Bleaching some pine cones...

January 4, 2016

In the run-up to Christmas I started to see lots of lovely bleached pine cones on Pinterest. I loved how they looked and thought to myself "how hard can this be?" and thought I could probably give this a go myself. The only thing was, I was short of pine cones...

Luckily though I spotted a source of pine cones one weekend at my in-laws as they have a Christmas tree of old planted in their garden, which is now, well it's much larger than a Christmas tree. I asked my FIL if he could save me some pine cones as they dropped and to my amazement - and to the amazement of my MIL and MOH too - he told me he had a bag that I could have which he'd collected a while back. So off he went and came back with a carrier bag of pine cones.

Result. This year was going to be the year I'd bleach some pine cones.

Rather than just plonk the pine cones into bleach I decided to do some more research and found this How to make gorgeous bleached pine cones post on Garden Therapy, and it looked just the thing. It gave more detail to my planned method and reminded me to take it all outside.

So sensibly attired in clothes-I-could-cope-with-if-they-got-splashed-with-bleach (they didn't) I set out to bleach some pine cones of my own.

I mixed some bleach and water and chucked in my pine cones and gave them a stir with a stick that had blown down in the recent winds. I wasn't expecting it to foam like that, but then again I'm not a bleach aficionado as anything to do with bleach is usually on MOH's list of jobs. And I only braved it for this as I thought there was zero-to-no chance of him seeing the point of bleaching pine cones, let alone be part of it.

So pine cones in a mixture of bleach and water, and stirred with the stick. And it was true, my pine cones floated to the top. I remembered reading that weighing them down with some bricks would help keep and increase their chances of lightening. So off I went to find some bricks.

Now all there was to do was wait. Hmmn.

In the end I managed to leave them overnight. I popped out the next morning in the rain to check on them, and couldn't tell if it had worked at all. I wasn't convinced, but rinsed them anyway. It did make me smile when I thought of how excited I was to find out, and how daft I must look smiling to myself...

I'd forgotten how pine cones close up when they're wet. I hoped that as they dried their new whiteness would be revealed.

And it did. For most of them.

I'd also forgotten - if I knew at all - how long pine cones take to dry and open, but as they started to dry, some were looking distinctly whiter.

They were also taking much longer to dry than I'd anticipated. When I started out I had no idea what I was going to use them for but soon thought I might add them onto this year's Christmas wreath as decoration. However it soon became clear this idea was pure folly as they were still not open. As we left for our Christmas break I moved them off the newspapers and onto a shelf above the radiator, hoping that it would give them a helping hand.

It certainly did, they are now dried and open.

They are all lighter in colour than when I started.

And I guess that like anything some pine cones take more to bleach than others. I quite like the mix of shades though. Now I just need to work out what to do with them, or at least find somewhere to store them where they are safe from MOH, who's most likely to want to throw them out. My other challenge - well that's remembering where I put them in time for next Christmas!

My top tip if you plan to try this: Don't leave it until 18 December before you start!

My Christmas wreath

December 21, 2015

During the week my ten wire rings (yes I know there's only supposed to be five gold rings, but Amazon were selling them in tens!) arrived through the post, so I had no excuse not to make myself a wreath now did I? I'd trimmed some of the lower branches from my little tree, just so it could get used to being part of my Christmas wreaths, but needed more greenery to make a full wreath.

On Sunday we made a visit to the Cheeseboard in Greenwich to stock up our Christmas cheese supply and I saw next door had tree offcuts for a £1 a branch. That's a much better price and so MOH carried two stems around town for the rest of the afternoon. Back home I popped out into the garden and cut some rosemary, holly, ivy and fatsia flowers to add to my stock of materials.

Covering the table with newspaper I set off in search of some wire. I know I have some, but I couldn't remember the safe place I'd put it in but thankfully I found some raffia so made do with that instead. I set about tying greenery into bunches before tying it onto the wire ring. It took a little longer with raffia than wire, but I think it works equally well.

I added bunches of the evergreen offcut we'd bought, some of my little tree and rosemary bunches. I opted not to use the holly, as well wouldn't you know it's prickly and I had enough of the other plants.

When the bunches of greenery filled the wreath's circle I tied bunches of three fatsia flowers and added those around the wreath instead of the orange slices, cinnamon sticks and baubles I used last year. It's a more rustic wreath this year, but given that it cost me approximately £2.15 and an afternoon to make, I'm happy with that.

And I love the fatsia flowers on it. I'll be using those again and when I hung it on our pale green front door this morning, it looked great.

Phew, my Christmas prep is starting to come together! How's yours going?

Christmas cards: another year, another tree

December 17, 2015

Last weekend I knew I needed to find time to make my Christmas cards if I was going to send handmade cards again. I had a design - and a craft - in mind but hadn't worked out quite how to do that. So given the lack of time I decided to try something else instead. It's always good to have a backup plan!

I tested it out and it worked better than I'd hoped. With a plan that works and the motivation to do it I once again found myself making Christmas cards with trees on. Last year there were trees too, and I'm pretty sure there'll be trees again next year, because I want to go back to my original idea.

Just as well I like trees really isn't it?

This year they all have the same design, although there's still so scope for individuality. I used material scraps and started out by placing the material on the cards, before tacking them down with some glue so I didn't drop them as I moved over to the sewing machine.

At the sewing machine I added an outline to the tree. I liked them before this, but this gave them the finish I was looking for. I experimented with how to add the stitched outline and found it easiest to do this in a continuous stitching movement. The bonus is this leaves a cute tree shape on the inside of the card too.

Then it was time to add a star to the top of my trees, a little sticky star was just the thing. In fact I found this the trickiest and was quite often juggling the stars and chasing them around the card to get them in place.

Phew, just as well I'm going for the individual look...

I'm really pleased with how they turned out, and especially how time efficient they were to create.

But that meant there was no excuse for not writing them. This year MOH and I shared writing our cards - we don't send a huge amount, and it seems we don't have an equal distribution of labour here. MOH wrote one and I did the rest, and boy you should have heard him moan about having to do that and why wasn't there a stamped "Merry Christmas" inside...

Because dear, we want to write a personalised message didn't seem to be the desired response, but it's true. I know that I love to receive cards where people have added a short message so I like to do that myself. I'll apologise in advance to the people receiving MOH's card...

Ah well, until next year when once again I'll plan to start earlier than I actually do!

Do you send many - or any - Christmas cards? And do you write the same or a different message in yours? And do you write them or share the task between you?