Saturday 23 December 2017

Christmas Italian Style

In our house, as in many Italian houses we will be having a pasta course of annolini in brodo. They are small pasta parcels that are filled with a fantastic mixture of stracotto and cheese which is an intense and wonderful flavour.



These have been a tradition for as long as I can remember. As a matter of fact a Christmas meal would not be the same without them.
I am not going to pretend that they are not labour intensive as they are, but like the tortelli they can be made in advance and stored in the freezer until needed.

First of all you will need to make the stracotto which translates as over cooked or extra cooked.
Start off with a good size piece of brisket. No need to worry if you have too much as you can eat the extras and enjoy every mouthful. You will need at least 1 kilogramme.

1 large onion.
2 or 3 cloves of garlic. It all depends on how big they are. they will cook for ages and the taste will mellow while they cook so don't skimp.
1 carrot.
1 stalk of celery.
1 Knorr stock cube. I bring mine back from Italy and I use gusto classico. It has a good flavour and does not fight with the flavour of the meat.
250g butter. Yes, that much.
A couple of glasses of white wine.


What you will need to do:
Fry the meat in a little butter, add the onions and continue to fry gently until the mixture is brown.

Add the carrot which you have peeled and cut in half along with the the halved celery.

Pour over the wine and add the garlic and stock cube.

Simmer gently and I do mean gently for about 5 hours. If you have the oven on low then it will sit quite happily in a very low onen for the same time.
It will be ready when it falls apart.


To make the filling you will need these extra ingredients.
Parmesan cheese Use as much as you think that you need. I generally tase mine and see. the cheese also tends to dry the filling so if you think that your filling is too wet add more cheese.
2 to 3 eggs
Fresh breadcrumbs

Make the pasta in the same way that I described in the Tortelli section and
These will fill us so much that the turkey course that follows will be picked at rather than devoured.

Blue for Christmas

This is a memory from an earlier blog post. Now that Craft Fairy and I are no longer an item, I have removed the links to the products.

However, I still have the stamps so message me if you want them!!!

I've made a lot of red and green cards lately and this challenge was very welcome. I have also decided that this card is going to be the one that I send out to my nearest and dearest. So to anyone that reads my blog, and doesn't get one of these handmade jobbies you know why.


Materials used
Trees plate 
Blue satin swiss dot ribbon 3mm
Buttons from the pack of mixed buttons
Art anfdGraphic pens from Zig Kuretake in number 3

Sunday 17 December 2017

Christmas Heart for a Garland

Yesterday evening I felt, (ha, ha) the need to make another of my favourite craft goodies. So, being Christmas, I decided that the best thing to do would be to make one of the red hearts. This time I decided to combine it with the red spotty bows that I made and a little of the natural cotton lace and create this:


You can make one too by using:

Red Felt Hearts 7.5cm, wide, 30% Wool Blend
30mm Pointed Cotton Lace Natural
Red Grosgrain Ribbon with White Swiss Dots
Christmas Red and Green Assorted Shape Buttons
Red Swiss Dot Ribbon, 6mm

Please message me for supplies.

You will also need a needle and thread of your colour choice,
Some wadding to fill the heart.

Red roses for a romantic gift wrap


Have you noticed that gift packaging is getting better and better all of the time?  If you treasure someone enough to give them a gift then it makes sense to put it in something special so that the person that you give it to knows right from the start that you made it for them with love.

So, today, I made a gift box and decorated it to show how much I like the person and the gift inside it.


A few posts back I showed you how to make a gift package and this time I used that method to make a box in red card.

The ribbon that I used was:
Old Gold Satin Ribbon, 3 metres by 16mm
The red red rose was:
Really Large Paper Roses - 4.5 cm - Red

If you want some of the large red rose heads I have plenty. Please message me.






Friday 8 December 2017

Christmas Inspired Felt Heart

I did tell you two days ago that I was on a roll with these felt hearts. I wasn't lying as I"ve made another one today. This time I decided to go for a more Christmas inspired set of colours and this is what I came up with.


I chose the beauriful tear drop lace in ivory as I'm not all that keen on white and red. I paired it with the luxurious red and old gold damask ribbon, a cream ribbon rose and some of the 4mm golden beads. I used the diagonal layout that seems to be my favourite at the moment and this is the result. I hope that you like it too.

Materials used can be found here:

Red Felt Hearts 7.5cm, wide 30% Wool and Synthetic Blend 
Golden Glass Seed Beads, Silver Lined, Round, approx 4mm 
Cream Ribbon Roses
15mm Tear Drop Guipure Lace x 1 Metre - Ivory
Red and Old Gold Luxury Damask Ribbon 2 metres x 16mm
Green ribbon with red centre stitching 3m x 4mm

On reflection I think that there should be a bead at the very bottom tip. Note to self. Do this next time.


Saturday 2 December 2017

Felt Christmas Tree


Doesn't it really annoy you when all of those lovely Christmas tree baubles are too heavy to actually hang on your tree. They are beautiful but they bend the branches.

Now is the time to get cracking with handmade Christmas decorations and this one is perfect. It is quick and easy and so light weight that it won't bend your Christmas tree branches.

Simply take:
Felt
Red Beads

Thread... I used red
Some stuffing.
Cardboard

What you need to do:
Cut out a template using the measurements on the sheet below:


Use this template to cut out your felt shapes. I drew around the shape and then cut out. It was far easier than trying to cut around the card.


To avoid wasting felt you can place one side of the tree against the cutting edge of the previous one.




Now. sew the beads onto one side of the tree.

put the two sides together and sew around three sides with a running stitch. Stuff the tree and sew the other side together. Now sew on the bow.

Finished. Think a garland!!