Animated snow globe love // LA Times

These have been around for a while but they are just too good not to show! There are 50 other glorious animated snowglobes on the LA Times blog. Check them out!

I absolutely ♥ the bear!

Pixely popup Christmas cards coming next week!

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{Printable} 35mm Pinhole Hasselblad Camera

Sorry for the silence! I’ve been catching up on some long overdue DIY around the house! It’s been two years since we moved into our house and I’ve been so busy with the kids, blog, book and various pieces of work that our home has been totally neglected!

My cousin sent me a link to this amazing printable 35mm Pinhole Hasselblad Camera and I thought you lovely folks might think as highly of it as we do. It’s definitely on my to-do list!

You can download the camera from Kelly’s site and there are full video instructions you can follow.

I’ll be back on Monday with a new paper-craft project! Hope you all have a great weekend between now and then. I’m still pinning lots of crafty projects on my Pinterest site so do check it out if you haven’t already. I’m thinking of setting up a group craft board so if you are interested then leave a comment below.

BTW my cousin is in a band called Officers. You can check out their site here. They just toured with Gary Newman…very cool!!

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Crafty envy #3

Hello folks! It seems I have been taking a little blog-break of late (do any of you fellow bloggers ever feel the need?). I thought I would break the silence with a little round-up of all my favorite colourful crafts that I have seen on the web of late.

Colourful, easy DIY art from Little Helsinki.

Lovely geometric giftboxes from ruffledblog

Amazing DIY decorations by Alexey Danilin (I know they are hanging on a christmas tree but they would look great all year round!)

Judy from cute and useful wrote to me to show me her version of my string tied envelopes. They are super-cute and you will find the free, printable papers on her site.

Hope all of you in the northern hemisphere are enjoying the arrival of spring. The kids and I are loving it and have been trying to beat the garden into submission! (I really don’t have green fingers so I always find it a bit of a challenge). My boys have been making friends with the worms and have been having lots of (muddy) fun.

My book popped through the door last week so I’ll pop some pictures up next week…I will also be back on Monday with a new craft. Oh, and I’ve been putting together ideabooks for houzz in the last few months. Much fun…check out my top picks here.

Until then, have fun!

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I ♥ mathematics {platonic solids garland}

Oooh….it’s been I while since I last posted. We had a smashing Christmas and new year. Hope you all did too!

My computer died just before Christmas and it’s taken my hubby and I a while to bring it back to life…which is why it’s been a bit quiet. I lost 3 months worth of work (new years resolution no.33 = backup files more regularly!).

Now seems like a good time to thank all you lovely lot for visiting minieco over the last couple of years. I am ever amazed at the increasing number of people who tune in! I also realise as far as bloggers go I am quite slack…only managing to get a post up every week or two. I’d like to say that this will improve……! Thanks for sticking with me through the quiet times anyhow!

In between posts I regulary use pinterest so do pop over and check it out if you haven’t already. It’s a great site for gathering together all your favourite bits of eye candy!

There seems to be a bit of a Polyhedra craze going on at the moment. It seems to me that mathematics has never been so cool.

I have put together some templates for a ‘platonic solids‘ garland. Perfect for cheering the place up now all the festive decorations have been taken down.

Simply chop, score and glue together.

Don’t forget to thread your cotton in whilst glueing the pieces together….I forgot! (I did manage to thread the cotton through afterwards but it was pretty tricky and took longer than it should have done).

I’ll try to get a better photo of it in situ…our conservatory is really bright and sunny but the rest of the house is pretty dark (especially in this miserable weather).

If you want something a bit more subtle then you could make the polyhedra white with some neon/gold thread!

If you fancy having a go you can download templates here. (There are two templates on each page!)
Cube
Icosahedron
Tetrahedron
Octahedron
Dodecahedron

Happy chopping/folding/sticking!!

Check this site out for a jawdropping collection ofpolyhedra templates. Amazing stuff!

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Hama bead weaving…in progress!

Bleughhh! My computer ‘died’ at the weekend and my hubby and have have been trying to fix it since then so that’s why things have been a bit slow around here! Thankfully my sister came to the rescue and lent me her laptop today so I could write one last post to wish you all a happy holidays!

In amongst it all I have managed to find five minutes here-and-there to try out some hama bead weaving. I’m going to work on a few projects over Christmas and will put some tutorials on my site in the new year. I am very inspired by these hama bead baskets at finelittleday and am determined to figure out how to make one!!

Hope you all have an ace holiday and enjoy hanging out with your families and friends. We are off to Scotland for christmas so getting very excited about that!

Cheerio for now
Kate
x

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Crackers!!

I can’t imagine tucking into a Christmas dinner without pulling a cracker first. I love the naff hats, the cringe-worthy jokes (and just the tradition of it all).

Crackers are so easy to make…and if you don’t fancy making some for the table you can make some miniature ones to hang in the tree. They also make really cool gift boxes.

I’ve put some templates together if you wanna try. I initially drew these up for my son because he breaks up from school next week and I wanted to line up a few nice things for him to do. (I’m going to ask him to make one for each of his grandparents for Christmas – I’ll cut out the cracker and he can fill it with drawings, sweets and confetti and decorate the outside…sorted!).

Here’s how:
1) Download the pdf and print onto thin card. There is a large template and a miniature template. (Full size crackers are 25cm long and miniature crackers are 16cm long).
2) Cut around the outside with a pair of scissors.

3) Score along all the dotted lines. Compass points are great for scoring card.
4) Using a craft knife cut out all the diamond shapes.

5) Fold along all the vertical lines.
6) Fold along horizontal lines as shown. At this point you would insert a cracker bang and tape it into place at each end using sticky tape. (I didn’t use any cracker bangs for this post because I didn’t get my act together and order them in time!…If you wanna buy some, have a look on ebay).

7) Bring ends together and join using a glue stick or double sided tape.
8) Tie one end with a length of cotton/ribbon/string*

9) Wrap a gift/sweets/hat/joke/confetti* in some tissue paper
10) Pop inside cracker and tie the other end with cotton/ribbon/string*

* delete where appropriate!!

Job done!!

Hope all your Christmas or Hanukkah crafts/preparations/plans are coming along a treat.

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Simple Christmas tree decorations for kids (+ templates)

Phew, I finally got round to making some Christmas decoration templates for kids. (I don’t know about you but my to-do list is out of hand at the moment!).

My two boys are still a bit young to do the cutting-out so I did it for them. Their job is to go wild with the glue, glitter, silvery markers etc etc!

If you wanna print some out for your little ones to cut-out or decorate then you’ll find templates after the jump.

Read more…

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