These are fun and easy Christmas Ornaments to make, made using salt dough. You can leave them plain, add some essential oils to give a festive scent, or paint them with acrylic paints - the choice is yours. I used Kiki Reva Kani Cookie Cutters* to give a NZ festive look. 1 cup plain flour 1 cup salt 1/2 cup water Combine the ingredients in a bowl and knead until well mixed. The dough should not be sticky but you can roll it out on a lightly floured surface just in case. Roll out … [Read more...]

I recently went on a Resin Jewellery-Making Course that also included an introduction to making your own silicon moulds. It was a fascinating process that I thought I would share with you because, whether you are making jewellery or other items such as soaps, you can produce unique items rather than things that everyone else can buy a mould for. First step is to find or make the things that you want to create a mould of. I gathered a bunch of nature-inspired jewellery pieces including … [Read more...]

My first foray into making beeswax candles was not very successful. In that first failed attempt I had tried to make a pillar candle using melted beeswax but struggled with getting a wick size large enough for it to burn properly. Then I saw some natural beeswax sheets that were made from wax that was filtered to remove impurities to allow it to burn cleanly. There was also a tutorial on how to make rolled beeswax candles. Surely this time it would get a better result. Use a whole sheet … [Read more...]

I've made lots of candles before but they have all been in containers of different shapes and sizes. I had always wondered about making pillar candles and of course had to give it a go. In a previous post on Candle Making Tips I outlined the process for choosing and measuring your wax, selecting the wick and fragrance etc. All of those apply here so I won't repeat them again. The main difference is that you need a candle mould and you need to get a soy wax blend that is specific for making … [Read more...]

There had been a Dyeing business just down the road from me for as long as I can remember. However, when I decided that the time had come to renovate my beloved but tired and faded duvet cover, I was devastated to discover that they had closed down. All the references online seemed to point back to the now shut business. I had tried dyeing things in the past without much success and there seemed to be a very limited range of dye colours available from most places. Then I was absolutely … [Read more...]

Macramé was all the rage in the 1970s. I took to it with a passion, making countless macramé pot-plant hangers, bags, wall-hangings, key rings - you name it, I tried it. I remember even being commissioned to make a giant floor to ceiling multi-level plant hanger for my parents' lounge. I still have a macramé bag that I made way back when. What is Macramé? Macramé is essentially "the art of tying decorative knots". The origin of Macramé is generally attributed to Arabic weavers during … [Read more...]

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about a new product called Alcohol Lift Ink that enabled you to stamp an image using alcohol ink (that wasn't previously possible) to create cards. In this post I show how that technique can be used to decorate a silk scarf using alcohol lift ink to stamp images onto the silk. Alcohol inks are vibrant, pigment rich inks in an alcohol base and this allows them to be readily manipulated to create permanent designs on non-porous surfaces such as glass and … [Read more...]