Rustic Christmas trees

I've really enjoyed making ornaments from little twigs, I love the natural and rustic look they have! So next I made a little Christmas tree, you can see the tutorial over at the WeLoveUnique blog and make one yourself :-)

The advent calendar is proving to be quite a challenge, too many options, too many ideas, wondering what will work... Hoping to make something happen in the next few days.
Wishing you a creative day,
Aleka

Wooden stars ornaments

Hello!
I've seen quite a few ornaments made from little wooden sticks and I just love their rustic and natural look. So I thought I'd give it a try :-)

What you need: wooden sticks with different thickness, hot glue (use the clear kind, I had white and it showed a bit on my stars) and jute string.
Start by cutting the wooden sticks to a size you want, I used a small saw on the thicker ones and just snapped the others. I made sure that I had two different lengths for the sticks, that way my star would look better. Hot glue two thick ones and two small ones creating two crosses, hot glue the two crosses together forming a star. Use the jute to cover the part where they are glued together and then dab a little glue to the top of the star and place another piece of jute. Make a loop so that you can hang your stars and cover the glued part with another piece of jute, just circle around it and tie a neat little knot.
Ta daa! You stars are ready :-)

Wishing you a lovely day,
Aleka

Linked to Homework, LizMarieBlog,Whipperberry 

New year's hoop art tutorial

Hello!
This is a project I had in my mind for a while, it didn't take me a long time to make it and I do love the result. I've used white fabric mounted on an 6 inch embroidery hoop and black felt numbers to "write" the new year. I've used a font called twinkle and after I printed my template I cut each number from paper and then used them as templates to cut the felt. A nit little trick I did to cut the insides of the 4 & 0 is this: I used blue chalk to mark the cut out on the felt, as you can see in the second photo and then used my pointy scissors to cut it out.

I placed my numbers on the fabric and then started embroidering them. I did the little twinkles first to secure the number in place then used scissors and tweezers to remove the paper. Then I just traced the number with white thread. I followed the same rules for the rest of the numbers, first I embroidered the little stars and after removing the paper I embroidered the outline.
And when I finished I had my new year's hoop all done, I love the contrast of the white fabric and black felt!

Wishing you a great day,
Aleka

Linked to Homework, LizMarieBlog, PersiaLou & Whipperberry