Preschool Christmas Cake Decorating

They're a bit lumpy and bumpy but who really wants to chop the top off their fruit cake so that they get the perfect finish?! Here are our Christmas cakes for this year. There's one for us and one for my Dad and sister to share. Jessica enjoyed painting the cakes with apricot glaze a couple of days ago and then had a whale of a time with the icing today. She did a lot of the rolling and cutting as well as a large amount of eating and playing! I use edible glue to secure the stars, which can be quite fiddly and then we used edible ink pens for the writing. These were brilliant on the white icing today as I had covered them yesterday ensuring that the icing was pretty firm. I wasn't up for anything too elaborate this year and it was nice to share the experience with Jess on this occasion. 

Right, that's the end of my Christmas posts for this year. Merry Christmas everyone!

Handmade Bauble Ideas

This time last year I was coming to the end of my rather long break from blogging so I didn't actually share any of our tree decorations from last year. So, here they are:

Decoupage onto cardboard or polystyrene balls...

Using marbling inks on cardboard and polystyrene shapes...

Hama bead designs...

Jessica's acrylic painting on polystyrene and mache shapes...

Salt dough, cookie cutters, acrylic base coat and sharpies...

Candy cane and pipe cleaner reindeers...

Miniature photo frames. I created these for myself, my sister and my Mum's siblings after she passed away in 2016...

Glass Painted Decoration

This is the last of my tree decorations to share from this year although there will be one more post tomorrow, which will feature some of last year's creations. Here I have used glass painting on a flat acrylic star. I drew my poinsettia design on paper first and taped my star on top so that I could trace the design with my black outlining fluid. Once dry I filled in the design with glass paints and left to dry overnight. This is the freshly painted piece sitting to dry...

Then here is the dried piece held up so that you can actually see the yellow details at the centre of the flower. As you can see, there are some gaps and it would take a second layer of glass paint but I rather like it just as it is. The odd imperfection just goes to remind you that it's handmade after all!

Pyrography Decoration

I just love this drawing of Jessica's so much. I'm so looking forward to have it hanging on my tree every year...

Toilet Roll Fairy

This year we've had to have a Christmas fairy rather than an angel on the top of our tree - Jessica insisted! I bet no-one else has one like ours!!!

Painted Reindeer

These blank reindeers that Jessica has decorated are now just £3 at Hobbycraft! They stand nearly 40 cm high and are brilliant. Jess chose to use acrylic paints and glitter glue to decorate ours but they'd be fantastic for decoupage too.

Yarn Wrapped Curtain Hoop Decorations

I love these handmade decorations and they're so simple. First I attach the small brass charms to the curtain hoops and then wrap yarn around and around until I'm satisfied with the coverage. The ends can be secured with glue or hidden underneath the yarn depending on your preference. This little set looks fab on our tree this year.

LED snowman

LED tealights are a wonderful thing! 

Jessica and I made some larger versions of these last year but opted to try the slightly fiddlier version this time around. I've seen the idea posted all over the place and they're adorable! I particularly love the pom-pom ear muffs! We've used small googly eyes and a Sharpie to draw on the mouth for this little fella...

Pinecones and Pompoms

Good grief you need a lot of pompoms to stuff a pinecone! In all honesty, I think my cones are a little small for this so they are a bit cramped but they still make cute decorations for the tree. Unfortunately I was part way through a bright pink glue in my glue gun, a clear glue would have worked much better! 

Here are my two decorations adorning our tree...

Disney Princess Christmas Tree

Jess is thrilled with our Disney Princess Christmas Tree creation made from a £5 Hobbycraft blank in very little time. We painted the tree (front and back) with acrylics before smothering it in glitter glue. The baubles were made using decoupage techniques and printed images of Jessica's favourite princesses. I had to be quick and light-handed to avoid the ink running but they worked quite well. I suggested that we also glue pom-poms all over the tree but Jessica rejected my suggestion. She's now going to spend the whole festive season rearranging the princesses I think.

Needle Felted Christmas Pudding

Bungay Christmas Market was full of wonderful ideas last weekend. Whilst I'm afraid I couldn't bring myself to pay the money the stall holders were asking for their own decorations, I did come away with loads of lovely ideas for decorations I could easily make myself. There were lots of different baubles based around the humble Christmas Pud to be seen and they used all manner of techniques. So, I couldn't resist having a go at my own needle felted one...

Pinecone Reindeer

 

To give the blog a brief break from my needle felting exploits I made this pinecone reindeer decoration this afternoon. I have seen the idea in a few places and thought our tree needed one of these this year. It was more fiddly than it looks and I'm glad I didn't try doing it with Jess because it would almost certainly have ended with cross words between us. He was worth a little bit of effort though!

Painted Penguin Baubles

I spotted this one on Kids Craft Room and thought we'd give it a go. I had a couple of cardboard baubles from Baker Ross left over from last year so we used them along with acrylic paints, googly eyes and orange felt for the feet. 

Anti-gravity Christmas cake

It's finally December and whilst I'm a few weeks away from decorating this year's cakes I thought it was about time I shared the cake I made for Mum back in 2015. I haven't done another anti-gravity cake since but it wasn't difficult to do. I obviously bought the snowman and the Father Christmas figure and I used Wilton Candy Melts for the dripping. I didn't get on very well with them actually and I really didn't like the taste of them so I'd probably try something different next time. 

Anyway, here it is, the last cake I got to make for my Mum...