to do something similar but with the petals entirely stitched...although I have just found two forgotten and half-finished embroideries in a cupboard, plus I've just started working on a new one tonight so that might be a while off...

My Mum, Gran and niece

Anyway, most importantly, the birthday girl loved it and had a great lunch at her favourite restaurant, surrounded by family, delicious food and copious amounts of wine!  

Jenny

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DIY Christmas Giftwrap

I love browsing all the luxury giftwrap available from the likes of John Lewis and Selfridges but for the past couple of Christmases have been going low-key with brown parcel paper. I love it for various reasons:
❆It's cheap
❆ It's really good quality so is easy to wrap with and doesn't tear
❆ You can dress it up in many ways and with any colour theme you want
❆ It looks really classic and timeless
This year, I was inspired by this lovely idea from www.robbieanderin.blogspot.co.uk.  I originally found it via a Pin on Pinterest and loved the idea of using doilies as gift tags.

It just so happened that I had loads of paper doilies sitting in my studio, leftovers from a long forgotten project.  Mine weren't as pretty as the ones on Robbie and Erin's blog but I still wanted to incorporate them into my wrapping as I love the way they look against the brown paper.

I decided to just use doilies as embellishment, tie them into place with raffia ribbon, and make my own gift tags.  I say 'make', but all I did was buy a huge quantity of those cheap card luggage tags you can buy from any stationery shop and punch Christmas trees into them with a paper punch.

I really like the end result.  I also like that all the wrapping is totally recyclable or, if it's going to a crafty or frugal recipient, re-usable.  

For smaller items, like the little Disney rings and bracelets I bought as a stocking filler for my four year old niece, I made the doilies into a little pouch and tied them with ribbon.  I love the way these look and will be using this method again.  

Using the same technique with lace doilies would be a brilliant way of wrapping jewellery for big girls too :-)

Jenny 

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