DIY: Flower fairy lights from soap bottles

It is snowing the third or fourth day in row. Cloudy days are also a bit dark and I feel a need to light little fairy lights to bring a touch of coming spring to my home. This year the first blossoms of spring come from the bathroom as these flowers are made of soap and shampoo bottles. If you are as lazy as I am you might already have some empty soap bottles on the bathroom sink so you don´t have to wait until the bottles are empty :) 

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You will need: 

transparent shampoo/soap/dishwasher bottles

battery operated fairy lights that do not heat (!)

scissors

drilling machine

4mm drill

small nail

hammer

transparent elastic band

Cut the leaves and flowers following the pictures above. Hammer little holes to the leaves so that you can thread them to elastic band. Twine the elastic band with leaves to the wire. After you have cut a flower drill a hole in the middle and then cut the flower open as shown in the last picture. This way it is easy to place the flowers around the lights. Now you are ready!

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I have noticed that there is more traffic on my site. It is nice to see that you people can find my blog! If you are interested to follow my blog you can add yourself to my bloglovin´or google followers. It would also be nice to hear about you in the comment box.

I have made the site easier to navigate by adding pages where you can read about me and find all DIY tutorials in the same place. There are also labels on the right sidebar.

I have been planning lots of new projects to share here in my blog and I hope to see You here again :)

Best of wishes Sannu

Bake Cupcakes for the Valentine´s Day

Tomorrow is the Valentine´s Day and today I was baking cupcakes. On Valentines it is nice to bake something cute and sweet. It is good to have one day per year when you can devote yourself to pastel colors, hearts, flowers, cliche romantic movies and sweets. If you are not spending the day with your nearest and dearest for some reason it is still a day to remember your true best friend, you yourself.

Cardamon double chocolate cupcakes:

200g butter

2dl sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cardamom

3dl wheat flour

1-2 tbsp milk

Filling and icing (to nine cupcakes):

200g cream cheese

100g white chocolate

100g milk chocolate

Food gel colours

Candy or some other decorations

1. Beat the butter and sugar together with mixer. Add one egg per time.

2. Mix dry ingredients together  in a separate bowl and add to the butter, sugar and egg mix. 

3. Add some milk so that it is easier to divide the pastry to the baking moulds. 

4. Bake in 200 Celsius temperature for about 15 minutes. 

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When the cupcakes have cooled down use apple drill to make a hole in the middle. 

The filling is easy to make: just mix 100g cream cheese to 100g melted milk chocolate. Use pastry bag to fill the cupcakes. Mix the icing in the similar way using melted white chocolate. If you like, add some gel color to the mix. It is easier to get even texture if you use mixer. Decorate the cupcakes using different colored icings and candy.

This makes 16-18 cupcakes. Icing is for nine cakes, because I tend to put some cupcakes to the freezer. That way I won´t get an urge to eat more than I actually feel like just because of best before is coming.

Sannu

Early Bird Easter DIY: Decorate a table chandelier

This table chandelier is an easy and quick DIY project. Remember how I made flowers from a tin can? Now I made five small and five big flowers and put them together. I did not paint flowers because I wanted to show the recycled material. Instead of that I spray painted a Christmas chandelier that I bought from the January sale. Then I just added some beads.

The eggs are another idea from recycled material. I made these couple of years ago and still like them. You can use old news papers or loose pages from broken book.

How to attach the flowers and before picture of the chandelier. Here is a link to the post where I show how to cut flowers. In this project the only difference is that I cut squares from the tin and then formed them to circles to cut flowers.

Some might think it is early for a project like this but if you are up to making decorations yourself it is perfect time to start collecting ideas. You still have plenty of time to collect material from sales and flea markets, enjoy DIY projects and make a few extra pieces for a gift. 

Have an inspirational start for the week!

Sannu

A quilted blanket with bold colors

I really enjoy quilting because it is one of the best ways to use small pieces of fabric. I have also noticed that combining old and new fabrics makes pieces to show their best. If I would pick just one of these fabrics that I used and sew it to a bedspread it would not look as good as this no matter how beautiful the fabric would be.

In my opinion these kind of handicrafts do not go off fashion as quickly as single fabric prints might go.  When you combine fabrics from different eras there is no date for the end product. When I read about quilting models I was surprised how modern the blankets from the 1800´s look like, I would have dated black and white graphical blankets to the 1980´s :) 

Even though this blanket is a real mix of colors and patterns all of them seem to be from the same color family. I chose to use colors that can already be found in my apartment. I tamed the colors with grey that is almost black. 

For cutting the pieces to your work you will need a quilters ruler, a cutter and a mat.  These make quilting so much easier as you can get straight lines with one move. In my project the center pieces were 20 cm *20 cm. And stripes 4,5 cm. Measurements include 0,75 cm seams. You don´t have to measure the length of the stripe as you circle the square one side at the time cutting of the leftovers. 

Quilt blocks. I added one round of dark grey before combining the blocks with another shade of grey.

After combining the blocks I added 20 cm thick stripes to both ends and 4,5 cm to the sides.

Then I made the layers placing top, batting and basic cotton fabric one on the other. Then I used small knots to tie the layers together. I also made decorative stitches to the squares. Then I went all the side edges with sewing machine´s zig zag stitch before finishing with ribbon.

After taking these photographs I went to a flea market and found two pillow cases that match perfectly to this blanket. Sometimes the right things just come to you :)

Best wishes Sannu

ps. Do you have experiences with quilting?  How did you like it?