Gingerbread biscuits

Hi guys!

I don't know about you but a big part of the christmas festivities includes eating and making food...and drink but I will cover that part next week! To get me into the festive feel of things today (I say today but i've been trying to put bake these and put this tutorial up all week!), I am going to making gingerbread biscuits. These are yummy warm and are the perfect accompaniment to a mug of piping hot chocolate. 

Ingredients Needed:
125g butter
100g dark brown muscovado sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
325 plain flour plus some for dusting
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon & cloves
5 tbsp royal icing
2 tbsp water
decorating bits - silver balls

1) In a non stick pan melt the butter, sugar and syrup together. Stir together until combined.

2) In another bowl add all your dry ingredients; flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, nutmeg and cloves and stir together until combined.

3) Take the saucepan off the heat (make sure the liquids not boil) and add in the dry ingredients. Stir together until it forms a ball.

4) Let the dough cool down for a few minutes and roll it out onto a floured surface. Using cookie cutters of your choice, cut out shapes and place on baking trays lined with greaseproof paper. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees and cook them for 9 -10 minutes.

5) Once cooked remove from the oven and whilst they are warm, poke a hole at the top in order for you to put a string through them and hang them up.

6) Mix together the water and royal icing and decorate the biscuits however you like.

Tip: Dust the cookie cutters with flour to prevent them form sticking to the dough

I hope you enjoy baking these as much as I did. Do you guys have any christmas food traditions or bake something special during the festive period? I know for me I always enjoy eating loads and loads of panettone (with lots and lots of butter). 

Like always If you don't already follow me on all the social media platforms, get following and I also wanted to add a quick little plug for myself because I have a online store where I sell handmade cards which are designed and produced by me! If you do have the time I would really appreciate if you could check it out,  curlyneedle.bigcartel.com :)

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Jam jar no more!

I recently was looking on Pinterest and found a lot of DIY's of jam jars/ mason jars being turned into tea lights and candles. Some really didn't show how to do it, so I thought I would give it a try.

What you will need!

- Newspaper/ some old matt/ cloth or I used a bin bag to protect the floor/work surface.

- Might be worth having a mask to protect yourself from the fumes from the spray paint.

- Protective clothing

- Fabric- lace or mesh will do.

- Sellotape

- Scissors

- Mason Jar/ bottle

- Spray Paint

The first thing to do!

Firstly I washed the labels off the jar and bottle, also made extra sure there was no jam left in there. :)

Once dry, I wrapped the bottle in the fabric mesh and used Sellotape to fasten it- this may have been a mistake afterwards. I think it may have been easier to place the fabric over the bottle and slowly rotate the mesh around the bottle when spray painting. The only issue it could get a little messy.

I placed this outside but a well ventilated area would have worked to. I put a bin bag on the floor as I didn't want to spray paint the floor. This was then left to stand to dry over night.

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the mason jar but I used the same method. But instead of the mesh I wrapped the tape around it in a pattern I imagined it to be something like this…

This morning I pealed gently off the Sellotape and mesh and got something like this…

  It didn't work the way I planned, I do like the effect the mesh made and the Sellotape was actually water tight, as I thought it may let the paint bleed in. I think a thinner tape may have been better so there was a pattern left in a neater form. Or use maybe string to get more zebra, line effect.

It wasn't an epic fail and the best thing about spray paint with a big scrub it does peel off and so you can start again. 

So please try my method and take my advice and hopefully you will have a better result than this :)

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P.S. I totally forgot to say pop in a tea light once completed to get the final look and effect, or use it to keep you paint brushes in like I will be doing. 

D.I.Y. Textile Owl

Hello Internet! 

April here, to show you how to create your very own decorative owl!

Here I have created an easy step by step tutorial for you guys to follow

Tutorial! 

Estimated making time: 1.5 hours 

 ( this was me taking my time, simultaneously watching the dan and phil show on radio one, so I was slightly distracted ;D)

(lighting in my room is awful, sorry)

What You Will Need;

(btw, all these products can be found in your local haberdashery store and/or hobby craft)

2x black buttons

2x white thick felt ‘eyes’

1x cream thick felt ‘face’

1x brown triangle

2x grey thick ‘bodies’

2x fabric ‘wings’

2x thick felt ‘wings

1x fabric tummy

1x felt heart

1x handful of stuffing

not forgetting the thread

Obviously you can change the colours of any of the materials needed to create your owl, (its down to personal taste) I just used what fabric I had left in my scrap fabric box. You may also need a hot glue gun/ pritt stick, although I have created the whole project through hand stitching.

Step One- The Body

You will need to blanket stitch the sides of the owl together leaving a hole to pop in the stuffing, alternatively you could stuff with potpourri if you want a beautiful smelling owl. 

You then obviously finish stitching up.

Step Two- The Wings and Eyes

To make the wings, put you fabric wing and felt wing shapes together, and blanket stitch around them. Follow this step again for the other wing too.

For the eyes, sew the button on to the white felt circle to make the eye, and then make stitches, like spokes of a wheel from the button around the edge of the white felt circle. This I feel makes the eyes more owl like. Follow this step again for the second eye

This is a front and back view of what your little owl should look like now J

Step 3 –Putting The Face Together

For this step you will need to either hot glue gun the eyes to the face shape or sew it, like I have. Then hand stitch the triangle shape to the face as shown creating its mouth.

Step 4- Putting It All Together

 For this part you can stick together your owl with either a pritt stick or hot glue gun, however you can also hand stitch, which I did once I discovered my glue had

Dried out.

I used a basic stitch to put together the tummy and the body of the owl

(If you know you are going to be hand stitching the whole project stitch the tummy on the felt body before you stitch together the front and back shapes creating the body)

 So, once you have finished gluing/tacking/stitching your owl together he should look like this! 

I also added a tie, so I can hang him from my wardrobe handle.

This is the finished project! Hopefully you have an amazingly cute little fellow that you can use to decorate your room with!

Personally I have used my owl to hang off my ( very dull looking ) 

wardrobe handle 

(just to spice things up!)

You however, could use him as a decorative potpourri holder to pop in your sock drawer, decorate your room with or simply give as a beautiful handmade gift.

Toodlepip xx

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♥