Last of the Crafts

Well, we're nearly at the end of January, I'm on the 5th out of six stories I'm roughing out for the first part of the new job, and I need to wrap up (LOL!) the rest of the gifts I made for Christmas (which seems about 100 years ago now). So, here we are:

Purses. Along with PJs, my family also got a zip purse each with a home made lipbalm inside:

Sewing Jar Kit. Following this tutorial, I made one one these for Lovely Sam and filled it with vintage spools of thread and the like I found at the craft fair we did back in November:

Tea towels. I bought a load of plain tea towels back in the summer with the vague notion of screenprinting on them, but as I already had them and a whole load of embroidery thread knocking around, and in the spirit of making and giving without necessarily buying anything new, I embroidered a whole load of tea towels, too, mainly using Jenny Hart/Sublime Stitching patterns that I already had. Some of them have glow in the dark thread, which is just an awesome invention. Do excuse the crumples, the photos were taken before I ironed them all :

And, lastly, teacup candles. I had SO much "granny china", as my sisters call it, taking up cupboard space and shelf space and all other spaces, that I just had to DO something with it all. These took me two attempts. The first time, I ordered the wrong kind of wax and it just turned out crap. I ordered a second batch of wax from here (soy this time, which is generally kinder all round), and made these babies below, which I put together with their corresponding saucer and cake plate:

Phew! There it all is! It seems a lot all laid out like that, but it didn't seem to take that long to get it all together. You can easily make a batch of candles or lipbalms in an hour, and the teatowels I stitched over the course of a couple of weeks while watching too much iPlayer. I'm not one of those crazy people who plan months and months a head for Christmas, so I shall wait and see what strikes me as a good crafty gift idea come the autumn for this year!