Hello my friends! 

Happy December!

As we’re finally into the twelfth month I though I’d really get into the festive season with a post on gift wrap and a couple of d.i.y gift tag ideas. 

I am unashamedly one of those Christmas freaks who not only tries to get the wrapping done early but likes to have a gentle theme to my gift wrap – be it nature, or glitter, gingerbread men or fairies I like my gifts to look good, this year I decided on snowflakes because a couple of weeks ago we had five inches of snow even if it only lasted a day…we genuinely don’t get enough of the real stuff in winter here and although its so cold its also really pretty.

So I decided to create my own clay and crochet decorations and use them as gift tags! Its a super cute, less wasteful idea and the recipient can put it on their tree – it also works as an extra hand-made gift.  

These little clay Snowflakes are made with white fimo (oven bake polymer clay). This is such a simple craft, it’s literally roll the clay out, attack with chosen cutters/stamps, bake, decorate if you want to. I just chose to keep them simple with the recipients initial and a cute Noel 2024, but you could go to town on making them look fancy.

I use Fimo soft and once cut out the shapes are baked in a pre-heated oven at 110ºC for 30 minutes. Once they’d had overnight to really cool down and harden I sealed them with two coats of Mont Marte clay gloss.

My second batch of snowflakes are crochet! These were so much fun, I used Cygnets cotton yarn for this project –  it is so soft and really lovely to work with. I am not a quick crochet-person and these turned into a labour of love but then again I did need to make quite a few of them! Full credit for the snowflake patterns goes to Kate at Crochetpedia on YouTube (you should defo check out her channel!), her tutorials are amazing and even I could follow them! I’m definitely more of a watch and do crocheter and Kate’s videos are so well made.

I always use brown paper (and eco paper tape) to wrap presents as it can easily be recycled and looks lovely tied with ribbon, for 2024 I’ve also used left over white linen from various projects I’ve had over the last year (fabric is a great help when wrapping awkwardly shaped things!).

Overall I’m so incredibly pleased with how smart my gift wrap looks this year, normally I go all out with dried herbs, orange slices and raffia so its really nice to come up with something different for a change.

I like to think the recipients of these gifts will look at them and think ‘now, that is a nicely wrapped gift.’ 

Wishing you a merry pre-Christmas, may it be calm and stress free!

Now, all I’ve got to do is hide inside until Storm Darragh is over and hope my power doesn’t go off!!