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making time for christmas

December 5, 2012  in diy craft projects, homemade

Homemade lavender bags by Sania Pell

If you’ve followed my blog since the early days you may know I help each year with my children’s school Christmas fair since my son first started nursery, and this year was no exception. Being part of the school community is a wonderful thing. When the children were little and I stayed at home and looked after my baby daughter, helping at the school gave me a creative outlet and contributed to a community that helped all the school children. Now my children are both at school and I am working much more I have less time to help, but this year I still managed to make a few items for the fair in evenings and spare moments which we sold on the gifts stall at the fair last Saturday. I snapped a few photos in my kitchen of some of the things I had made and thought I would share them.

Homemade lavender bags by Sania Pell

Homemade lavender bags by Sania Pell

Lavender bags are always popular, you can’t help but smell them when you pick them up, and however many we make (and between us we made almost 100 this year), we sell every single one. We sold them as singles or double packs in linen and Liberty print fabric, with a ribbon tied around them. They’re simple to make even if you have basic sewing skills and there are how-to instructions in my first book if it feels daunting. I posted about lavender bags as a great mother’s day gift back in March (see post) but they are perfect Christmas gifts too.

Vintage playing card notebooks by Sania Pell

These little black notebooks were bought from my local Tiger store and I just added some vintage playing cards, bought from a car boot sale, to the front covers with double-sided tape. These are a simpler adaptation of the notebook project in my latest book (see my previous post). Great as a stocking filler with a little pack of coloured pencils.

Vintage playing card notebooks by Sania Pell

Vintage playing card notebooks by Sania Pell

The festive wreaths below are another popular item and look fab hanging from your front door or inside your home. This year I bought heart-shaped basic woven wreaths and decorated them with felt leaves that were cut out and stuck on. To do this pin a real leaf from a tree to your felt and cut around it as accurately as possible. I embellished with ribbons and covered buttons at the top of the wreath and added little birds from DZD. To see another variation of this project see my post with instructions from last year here.

Embellished christmas wreath by Sania Pell

Embellished christmas wreaths by Sania Pell

Embellished christmas wreath by Sania Pell

Lots of parents helped and we also made lots of other items like hair clips and bands, embellished cushions, decorations, jars of sweets and lots of gifts donated by local companies and parents. It was a successful day, we raised money for the school but most importantly it was a lot of fun for children, parents and teachers to all get together on the same day.

Now it’s time to get back to planning our own family Christmas!

 

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8 Comments

  1. I totally agree with you, it’s so locely to make things for school and yours are as allways absolutely wonderful 🙂

  2. allesistgut says:

    You made wonderful things. The lavender bags and the individualised note books are my favourites. It’s always nice to get something personal.
    Have a nice day!

  3. elisa says:

    100 lavender bags! you are amazing. they are so gorgeous, i want to make some. my children can never have enough notebooks, they’ll fill one in a week!

    xx

  4. Claire says:

    Wow – these are just lovely! Where is this school fair? With beautiful handmade gifts like these, I need to stop by and do some Christmas shopping next year!
    I’ve included a link to this post on my blog so that I could share it with my readers – hope that is ok with you. all work is credited as yours of course.
    Claire.x

  5. Lisa says:

    Do you use stuffing as well in your lavender bags.there lovely.Lisa

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INTERIORS, FOOD & STILL LIFE STYLIST

ABOUT SANIA

Sania Pell freelance interior stylist London.

Sania Pell is a freelance interior stylist, art/creative director and consultant based in London. She is a Contributing Stylist at Elle Decoration magazine, with whom she has worked for over 20 years, and is well known for bringing a unique aspect to photographic shoots for national publications, leading international brands and retailers as well as style consultancy for architects and property developers. She is the author of best-selling book The Homemade Home and The Homemade Home for Children. A trained, former textile designer, Sania is also involved in many multi-disciplinary creative projects.

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