Make & Craft Issue 2 Now Out

Make & Craft magazine now has its second issue out - and you can see several of my projects on the cover.  Make a teacosy to keep your teapot hot this winter adorned with matryoshkas, and a matching egg cosy:

Here is a shot of the cosy, just before I took out the basting and attached the back.  It is a great use of those felt squares available everywhere, and also a good way of using up the leftovers.  It would make a good image for a greetings card too - pick the three smallest and instead of felt use lots of offcuts of paper and card in Christmassy colors.  You could even have them all holding presents!

You can also make some nice flat cards ready for mailing using embossing foil.  My project features three plus a matching tag, here is a picture of the church one being made:

It would look just as good in silver, or colored in with permanent marker pens.  Those outlines can be used for other things too - on fabric the lines could be picked out in metallic thread perhaps in chain stitch, or why not ice them onto a cake with a fine piping nozzle?

There is also a beaded bauble (I don't have a photo of that, you will just have to buy the magazine from here) On the first page inside you can see an advert for Mad Cow Beads and this features two more bauble covers, available to buy as kits from here.  Available in Blue Star or Red Holly, these fabulous bauble kits contain everything you need to make a beady decoration for your favourite bauble!

• Includes a full bobbin of nymo D, a beading needle and all the beads and charms required.
• Choose red and gold with holly charms, or a 'drapey' midnight sky design with star charms
• Professionally written, full colour 'bead by bead'  instructions are downloadable - we send a llink with your kit
• You need to buy a standard size bauble - 2 1/4" - 2 3/4" work well, although the pattern can easily be made bigger
• these are suitable for beginners with some crafting experience, or beaders who want to try out seed beads! They are a little more challenging than our seed bead animals, but not too complicated.

You can also find instructions for a necklace to wear to all those Christmas parties (or just out for a nice lunch while shopping):

Plus a matching barrette for your pony tail:

A good reason for growing one if you don't already have one!  You could also clip it to the front of a bun, looks very effective.

Operation Pancake isn't forgotten either for as well as the embossed metal cards there are some patchwork ones.  These are just the thing for all you crafters who end up with lots of little bits of card, paper, fabric, ribbon whatever and wonder what to do with it all.  Make some patchwork cards that look like this:

This was cut up from an old flyer advertising a craft book, plus a few bits of white card left over from cutting some card blanks and a few peel off snowflakes plus a greeting.  It is all stitched on with some metallic thread so you need a sewing machine with a swing needle, but not a lot else.  There are two more, and if you wait a bit I will rustle up another one for you to make in a few days' time.

Plus it is gloriously, unashamedly FLAT AS A PANCAKE and at only 5 1/2" square it will easily slip through all the post office machinery at the lowest rate as long as you don't stuff a fat letter in with it.  Send an email instead...

Over to you.  Let's hear about what you have been up to, what you think of all this and anything else you can think of.