This tutorial was featured in the Summer issue of the UK Handmade magazine and I was reminded of it when I needed a bookmark for the book I’m reading at the moment and had to make one – I forgot that I hadn’t posted it on my blog yet, so here it is for you to enjoy.

- some decorative paper, I’ve used an old envelope with an interesting pattern - a ruler and a pencil - a cutting mat and knife

1. Cut out a square that is 10cm by 10cm 2. Fold it in half on the diagonal so that you’re left with a pyramid shape

3. Fold the right side up to the pyramid point and do the same with the left side 4. Rotate the piece by 180 degrees and unfold the two flaps

5. With the piece flat you will now see the outline of a [...]
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Well it’s about time I got round to writing a tutorial about Facebook as I’ve promised so many people that I would. I joined Facebook in April and have written a few posts about it since, mostly offering promotions for my fans etc, but never really disclosed that much information about how to set up a page for your business and how to manage it.

Please bear in mind that I’m no expert and I’ve kind of made this up as I went a long and I’ve made a lot of [sometimes irreversible] mistakes along the way, so this is by no means a Facebook Bible to follow word for word, but hopefully it will helps some folk out along their Facebook journey. I won’t go into the details of setting up a page for your business as there are lots of resources online that can help you with this. [...]
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My lovely Colin made me the most perfect lunch recently and I enjoyed it so much that I’ve been making it on a regular basis. It’s a lovely salad made up with salad leaves we’ve grown ourselves and croutons made from our own sourdough bread. You can vary the ingredients to suit what you have – it’s very yummy.

To serve two, you will need:

Salad Leaves (enough for 2 people) 8 Tomatoes 1 chunk of Cucumber Half a Red Pepper Half a Red Onion 4 Free Range Eggs Olive Oil Juice of half a Lemon Salt & Pepper Parsley Sourdough Bread cut into small crouton sized chunks 2 Cloves of Garlic

Special Ingredient – Flaky Smoked Salmon from the Salar Smokehouse in South Uist If you can get your hands on some of this then your lunch will be heavenly! It’s the best flaky smoked salmon I’ve ever tasted! We’re lucky as Olwen came to stay last week from North Uist and she [...]
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One thing that came out of my hair bobble dilemma yesterday was the discovery of a lovely tutorial on to make a fabulous display tree from which you can hang all manor of things. Karen Jinks of Chalk Hill Studio fame sent me a link and wondered if I could make something like this to display my hair bobbles. I don’t think it’s suitable for my hair bobbles, but I think it’d be great for my mobile phone charms and I know I’ve got some galvanised wire in the shed, so will be making one of these this week I’m sure!

You will need:

Wire Cutters Round Nosed Pliers Thick Wire – copper would be nice if you have it, but Karen used Galvanised wire Thin wire for binding

You first need to cut four lengths of wire  – make them quite long as you need to curl both ends [...]
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I love making jam. I love the whole process, from picking the fruit, getting all the ingredients together, collecting the jars for months on end and the actual process. It’s so quick and easy that I thought for this week’s Tutorial Tuesday I would share this recipe with you and show you how to make Gooseberry & Elderflower jam.

1kg Gooseberries 8-10 Heads of Elderflower 1kg Sugar 500ml Water

A sharp knife Some sterilised jam jars with lids A large preserving pan A wooden spoon with a long handle A small plate chilling in the freezer A ladle or large spoon

First off you need to go and pick your gooseberries. We’re lucky to have a gooseberry bush growing on the edge of the cliff at the bottom of the garden, so I didn’t have far to go to find mine. Despite the bush getting attacked by caterpillars last month, there is still quite a heavy crop [...]
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My watchband is slowly disintegrating and I’m looking for an alternative. I found a tutorial on the Instructables website and think I’m going to make one of these. It looks comfortable and easy enough to make. I just need to get my hands on some cord – maybe something bright and colourful.

The tutorial goes into great detail as the photographs below show, so I won’t try and repeat the great instructions it provides. Visit the tutorial here…

This week’s Tutorial Tuesday is going to focus on recycling CDs. I’ve got a ton of old CDs that I’ve been saving as I don’t want to chuck them in the bin and send them off to landfill, so I’ve been searching online for ideas on how to recycle them into something new. I found this great blog post with 22 fantastic ideas.

The post is called 22 Ways to Make Old CDs Awesome Again and can be found here.

This is a selection of my favourites:

Go and check out the original post at www.interbent.com to see the other ideas and maybe try a few of them out.

I want to make some small notepads that will fit into my pocket and that I can carry around and use when out and about. Nothing fancy just something simple that can be made really quickly and effortlessly. So I turned to Google to see if I could find some tutorials out there and I just stumbled across this great little tutorial by Daisy Janie. I think Google read my mind when it led me to this website as this is just what I’m looking for!

Aren’t they cool! I’m going to be trying this out at the weekend and will post up my results, but in the meantime, why don’t you give it a go…

To make these staple-free matchbook notepads, you’ll need:

This is another fabulous tutorial from the ‘How About Orange‘ blog. Ever need to wrap a present in a hurry and don’t even have any wrapping paper let alone a gift bow to stick to the present once it’s wrapped? Well this is a tutorial for you. You could wrap a present in newspaper and attach one of these fab bows and it’ll look amazing.

Check this image out to see what I mean:

This is what you need:

Find a brightly coloured magazine page and 9 strips of equal width – the tutorial suggests 3/4″ wide.

Leave 3 of the strips full length. Cut one inch off 3 of the strips. Cut two inches off 2 of the strips. Cut the last strip down to 3 1/2″ long.

You then need to twist each strip to form a loop at both ends and staple or glue it [...]
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I often send out CDs of my work in the post and as I buy blank CDs in bulk, they come without cases and I’m often at a loss as to what to put them in. I found this tutorial and it’s solved my problem in a unique and beautiful way.

You’ll need:

First off you need to make a template like this:

To get it you draw around a CD, then mark the center of the hole with a little x. Then use your protractor centered over your x and draw lines every 60 degrees. Your circle should now be dissected like a pie. Carry your lines out past the circle. They should be 11 cm from your middle x. Next pop your CD between the ends of your drawn lines [...]
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This weeks tutorial is brought to you from Design*Sponge. I was looking for a way to jazz up a few empty jars as I wanted to fill them up with spices and give to a friend as a gift and I came across this tutorial on the Design*Sponge website, which was not only perfect and exactly what I was looking for, it also gave instructions of how to apply the same process to pencils! So two tutorials in one here!

The tutorial suggests you need the following items:

I’m going to use some of my envelope patterns to decorate my jar lids and pencils. Instead of Mod Podge, I’m going to use watered down PVA and a water based varnish as they give the same results at a cheaper price.

Luckily [...]
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I love buttons and have a huge collection of new and vintage ones all over the place – in jars, in boxes and in lots of drawers. When I saw this tutorial, it put a smile on my face as I realised I could stamp everything in site with button patterns or even make some badges with my own button designs.

The tutorial suggests you need the following items:

But I guess you could improvise if you don’t have all of the above – I don’t have a sizzix machine, but I do have some circle punches that might cut foam – I’ll have to experiment.

via: http://maximumrabbitdesigns.blogspot.com/

These little chaps are a cheerful reminder that spring is just round the corner. These chicks would make an excellent Easter craft project for folk of all ages.

The Yolk Folk (from Left to Right) Cluck Gable, Eggory Peck and Sophia Le Hen

Purchase the templates and instructions here.