Festive Napkin Rings and Special Offer!

Welcome to this Friday's Crafts! I thought I'd do something quick and easy today, partly as its been a long and busy day for me! Part of this morning was spent in School teaching a class of 6/7 year olds to play hand bells to accompany their song in the Carol Service...great fun...please pass the ear plugs?

For the Napkin Rings I used 12" pipe cleaners, or chenille sticks, as they appear to be called nowadays, and some funky beads. I don't expect you'll all have the time to rush away to South Africa to get similar beads, but never mind about that!

The size of the beads will probably dictate how many you string onto one pipe cleaner, also, whether you want to conceal the pipe cleaner, or have part showing, as I did.

I bent the pipe cleaner into two loops, pushing one end into a middle bead...

...and then the other end into the same bead...but the two ends can easily go into different beads if you want a wider ring. By pushing the ends into beads, I covered the ends of the wires, which I was afraid might catch on the napkins and snag threads...an important consideration as I intend using the good damask at Christmas.

An alternative Napkin Ring decoration is to twist greenery around a pipe cleaner...

...then loop the pipe cleaner into the correct size...

tuck in the ends...

and twine some beads or sparkles around everything.
You'll notice here that I actually ended up with the Ring too small for all the extra bits I added, so be sure not to do the same. Beads actually take up more of the middle space than one thinks.
Also, greenery won't keep between now and Christmas, so that would add to the last minute jobs.

Finished Napkin Rings!

I thought that as a December Special I would offer a couple of 'freebies' to anyone buying from my Etsy Shop during December, so I've put a notice to that effect in the Shop.

But then I thought that since you, my long suffering Followers, are there for me all the year round, you should have something extra!

So for any Followers buying anything at all from my Shop between now and the New Year, as well as the other things, I'll include one of my Crochet Brooches as well.

(Please remind me that you are a Follower when buying, so you get everything!)

Howzat for bribery and corruption!!

(Would I make a good Politician???????)

'Tee Hee!' as Ladydi would say...!!!

I'm Just a Woman Who Arranges Things...

If you are really quick and head over to French Kissed you might still be in time for her freebie: a scan of a lovely Valentine postcard for you to use as you wish...she emailed mine to me this morning and its gor-gee-ous!
She also has a 'Caption Contest' going on...I love Caption Contests, possibly a left-over of our mad Church youth group when I was a teenager, when the older students held them regularly and gave weird prizes, like a voucher to wear pyjamas to Church, or be taken out for a pizza by the committee! Tricia's prize is much more rational!

I made another pin cushion, embellishing it from my bead stash.
And by the way if you like pin cushions, check out this site. Its positively 'droolable'! So many ideas for using scraps to make something pretty.

If you are wondering about the post title- firstly do you recognise it???
Secondly, this is what I did this morning to cheer me up...none of the family have seen it yet so there could be ructions later...they get awfully tired of me moving all the furniture around!

My favourite place to sit, as you can tell! Very battered sofa inherited from my Great Grandmother:
This sofa has been in the kitchen since the summer and although useful, I was afraid it would get spoiled, so to fit it in is really why I had to move everything else. And, as you can see, the Hub got another load of firewood yesterday!
This sofa is really the root of the problem as it is so huge. When we bought it the Hub lay down on every sofa in the store to find one he could lie on at full length in comfort. But it wouldn't fit in the rented house, so had to be wrapped up in layers of plastic and delivered to the windowless, rubble strewn half built house! It was very amusing even at the time.
And back to the beginning. I didn't get as far as tidying the mantelpiece, job for another day.
And then I got out my stack of velvet pieces as I thought of making simple cushion covers from them. I love the colours so much that I've hesitated to cut them up until the right idea came to me. They are actually from an old furnishing sample book someone was throwing out.

Cushion Top No. One:

Cushion Top No. Two:

I thought of putting them in my Etsy shop, but am wondering whether I'll be able to part with them when they are finished...They are very tactile and comforting.

I'll stop now before you fall asleep, I've some funny stories I'll tell yous tomorrow!

Et Voila!

Est ce que vous avez voire le FREE GIVEAWAY dans le blog French Kissed?

(What's 'blog' in French?) Its a Valentine picture from one of her postcards...and if you haven't viewed her postcards you are REALLY missing something!