Baby Shower present for around £20!

This October my lovely cousin is due to give birth to a beautiful baby boy named Logan. We are planning a baby shower at the end of August which is a great excuse to spoil her with presents! This is what I have come up with, all for around £20!

This is the box I have used, It was a wooden box that came from a crate of wine my Dad received for Christmas. Its a good idea to keep things like this they can be very useful! I bought two tester pots of paint from Homebase in different colour blues and gave the box a couple of coats. I then printed off some stencils and used these to write Logan on the front in the darker blue. 

The baby journal was the first thing I bought and the most expensive, this was £5. The frame was in a box of items for 10p from the car boot sale. Its new and goes well with the blue theme!

The two bottles of little angels wash were from Asda for £1.50 for the two. The rest of the bits were from poundland. They had a big range of baby items and they were all lovely and well worth a look!

These leather frog shoes were new from the car boot sale for £2, the M&Co socks and bear slippers were 50p each also from the car boot sale and the blue tractor socks were £1 from Poundland. 

All these clothes were picked up at either the car boot sale or a charity shop. The whole lot came to £8.80 which is less than the original cost of the cord trousers from next which I picked up for £1 with the tags still on! Car boot sales are brilliant for picking up baby items as most babies will only wear them once and then grow out of them. Many mums get given so many gifts the baby never wears them which means they will be selling items that are brand new! Car boot sales are better for clothing presents than eBay as you can pick up the item you want to buy and check it before you make a decision. There is also no postage few and most of the time the prices are much lower! 

These bits were made from an old top and dress that I was planning to throw away. The snake has bubble wrap inside to make it rustle when it moves! Its important when you are making things like this for a baby to make sure there are no loose bits for the baby to choke on. The frames were 10p for the three from the car boot sale which I painted in the same colours as the box and plan to put in pictures of my cousin, her finance and son (Logans big brother!) 

These two came from ideas I saw on pinterest! The scrabble pieces were from an old game of scrabble and the other one I used some blue buttons to make the letter L. 

This final present was £1 from the car boot sale. It needed alot of love, lots of washing and I even shaved part of it to remove the bobbly bits! I am really happy with how it has come out! 

Christmas Jumble Sale

Today we went to a car boot sale in Hitchin, we got there a little bit late so some people were packing up but it means most are ready to haggle! In the picture above I got all the candles for £1, some have been used but with a new candle in they will be great! The tin was 50p and full of tiny decorations including this Christmas pudding pin badge which looks great on my tartan scarf! The other decorations I will use to add onto presents and to decorate the chocolate slabs I will be making tomorrow! I also got a cream coloured blazer for £1, it has no label but its got a nice fit and will be smart especially for next year when I will be having interviews for placements. My last buy was a mug from Whittards with little scottie dogs for £1 on that I have filled with homemade dog treats as a gift for the dog (pets have Christmas too!)

Pamper Hamper

I have spent today doing some more making and wrapping for Christmas and decided to do something about the Pamper Hamper I mentioned in another post. The whole thing including the box cost me about £3.75 which I'm pretty happy with as it looks a lot more! 
The box contains the soaps I got from the jumble sale and nail varnishes with cuticle sticks and files from M&S that came in a huge gift box. I won these on a tombola along with a turquoise scarf that will make a good present for my Nan. I've added 2 shell candles which you can see how to make in a previous post!

The other picture is the smaller items added, the bracelet was from the jumble sale and only cost 25p! I saw one exactly like it in boots for £4 so that was a good find. The photo frame came as a pair that I found in a charity shop with the label still on saying £8 just for that one and £12 for the other! I paid a pound for this one and the other will go as part of another present. The little heart I made loads of last year with some left over fabric, they cost virtually nothing but if you spray some perfume on they hold the smell well and make nice smell hearts to be hung on a draw or a door knob. 
I would quite like to receive this as a gift so I hope the person receiving it like it! 

Shell Candles

These shell candles are one of my Christmas crafts, I am planning on giving them away as gifts for the ladies in my family as most of them are quite girly! I already had the wax pellets left over from a previous craft where I made teacup candles. One thing I learnt from those is that the wick sustainers are really important in keeping the wick in place! I think the wax cost me around £6 and out of that I made 3 small teacups and 8 shell candles so it was good value for money. The shells are actually scallop shells that I washed and sterilised. We ate the scallops but you could ask at the supermarket if they had any shells they were throwing away, there are lots of crafts that could be done with them! To make the candles I fixed the wicks to the sustainers and put them in the right place on the shell. I then used a double boiler (one pan of boiling water with a smaller pan over the top) and added the wax pellets, stirring until they were fulling melted. After taking it off the heat I added a few drops of vanilla room fragrance and poured the wax into the shells. They set very quickly especially in a cold house but its helpful to stir them occasionally to get rid of any bubbles. This time I completely forgot but they have turned out okay, a very cheap but good looking Christmas gift!

Chocolate Slab take one!

This is my first attempt at the Chocolate Slab for Christmas! I've planned on making a couple for members of my family and maybe just to have as a spare gift in case I've forgotten anyone! This slab was made using Tesco chocolate which was 37p per 100g bar. For this slab I used 2 bars of each but I will use a quality chocolate for the presents! When it came to melting the chocolate I used a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water but definitely had it far too hot with too much water as the chocolate melted too quickly and almost burnt. I had to use milk in both chocolates to get them back to the smooth consistency to pour into the tin which I lined with cling fling. Once in the tin I used a broken crunchie bar on the white side and white chocolate buttons on the darker side. Overall i'm pretty happy with how it looks but it doesn't have that snap that chocolate bars are meant to have and that's because I didn't temper the chocolate. I've bought a thermometer now so when it's delivered I will have to have another go. For now i'm happy making my way through this one!