inklings christmas blog hop

kia ora and welcome

to the Inklings christmas in july blog hop! i am guessing you hopped on over from the very clever nicky's blog to check out mine and want some ideas and inspiration for christmas ideas because it is not long to go -it'll be on us before we know it and we will all be wishing "gosh darn it i wish i had started those darn xmas cards and projects earlier" lol i know because i say it every year hahahahahaha remember we are also giving away some blog candy so leave a comment and then email our fabulous organiser christie so you can go in the draw to win FREE STUFF! if you are a SU demo feel free to leave a comment so i can come and visit your blog but unfortunately you cannot enter the competition for the blog candy when i was a child my mum often encouraged me to make presents for people. each year she would dutifully hang our handpainted pine cones or paper lanterns or macaroni angels on the tree with pride. when i my mum passed away 2 years ago i carefully accepted those handcrafted masterpeices and added them to our tree here in australia. i have also encouraged my kids to make a new decoration each year to add to the tree. this is what i will be getting the kids to make this year. it is a decoration made from the little plastic ribbon reels we have when we use up all our SU! ribbon. just add paper, ribbon and a bit of bling and xmas decoration is done! this is what the ribbon reels look like. they come in skinny or chunky and are very durable. they also pull apart so you can have two parts to it....or put stuff inside them.....

here is a side view of what i did to my reel. i added some ribbon and silver twine to the middle.

inside the reel i put in a teeny tiny banner saying 'merry christmas' for the kids i will get them to make a banner with their names on it, possibly a photo, and the date so it can be a little momento of this christmas

whilst trawling the internet a while back i came across this cool star and thought that it would look fab with our dsp. so i hunted down some instructions and this is my example. i used the basic gray dsp from the hostess pack as it was already cut into 15x15 squares for me! here is a tutorial on how i made it!

cut out six 15x15cm peices of paper and fold them in half to make a triangle

draw a line down the middle. i did this to help remind me where not to cut!

i measured it up so i had 3 even cuts along the bottom i measured 3cm, 6cm, 8cm, 13cm, 15cm and 18cm. from top to bottom i measured 2cm, 4cm, and 6cm.

then i cut lines that joined up with the measurements. however i did not cut alllllll the way through!!! if you do this it will fall apart and you'll end up with a pile of diamonds!

fold it out and it should look something like this. minus the ugly looking numbers because yours will be a lot more discrete :>

take the middle two and curl them in together and attach. i used dst but a glue dot would work just as well

turn the paper over and do the same with the next lines

turn it over to the starting side and curl those together so they attach hopefully yours will be looking a little like mine at this point!

turn it over for the last time and attach the points together this makes one branch of your star. go ahead and make 5 more

when you ahve got all six done, grab three and staple together at the tip. then do that with the other 3. then staple them all together. go around the middle bits and staple them together too.

it should end up looking like this hopefully my instructions are ok and you get what i mean :> another project i have been wanting to do is a nativity scene with punch art.

so here are all the gang with baby jesus. i have my 3 wise men and their camel. i have my shepherd and his sheep. i have the angel on high with the star.

and of course, mary and joseph and baby jesus in a manger. i would just like to say that these are NOT childproof and should be kept away from anyone who is short, cute, just learning to walk, around 1 year of age and likes to eat paper ...sigh.... well on that note it is time for you to hop on to the next exciting blog to visit the amazing amy. don't forget to say hi and leave a comment before you leave! cheers ears!