Christmas pudding jar topper

Get in the festive sprit with this clay jar topper!

You will need:

- clay ( brown, white, red and green ) i used cloud clay and coloured it using acrylic paint
- a clean jar with a screw on lid

1. make sure your jar is clean 

2. Soften your clay and colour it if necessary, you need a large brown piece to cover the lid and some white, a little green and a little red clay.

3. Mould the brown clay into a dome shape and press onto the lid of the jar, it doesn't need to be perfect as imperfections make it look more realistic!

4. Roll out the remaining white clay

5. Cut out a splatter shape then smooth over the ' pudding ' this forms the ' icing '

6. Cut out some holly leaves from the green clay and make a small ball from the red icing, lithely press them onto the icing, be careful not to squish them though!

Bake or leave to dry then you can add a gloss finish or just leave it!

Fill your jar with christmassy sweets and enjoy!!!

Lovely little hand warmers

These little hand warmers take seconds to make and can use up any old scraps of material and old rice! useful for keeping your hands warm on a cold morning or cool you down in the summer!

All you need is,

- material
- rice
- needle and thread
- pins

So first of all you will need a template, you can chose whichever shape you want, I decided to go for a heart but squares work well too. To make my template i simply opened up word, created a shape and printed it off! 

You then need to cut two shapes out of any material you wish. You may want to use wadding alongside the outer material to hold in more heat.

Next pin around the outer edge and sew the right sides together, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance and a gap so that you can turn the hand warmer inside out and fill.

After you turn your hand warmer inside out you will need to fill it with rice.

You can use whatever rice you want, lentils also work as a substitute! Use a teaspoon to half fill your hand warmer, this gives it a bit more flexibility in your hands.

You will need to sew up the hole by hand to ensure that you don't get any rice spillages.

Then you are ready to heat up your hand warmer, simply place it on a plate and put it in the microwave for 10-20 seconds, no longer.

Your hand warmer should stay hot for about 5 minutes, you can also use it as an ice pack just place it in the freezer for about 5-10 minutes.

Any questions and queries email me at  butterflyfairycrafts@gmail.com