Countdown to Valentine's Day

Hello 2023! Wow.... it's definitely been a while!

I wanted to kick off the year with a creative project and as someone who can't resist an advent calendar....or two, I thought why not create an advent calendar for the romantic season of Valentine's Day.

The idea came about as I was packing away my Christmas advent calendar (that we made in 2020 - blog post here). I was looking at the red baking tray and suddenly thought that I could create a similar type of advent calendar for Valentine's Day. I then started to look on Pinterest to find some ideas but nothing really jumped out at me, so then I delved into my craft stash to see what I could find to inspire me.

I pulled out a die set by Tim Holtz called Gift Card Bag. 

Once I saw this die set, the idea to create an advent calendar that included daily activities to do with your loved one sprang to mind. However when I looked at the size of the die, I knew I wouldn't be able to fit 14 of these bags on the baking tray, so I started to think how I could alter it in some way.

I then looked at cropping it to a smaller size and began experimenting.

I measured the size of card that I thought would work and then laid out the die. I knew that I would need to create my own bottom tab once I had die cut the paper so made allowances on the measurements for this.

The above photo shows how the bag came out once I had die cut it and added my own tab. Once folded up, it creates a cute little pocket that will fit a 2x2 inch card inside.

    Once I had assembled all my pockets I got to decorating them and printed out some photos, approx. 3cm x 4cm each and then added some romantic words and most importantly the advent number. I decided for ease to just use some gold Thicker stickers that I had in the cupboard.

To make the activity cards, I typed up some activities that would fit on the 2x2 inch cards. I chose a range of activities that I knew we could fit in around our day to day lives and didn't have to be too extravagant.

I will include a list of the activities I chose below as it might help as inspiration for your own advent calendar:-

1. Tell each other the top 5 things you love about one another.

2. Learn how to say I Love You in a different language.

3. Tell each other your favourite memory.

4. Go for a romantic walk

5. Watch a movie together

6. Give each other a massage

7. Sit around a log fire and look at the stars

8. Buy each other a sweet treat

9. Spend the evening dancing together

10. Go on a brunch date

11. Tell each other a wish for 2023

12. Each pick out your favourite photo together

13. Play a game together 

14. Have a romantic dinner for two

I hope this post has given you some Valentine's inspiration for your own crafting projects this month.

N.B. The paper I used is from the Carta Bella My Valentine collection

Easter Craft Fair with The Fairytale Fair

We are so excited to share with you that we will be attending and selling at The Fairy Tale Fair Easter Craft & Design Fair next month. It's our first time selling at a Spring fair as we usually mainly sell at Christmas time, however this year we have been dabbling in some Easter makes and also fashion accessories. In this blog post, we want to give you a quick overview of some of the products we have been working on lately and hope to sell at the event. 

If you haven't already, you should definitely check out the Fairy Tale Fair website and find out more details about the day. As well as over 60 stalls selling their handmade creations, you can also enjoy and meet special guests, including the Sussex ghostbusters, The Mad Hatter stilt walker and Jon the Singing Chef. This fair is a fantastic community event, in aid of St Barnabas charity and there is definitely something for everyone.

The first set of sneak peek products we are going to share with you are our Spring/Easter makes, which includes a variety of decorations to celebrate the season.

After the success of our Christmas Gonks, we couldn't help ourselves to making some more for the Spring season.

If you prefer to place your Gonk on a mantelpiece or shelf then you are in luck as we also have these standalone Gonks too!

These fabric bunny decorations come in beautiful pastel shades and will look so cute hanging on a decorative twig tree.

It wouldn't be Easter without some eggs, and these decorations are simply beautiful! We will have a variety of different designs to choose from so you can pick out something that will suit your decor.

We have some more bunny decorations in the form of wood this time. Each beautifully painted and decorated, perfect for hanging on a twig tree.

Moving onto some fashion accessories now and these vinyl card holders are perfect for storing your essential cards in whilst on the go. Each come with a handy swivel clip so you can easily attach them to your bag or belt loop.

These Itty Bitty boxy bags are one of my favourite new products and are so handy for carrying around essential items, such as loose change, car keys, dog poo bags, lip balm, face masks and more! These bags come attached to a coil hair tie which can easily slide around your wrist to make them hands free.

For more sneak peeks of the items we will be selling leading up to the fair, make sure to follow us on our Instagram page.

We hope to see some of you there!

NEW Easter Craft Workshop

Welcome to our first blog post and workshop announcement of 2022! 

We are at that transitional time of the year where we are ready to say goodbye to Winter and welcome Spring with open arms. And what better way to do that then by taking part in our upcoming workshop.

Our Easter workshop for 2022 includes a variety of makes which will definitely whet your appetite for Easter and get you ready for Spring!

In this workshop you will be making a beautiful birdhouse plaque hanging decoration complete with a bird nest, speckled eggs and branch decoration. Approx. measurements are W11cm x H17cm x D6cm. You will also be making two Easter shaker cards and three adorable Easter gift buckets that you can either use as decoration or as a gift for loved ones this Spring.

Take a closer look at the projects below:-

The birdhouse plaque can be hung on a wall or sat on a shelf.

The shaker cards will include a bunny and chick scene design, set behind an egg shaped shaker dome and decorated with floral die cut embellishments around the edge.

Finally the Easter gift buckets will include some beautiful bunny imagery around the side of the bucket and be filled with brown shredded paper and topped with decorative eggs. Alternatively if you are choosing to gift these buckets to loved ones, you can choose to fill them with chocolate eggs once you get home.

So that is a round up of our latest workshop offering. If you would like to find out further details, please visit our Workshops page on the blog or email vintagefollie@hotmail.com.

Wedding Series 2: Beach Themed Thank You Postcards

To finish off our Wedding Series, we are featuring our thank you post cards. Of course I still wanted the thank you cards to reflect our beach theme for the wedding and I used my Craft Artist design software to create them. Luckily I have accumulated many different artist image collections for this program and managed to find some shell graphics to use. I also had a beach woodgrain background that fitted in perfectly. 

I added in an image of me and Conor and then also added our name and the date we got married (officially). I put the date inside a stamp mark on the top left of the card to give it that old fashioned postcard aesthetic.

For the back of the postcard, I kept it fairly simple, just using the shell graphics along the bottom and adding the old fashioned "Postal card" font at the top, alongside a stamp mark outline in the top left. That left plenty of space for us to write a personalised thank you message to each of our guests who attended.

Once I was happy with my designs, I uploaded them to Vistaprint and got them printed.

The perfect finishing touch to our beach themed wedding!

Wedding Series 2: Beach Themed Table Centre Pieces

For the wedding table centre pieces I wanted to use a few different elements that would all contribute to the beach theme we had chosen. I started to collect different pieces throughout the year as and when I saw them. I ended up getting the majority of the table centre pieces from The Range as they have a fantastic selection of beach/seaside home decor, plus they are very reasonable on price, helping to keep our costs down.

Unfortunately we didn't get a brilliant picture of the whole of the table centre piece arrangement at the wedding so I have a picture from a set up I did at home and have included a smaller image of the arrangement at the wedding.

So the main pieces were a glass jar (The Range), which came with some rope wrapped around the top and a star fish embellishment. I added some sand and shells at the bottom and placed a candle inside. 

This jar was placed on top of a large wooden slice (The Range).

The driftwood candle holder also came from The Range and I just added a tea light inside.

I created the table number bottles by using some bottles that I bought in Poundland which have the bottle top lights included. I then just made some labels to stick onto the front of them and then added some twine around the top and added a Starfish embellishment (Amazon).

I bought the large starfish from a trip to St Ives last year and placed two on each table around the arrangement. I added a couple of large shells, that I bought a couple of years ago at a craft jumble sale. I used these to place tea lights inside and scattered them around the arrangement. 

Finally I added some blue glass heart stones (The Range) to add a bit of extra colour and embellishment, plus they help to reflect light as well.

The venue added a burlap table runner and also a light blue sheer table runner across the tables which helped to add a bit of rustic beach charm, however I'm not sure if this was needed - but that was just a tiny detail that only I would have noticed!

For the top table we sourced a large rustic wooden tray from Amazon, which we filled with shells (from our stash at home) and also placed a glass jar and two driftwood candle holders inside. We wanted to keep it quite simple and needed it to fit in with the rest of the table centre pieces.

Overall I think the table centre pieces reflected our beach theme well and they are also home decor pieces which I can use after the wedding to decorate around my house.

Wedding Series 2: Flower Girl Beach Bucket

In our Wedding Series earlier this year, we featured the bouquet and buttonholes. However we forgot to feature the flower girl's beach bucket that we made for my beautiful niece Annabel to carry down the aisle. Unfortunately she wasn't able to be in the room with us in April when we got married due to Covid restrictions, so we were so happy that this time round, our flower girl could walk down the aisle with her bucket and scatter some flower petals (you could also think of them as pebbles - but real ones would have been to heavy to scatter on the floor!).

We found this bucket as a set of three from a gardening website earlier this year. The colour of the bucket was perfect and even though it had some embossed writing on the front of it, we knew we could cover that up with some twine wrapped around it. 

We added a starfish to the front of it and some wired pearl pieces - similar to those found in my bouquet.

We then added some tassels to each side of the bucket, using some seam binding that we coloured in a blue tint and scrunched it up a bit.

I think Annabel enjoyed holding her bucket during the wedding and it was the perfect accessory for our beach themed flower girl.

Wedding Series 2: Beach Bucket Favors

Up next in our Wedding Series are these fantastic beach bucket favors! When it came to deciding what we wanted to gift our guests in our wedding favors, I have to admit we went through a few ideas but none of them seemed to fit in with the beach theme very well. After looking through some more ideas on Pinterest, we finally found a miniature candle bucket which was just what we were looking for. Unfortunately these candles were from the USA and wasn't something that was going to be cost effective to ship. So we then started thinking about how we could create something similar. We did try making our own candles inside small metal buckets, however we discovered that these could leak whilst burning and I definitely didn't't want our guests to be burning leaking candles at home.

We therefore decided to use tea lights instead but needed something safe to sit them in for our guests to burn them at home. So we bought some small glass tealight holders to put the candles in. This way they could been placed inside a container and will burn safely.

We decided to use small garden peat pots as the bucket and pierced some holes around the edge to give out some light when the candle is burning. We then painted the peat pots in an off white and found a mixture of sand dollars and starfish to add on the front.

For the handle we used a wired twine that was also painted and on one side we aded a shell and pearl bead.

To finish off the favors, we added our guest names, using a small print out flag attached to one side. 

An extra treat for our guests were some sweet treats, in the form of chocolate seashells - very fitting for our theme! These were wrapped in small cellophane bags, tied with twine and positioned on top of the tealight.

I think these favors were perfect for our beach themed wedding and a gift that our guests can continue to use at home when they are burning small tea lights.

Wedding Series 2: Beach Shell Place Cards

The second part of our Wedding series is back! Our wedding celebration took place at the end of October and it was lovely to finally see the results of our labour over the last few months. 

To kick things off we are featuring the Wedding place cards today, which were inspired by the main Wedding invitations. We had used a shell die cut on the front of the invitations and when I was making the invites, I knew these shells were going to come in handy again when it came to making the place cards.

The shell die cut is from the Tim Holtz Seashells Bigz die (662706). The die also includes a corresponding embossing folder so that you can add detail to the shells once you've cut them out. 

Before I cut any shells out, I first needed to print our guests names on some textured white card stock. I measured the size of the shell and then used my computer to make a text box that is the same size. I then used a script font for each guest name and made sure it was centred in the middle of the box.

Once these had printed, I cut each box out and then lined this up over the shell die cut to cut it out. I then used the embossing folder to add the shell detail.

To finish the shells off I used a gold mica paint (Finetec Coliro Pearlcolors Vintage Set) and an ink dabber to gently add some gold around the edge, helping to add a touch of elegance. 

A simple but effective way to add our guest names to the tables, reflecting our beach themed wedding perfectly.

Halloween Treat Pockets

Happy Halloween! 

With all the hustle and bustle of wedding prep, I hadn't quite had time to create many Halloween makes this year, but I wanted to fit in a quick project to mark the occasion.

A quick and easy project to make are these little treat pockets, which are just big enough to slot a sweet treat inside! 

To make these pockets I used the Tim Holtz Gift Card Bag die set (662687) and Tim Holtz Frightening Faces die set (663090). This die set includes 12 faces so I wanted to make sure I used a different one for each treat bag. I also used the letters included with the Gift Card Bag set to add the word "Boo" underneath each face.

These bags were the perfect size to slot in some halloween chocolate lollipops that I picked up in Aldi a few weeks back. 

If you have some slightly bigger treats to gift this year then you could also use the Tim Holtz Treat Bag (663096) which provides a slightly wider gusset. I used the same method with the treat bags and popped some mini halloween biscuits inside a cellophane bag, finishing it off with some striped ribbon.

I hope you all have a ghoulishly good day and take some time to fit in some halloween crafting!

JoAnn Autumn Haul from the USA

We are so excited to share this post with you about our recent order from JoAnn craft store in the USA. About a month ago we found out that we could order from the JoAnn website and have it shipped to the UK for a reasonable price! I'm sure you all know as well as us that buying from the USA is never usually cheap with shipping rates at a crazy price which doesn't make sense for what may be a low value order in comparison. Alternatively a lot of USA craft stores and brands don't offer shipping to the UK which then makes it impossible to get hold of these lovely items!

Since we had been looking at USA haul videos lately we couldn't wait to start perusing the Fall and Halloween shopping category on JoAnn's website to find out what goodies we could buy! There were pages and pages of lovely home decor, craft items, fabric and more - so much to take in and choose from!

We did manage to restrain ourselves quite a bit and didn't end up purchasing as much as I thought we would, however this is only the first order!!!

So let's start with my purchases, I got a couple of kitchenware items and a home decor piece...

Hello Pumpkin Ceramic Mug

Just Enjoy Ceramic Mug

These mugs are lovely and chunky and can definitely contain a lot of your favourite hot drink come the Autumn time. They also look beautiful displayed out on your counter top ready for guests when they come over.

Hello Pumpkin Spatula Set

This set is excellent for those bakers out there when you want to whip up an autumnal treat. Additionally they look wonderful sat inside your utensil pot on the counter top.

Small Lit Amber Pumpkin

This small light up pumpkin is an excellent piece of home decor and looks great sat on top of a shelf or windowsill. When night time comes, switch on the lights and let this little pumpkin create a wonderful Autumn ambience.

So that's all that I included in my part of the order, let's move on to my sister's Autumn stash...

Hello Pumpkin Spoonula

As well as the same pumpkin spatula set that I bought, my sister also picked up this Hello Pumpkin Spoonula, excellent for cooking and baking this season.

Pumpkins & Leaves Mini Baking Cups - 100 pcs

If you love baking cakes then these mini baking cups are a must for the Autumn season!

As you will see below, my sister has already put these to good use!

For home decor, my sister picked up the following items....

Small Lit Pumpkin - Orange Leaves

This pumpkin is beautifully decorated around the outside with an embossed leaf pattern and also contains LED lights which you can switch on at the bottom to light up your room at night.

As you will see in the picture above, my sister also picked up a decorative sign to display...

Time to Get Cosy Autumn Wall Decor

This small sign looks great displayed amongst your autumn home decor and creates a cosy atmosphere.

Autumn Extra Large Flip Top Storage Box - Pumpkins & Love Fall

A fantastic piece of storage that you don't mind displaying around the house. It also provided a great space to place our glass light up pumpkins during the packing process and kept them from getting broken! Unfortunately the box did have a couple of tears around the edge of the lid but easily fixed with a bit of tape to secure in place. Not sure if this was caused during shipping or if someone picked a slightly damaged box in the first place!

Autumn Textured Throw - Orange Checks

This beautiful autumn throw measures approx. 50 x 60 inches and creates a wonderful backdrop across your sofa for a cosy autumn feel.

So moving on to a few pieces that mum ordered...

First up is a couple of pieces of Christmas check fabric...

Red Buffalo Check Christmas Cotton Fabric

Red Checker Plaid Christmas Cotton Fabric

As I'm sure you can imagine, this fabric will come in excellent use for Christmas sewing projects and I'm sure we will share with you any makes we have made with this fabric nearer to Christmas.

It's worth noting that the minimum order quantity for fabric is 2 yards.

Lastly mum ordered an autumn wreath that matched in with the colour of her front door.

However, unfortunately the wrong wreath was included in our delivery and therefore we are still waiting for the correct wreath to arrive, but I'll include an image and link below so you can see what it will look like. Once it has been delivered I will include a picture below, with it displayed on mum's front door.

Autumn Triple Berry Wreath 24" - Cream, Orange & Gray

So that sums up our first ever order from JoAnn in the USA. It is definitely worth checking out if you want to get something a bit different for your home and also it seems to be an area which UK shops are still struggling to provide. And if you do find shops that are selling these cosy autumn home decor items, they seem to be selling out in just days of discovering them! JoAnn is always offering great discounts on their products and even extra discounts at the checkout so make sure you look out for those offers to save even more money. In total it took just under 3 weeks for our order to get to us and we were updated every step of the way so we knew whereabouts our parcel was at all times.

We definitely think it's worth making an order, especially at this time of year when you want to get your hands on some lovely Autumn/Halloween and Christmas goodies!