Making a Christmas Wreath

On Monday14th November I went along to a lovely village pub to learn how to make a beautiful Christmas wreath.
The class was taught by Claire Mackaness, from Beautiful Things. She can also be found on Twitter @clairemackaness.

So you start with a pollystyrene hoop and a ball of yarn. Don't worry if you run out of yarn you can use other colours or tie off the end and start another ball of the same colour.  

Tie on the end of your yarn and pin the knot to the polystyrene hoop and relax, now your knot won't move!

As the first part of making the wreath can take a while, you need patients and mulled wine to get you in the Christmas spirit!

DON'T PANIC (MR Mannering!). If you get tangled up pin the yarn to the hoop and untangle it :) (Even our lovely teacher got tangled up!

This is what the final product should look like. Then it's time for the decoration!!! This is my favorite bit, and Claire provided the most amazing embellishments.



Everyone had a brilliant time and I can defiantly say that the people make a class as much as the activity.

If you live near Brentwood in Essex  and you would like to take part in one of Claire's classes you can find the full list here. 

How to Make a Roly-Poly Bird!

On Friday at 6pm 18 Brownies turned up on the door step of Cherry Green Trees camp site and lodge expectant of a weekend full of exploring, playing, and most importantly, crafting!!! 

Each pack holiday that we run is based on a theme, and this one was Roald Dahl. The girls were divided into three groups based on one of his books and the leaders (including me) became characters from the books. 

The craft that I was elected to run was the making if the Roly-Poly Bird. This is an easy make, but also fun. It does require the concentration of the children doing it and it was remarked upon several times that each group that sat at my table was silent :). 

The instructions can be found here.

I got the girls to cut out all of the pieces that they needed to make the birds using templates that I had prepared earlier (how very Blue Peter!) and then made them read the next step from the page.

To make things move a little faster instead of getting the girls to stick the limbs of the bird onto the first plate I let them use a stapler as once the second plate is stuck on top you wouldn't see the staples.

The birds turned out fantastically and I was so please that when the girls were asked to evaluate their holiday the mentioned making the birds as one of their Favourite activities!