Here’s the second of two cake stands I made over the festive period (remember I suggested them as a gift idea here?).  The first was for my Mum and this one is for my friend Jo, baker of cakes and lover of pretty, flowery things.

This is possibly the most professional-looking thing I’ve ever made.  Most of my efforts have that distinctly rough around the edges feel to them, which I do love, but it is nice for once to create something that might actually be mistaken for a professional effort!  It was so easy to make as well that I thought I might have a go at a few more for putting on sale on Etsy.  Here’s how you do it in three simple steps:

1. Source your equipment: I get all my plates from the local charity shops – none of them cost more than £2 apiece, and some of the patterns you find on vintage china are really beautiful.  The first stand I made had three mis-matched tiers while this one is smaller and a little more co-ordinated.  I can’t decide which I like best!  The handles I’ve bought from eBay for £1.75 each – they come with all the screws and bolts you need.

2. Find a responsible adult to drill holes in your plates: I do not consider myself a responsible adult so I asked my Dad!  He used a drill with a tile bit to create perfectly round holes in the centre of each plate.  None of mine did, but I’m warned that some plates can crack at the drilling stage, so if you don’t want to end up in tears (with a drill in hand – dangerous) I’d advise stocking up on a few contingency plates before you start building.

3. Assemble your stand: dinner plates on the bottom, side plates in the middle, a saucer for the top.  The pictured stand has only a dinner and a side plate but I still think it’ll hold plenty of cakes.  Place a washer between the plate and each section of the stand to avoid rubbing.  Screw it together and tighten with a screwdriver if it feels a little bit loose.

Ta da!  Gorgeous, completely unique cake stands, home-made for around £6 each.  Now for the fun part: loading them with up your favourite home-bakes and inviting your friends round for afternoon tea.  Awesome.

What have you made recently?

Last month I was talking about having no time for projects.  Like writing, and sewing, and crochet – the new joy in my life.  So this month, I’m making a bit more of a conscious effort to squeeze in time for those things (I actually am, take no notice of the pithy amount of posting I’m doing here – it’s all being pummelled into crocheting my first blanket!).  And as anyone who has had cause to venture anywhere near any kind of shop lately will surely testify, jolly old Christmas is most definitely upon us.

So.  Finding time for creative projects plus Christmas, season of goodwill and foisting of gifts upon others.  When it comes to Christmas presents, my position is thus: no to mindless consumerist blow-outs but emphatic yes to all things second hand and home-made.  A position that I’m finding I can happily combine with my ‘do more creative stuff’ November goal. And true to form, I’ve produced a list of fun and easy projects to have a go at this festive season.  Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

• Knock up your own three-tier cake stand.  Charity shop-sourced plates, a handle from eBay and your Dad’s (or Mum’s, or your own – we cater for all possibilities here) cordless drill.  Amazing.
• Sew an elasticated skirt.  Some pretty patterned fabric, piece of elastic for the waistband and a few straight(ish) lines on the sewing machine.  Bish, bash, bosh.
• Baked goods! Truffles, cakes, biscuits – small cake decoration stores (or the dreaded Hobbycraft if you don’t have access to such a place) will present you with an array of colourful packaging options.
• Put your (home-sewn?) apron on, and make batches of jam, or pickle, or spicy golden marmalades.  Store in cheap cask jars from Ikea and tie with pretty ribbon.
• Whip up some festive (or not so festive!) bunting…
• Make a DIY advent calendar – I made one of these a few years ago, with numbered pockets and christmassy fabric.
• Make a DIY non-advent calendar.  It doesn’t have to look professional – in fact, my favourite home-made gifts are the ones that actually look home-made (yes I would be happy with a dried macaroni and glitter spray effort).
• Decorate a boring photo frame with buttons, jewels, safety pins and any other crap from around the house you can get your hands on.
• Write someone a poem (which doesn’t have to rhyme!)
• Hand-craft a meaningful card
• Sew your own tea cosy!
• Transform some scrap fabric or lace into a gorgeous peter pan collar.  A Sewing Odyssey is your friend.
• Buy a plain photo album, fill it and write a message on the inside.  You can even decorate the outside…
• Infuse some olive oil with garlic, chilli or lemon.  Store in tall glass bottles (the ones with cask lids are my favourite).
• And on the ‘infusing’ note, I once made a huge cask jar of pickled eggs for my boyfriend – the whole thing cost about £6 and I’ve never seen a bigger grin on his face.  (Yes I know, not everyone is lucky enough to have a pickled egg enthusiast in their life…)
• Sew some PJs!  Pyjama trousers are a seriously easy sewing machine project – the trickiest part is deciding which fabric to use!  Easy-to-follow patterns abound all over the internet and let’s face it – no one ever groans at a new pair of PJs.
• Grow someone a plant, some flowers or a few wintry herbs.  Snaffle some cute pots or even chipped teacups from a charity shop for storing them in and pass on some new life…
• Create your own vouchers.  Some people see this as tacky but I think it’s a great idea.  The best part is being able to tailor your vouchers to the person you’re giving them to.  Offering a knackered new parent some free babysitting?  Priceless.
• Draw someone a picture.  Simple yet surprisingly touching to receive.
• Write a short story.  I love this idea, although I haven’t tried it yet.  Make the giftee of your work the protagonist and take them somewhere exciting for a while.
• Get your brew on: cordial, elderflower wine, mulled wine for Christmas…
• Make some jewellery: rings, brooches, beaded necklaces.  I love rings made from buttons or coins of places I’ve travelled to.  Uniquely personal and not to be found in trashy Topshop.  Lovely.
• Create a mix tape or whatever the modern day equivalent of such a thing would be (a personalised Spotify playlist?  I find that depressing, but the sentiment is sweet…).
• Create a scrapbook!  Old photos, cinema and gig tickets, programmes from the theatre etc.  No two scrapbooks are ever the same.
• Buy some dolly clothes pegs and make some angels for the tops of friends’ Christmas trees.  Make sure to use plenty of glitter!
• Sew a Christmas stocking!
• Make soap!
• Bake a cake.  Everyone loves cake.
• Glass painting (thanks @hapsci for the suggestion).  Wine glasses, glass jars to hold candles, picture frames etc.  I’m reliably informed that the materials can be found in Hobbycraft (I hate the place but it does come in useful sometimes).

As I said before, please feel free to chip in with your own suggestions for Christmassy projects.  The more ideas the more fun we’ll all have.  And if you attempt anything on the list, please drop me a line and let me know how it went!  Now where did I put my pritstick…

Image above from here.

I’ve only just realised that I didn’t take a single photo of what I actually did on my birthday (just for the record, I had afternoon tea at my favourite cake place, followed by several rounds of mojitos and a highly competitive game of Edinburgh based Monopoly, WHICH I WON!).  So I’m afraid you guys will need to be content with photos of my favourite gifts instead.  Oh, the hardship!

So just in case you ever need to know, there are two very direct ways to my heart.  One is cake, and the other is books.  My friends seem to know this, judging by the little stack I received on Saturday.  Anyone read any of these (I’ll discount the bicycle manual from that question!)?

Bikes were definitely the theme of the day, judging by this beautiful card (does anyone else frame cards?  Inexpensive!  Full of sentiment!).  This is about as close as I’ve come to finding my dream bike in pictorial form.

Sunny sunflowers – my favourites!

This sewing box was a present from my parents and is absolutely beautiful (I almost don’t want to touch it!)…

Look at all that (upside down) space!  I’ve already passed rather a long while making the inside look pretty.  I think it has to be said that when the biggest dilemma of one’s day is deciding whether to arrange reels of thread by colour or by size, life is pretty darn good…

This has been a rather difficult Friday 5 for me.  At the risk of sounding all do-goody and annoying, I can’t say I’m overly fussed about Christmas gifts anymore.  I suppose it’s a concomitant part of growing up.  I still really love to see the faces of my young siblings light up when they realise that the all-knowing all-seeing Santa has bestowed the very thing they were pining for upon them (seriously, how does he get it so right, all the time?!).  But I myself am not really bothered anymore.  Christmas these days is about being at home, EATING and watching trashy television with my family.  If I get those things, I’m happy.  Easily pleased, huh?

Nevertheless, that wouldn’t make for a very interesting Friday 5!  So here we have five things that, while I could happily go without them, would definitely put a smile on my face come Christmas morning…

A stash of pretty fabric

I’m always on the lookout for pretty fabrics for sewing projects, but they can often be terribly expensive, not to mention a waste of money if the said sewing projects go disastrously wrong!  I’d really love, however, to have a good stock of dainty florals, quirky retros and bold geometrics in my sewing supplies basket, so that when the urge to make something springs itself on me I can get going straight away.  This would also be good for my Etsy endeavours (which, erm, haven’t started yet – who smells a New Years’ Resolution?).

A hammock

I don’t know why, but I’m really fascinated by the idea of having a hammock hanging from the ceiling somewhere in my flat.  I’d love to be able to jump into it and swing back and forth while I read a good book and sip a pina colada (or maybe just a cup of tea).  The logistics of introducing a hammock to a second floor Edinburgh-based flat are not really something I’m keen on pondering for very long, so if Santa could sort those out as well that’d be grand.

Snow

OK so it’s probably the cheesiest Christmas wish there is going, but I would really love a proper no-holds-barred white Christmas this year.  I want to curl up infront of It’s a Wonderful Life, eat lots of lovely food, drink mulled wine and watch some morbidly obese snowflakes plummet their way to the ground from a leaden grey sky.  I also want to go sledging.  Hardcore sledging.  And snowball fighting.  I’d love it if my entire street came out to play a great big snowball fight for oh, say, an hour, before we all went home for hot chocolate.  That’d be amazing.  Santa, if you could organise this I’d happily forfeit all material presents.

A stack of Pierre Hermé macaroons

These (above) keep popping up all over the internet, and by gosh do I wanna eat some!  I want to eat some, and then wear the rest.  Soooo pretty!

The much-coveted World Link necklace

Finally, I really love this necklace from uncommon goods.  It’s a map of the world, and I think it is so completely beautiful.  I’m not overly mad about necklaces (much more of a big earrings, big rings gal), but I’d definitely make an exception for this lovely little thing.

Don’t forget to pop over to the other ladies’ blogs today for a squint at their Friday 5 posts.  I’m off now, for three-ish weeks (I’m almost sad at the thought of not blogging for that length of time!).  I’ve scheduled some picture posts to make their way onto your screens in my absence, which I hope you’ll enjoy, and I’ll be back with some substantive writing in the week beginning Monday 6th September, hopefully also with a raft of exciting holiday tales to tell and photos to show.  Have lovely, lovely weeks everyone! xxx

Image above from Flickr – yuichi.sakuraba.

I’ve already spoken about how well and truly spoiled I was over my birthday weekend, but I thought I’d share a couple of presents I received, just because a) they are very ‘me’ and b) they seriously kick some thrifty ass…

A fellow tea-loving friend (this is the friend who gives amazing presents – remember the tea cup ring and the heart tent from Friday Five a while back?) gave me one of these eco-cups from Urban Outfitters.  It’s *amazing*.  You basically make your own hot beverage at home and then take it out with you, saving you money on buying take-out from a coffee shop.  Or if you do frequent a shop, you can take it with you and have your drink made in your own cup, sometimes for a discount, thus saving you some cash, and also giving the planet some light relief, one cardboard take-out cup at a time.  This will be perfect for frosty Winter walks into uni next year – it’s almost enough to make me want to start studying!

This is one of the cutest home-made cards I’ve ever been given, from another friend.  You maybe can’t see it that well in a photo, but the ‘icing’ is actually a piece of white fabric that’s been folded in such a way that it looks like perfectly piped buttercream – isn’t that incredible?  The case is made from some perforated paper, finished with a cute little ribbon and a splash of glitter.  And don’t overlook the strawberry on top!  This is the kind of card that brings a flutter to my heart.  I absolutely love it.

But this has to be the fairest gift of all.  It’s a re-make of the Aardvark Manifesto from the Keep Calm Gallery (if you haven’t visited the KCG yet, please do – it’s great), which I told Laurence I loved *months* ago, but then promptly forgot all about (you can see the original here).  He has actually constructed the entire thing himself, using similar fonts to the original, but tweaking some of the sayings so as to make it more personal to me.  So ‘play board games’ has replaced ‘play the kazoo’ and ‘read books and sew’ appears in lieu of ‘choose handmade’.  I am absolutely blown away by the time and the effort that he has put into this, all born of a desire to do something a little bit different and not to sell out and buy the original.  This gift epitomises my reasons for writing this blog – it’s about having a good life, not sacrificing the things you value and love, but doing that in a way that is kind to other people, to the planet, and to yourself.  It’s also about making the best possible use of your own skills wherever you can.  Needless to say I’ll be hanging my personalised manifesto in a very prominent place at home!