A few days ago I shared how I made some mini Hama bead snowflake embellishments and today I'm going to show how I used them to make a simple lantern from an upcycled jam jar.
To make the snowflake embellishments you need some mini Hama beads and a mini Hama bead pegboard. You can find links to the materials that you will need at the bottom of this post. The mini Hama beads are very tiny and take some practice to work with - you can find all the instructions and the free snowflake pattern in my mini Hama bead snowflakes tutorial as well as some tips for working with the tiny mini Hama beads.
I made six mini snowflakes to decorate my jar. You will see that because they are so delicate the snowflake pattern includes transparent beads which are hardly visible when the snowflakes are in position on the jar.
Then you just need to find an old jam jar which is a good shape for holding a candle. One with a wide neck is best so that you can easily light the candle. This lantern is suitable for both battery powered candles and real tealight candles.
To stick the mini snowflakes to the jam jar a glue dot works really well as it is transparent and will hold the embellishment firmly. You can also use glue, or for a temporary lantern a blob of Blu Tack also works really well, although it may show through from the other side of the jar.
It makes a great winter or festive decoration!
You can find my tutorial for the mini Hama bead snowflakes here. Below are the products that you need to make the snowflakes. I have made these snowflakes using mini Hama beads which are not the size which is commonly used. Make sure that you are buying the correct size board and beads.
If you’ve developed a flexible set of creative muscles, there’s no reason you can’t turn your pastime into a profit-making business.
Whether you have a flourish for flower arranging, or are a nifty knitter, you could turn your humble hobby into a lucrative side business… and eventually a full-time profession.
When you first dip your toe into the world of online business, you can feel a little out of your depth, especially with so many companies competing for consumers’ attention. If you’re ready to make money from your hobby, check out these five fantastic tips to help you out along the way!
Reproducible Items
Save yourself time, and keep yourself sane, by crafting reproducible items.
Having to photograph and list every individual item can cut into your valuable creative time, so the fewer times you have to do this, the better.
Of course, limited edition items can be a hit with customers, but having a core range will also help to boost your brand recognition!
Photo credit Viktor Forgacs via Unsplash
Price for Profit
One of the biggest transitions you’ll need to navigate when turning your hobby into a business is learning how to price your produce, as many beginners make the mistake of drastically under-pricing themselves.
Start with the mindset that you want to make a liveable wage from your craft, as eventually you might want to progress from being a side hustle. Remember that you should never just price to cover supplies, especially if you’re selling handmade products. If it takes you hours of your time to make, then the cost should reflect that.
Professional Site
Having a professional-looking, fast-loading and easy-to-navigate site is essential for providing suburb user experience and minimising your bounce rate.
Use a service such as Shopify to set up a site that suits your needs. Shopify also supports blogging, a feature that will really help to drive traffic to your site and grow a loyal customer base.
Photo credit Raissa de Paula via Unsplash
Search Engine Optimisation
Word of mouth might get you a few customers, but if you really want to expand your reach, then it’s important to implement SEO.
Your blog and products should be optimised for keywords in order to boost your Google rankings. Getting to grips with SEO can be a little tricky, but luckily there are agencies out there such as Maratopia Digital Marketing who can help get you started!
Experts in digital marketing can also help you perfect your website and advise you on pay per click advertising.
High Quality Images
Internet users spend more time looking at images than they do any other part of a site.
Having high quality images is particularly important when you’re selling goods. As an online business, you customers won’t have the opportunity to see the item in a physical shop, so your images must be detailed so your customers know what to expect.
Have you set up and online craft business? Share your tips in the comments below!
Welcome back to another regular post where I share some of the books I've enjoyed recently and have rated five stars on Goodreads, which is where I track the books that I've read. I hope that it gives you some reading inspiration!
The Forgotten Life of Arthur Pettinger by Suzanne Fortin
I found this book on Amazon Prime library, a selection of books which Amazon Prime members can borrow for free. It's historical fiction - Arthur Pettinger is elderly and suffering from dementia. He can't remember details about his daily life but he does remember romance in occupied France during World War 2. Like a lot of historical fiction books it switches between the modern day and Arthur's story, and although I've read many similar books in this genre this one in particular really stood out to me.
Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
I love Daphne du Maurier and having stocked up on many of her books to add to my bookshelf I've been working my way through them all! Frenchman's Creek is one of my favourites, set in 1668 it's the story of adventurous Dona, Lady St. Colomb, who has become stifled by her society life in London and escapes to the British countryside. Here she meets and falls in love with a French pirate and for a time is able to live her life far removed from what she has been used to. It's a beautifully written book with a fantastic story.
Don't Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
This is a collection of five short stories. Don't Look Now is the most famous having been adapted for film, but the others are definitely well worth a read. Don't Look Now is about John and Laura who have come to Venice to try and help them cope with their daughter's death and they find themselves mixed up with two elderly women who claim to be psychic. It's a gripping story and left me with literal chills as I finished the final paragraph.
You Are Invited by Sarah A. Denzil
This was an Amazon First Reads book available to Amazon Prime members. It's a modern ghost story and the sort of book which I normally race through, enjoy and forget as soon as I finish, but this one was particularly good and stuck out to me. Cath is a writer who has been invited to The Event, a monetised retreat for social media influencers in an isolated Transylvanian monastery. Their daily lives will be constantly streamed to viewers, and things start to get spooky when followers notice a dark shape in the background of their videos. Perhaps I enjoyed it because I liked the influencer angle, but it is definitely one of my favourites in this genre.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
I came across this book while I was researching ideas for setting up a habit tracker for the New Year and it seemed to be the definitive work on the subject so I treated myself with some Christmas money. I found it an excellent read, perhaps some of the tips and tricks for developing habits are not new but it was all expressed in a way that made great sense to me and proved very motivating. For example ways to incorporate a new habit into your life and make sure that it sticks. I liked that it was aimed at helping to develop general everyday habits, not just ones intended to push you forward in the workplace, for example healthy eating or exercise.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Clune
I had seen this book recommended online so reserved it from the library. I must admit that it wasn't quite what I was expecting as I would say it's more of a young adult or older children book and I found that it had a bit of a Harry Potter or Good Omens vibe to it. But I really liked it! It's the story of Linus Baker who works for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth and is responsible for visiting orphanages and assessing whether the needs of the magical children that live there are being met. He is sent on placement to a remote orphanage where a very dangerous group of children are living, and he has to determine how much of a threat they could be. It's a story about diversity and acceptance and while it was a little bit soppy at times, it was still an enjoyable read.
I had never really been one for working out at home until the pandemic hit. I exercised regularly, but I went to the gym or for a run. When the gyms closed I started to look for alternative ways to exercise, and even though we are still members at the gym I've continued to workout at home as well. I like having that option, especially at this time of year when it's so dark and cold outside.
For exercising at home I still wear my exercise clothes, as I find that helps me to get into the right mindset. I don't buy expensive active wear though, I have several basic running tops from Decathlon that were less than £3 each, and I also buy bits from Amazon and the supermarkets.
I do think that it's important to wear shoes when working out indoors, and some exercises like a plank are very difficult if you are just in socks. I keep a specific pair of trainers for indoor workouts so I don't need to worry about them bringing dirt inside. But they don't need to be fancy ones that you might wear for running outdoors, they just need to have a bit of support and a sole with some grip.
I like to get my clothes ready the night before so I'm all ready to go. I also have in mind the exercise that I'm going to do the next day, whether that's a stint on the cross trainer or a selection of videos to work through.
Most of my indoor workouts are following a video on YouTube, and there are so many free ones to choose from. I'd recommend having a browse and trying out a few different styles to see what works best for you. I have a couple of playlists set up, for example shorter daily workouts and some longer cardio sessions.
A few of my favourite fitness video YouTube channels:
Rachel Gulotta Fitness - a great selection of cardio and strengthening workouts. The videos are very calming with gentle music and regular stretch breaks featuring beautiful nature scenes. You can get a great workout, especially from the longer HIIT and cardio ones. She also publishes regular daily and monthly workout schedules and challenges featuring different combinations of her videos so that you don't get stuck in a routine.
Joe Wicks - these are mainly HIIT workouts but there is plenty of choice with weights and targeting different parts of the body. Some of these are very tough so you need to take it easy at first!
Chloe Ting - another selection of very aesthetic videos, often targeting particular areas, for example the abs. A really good selection of videos with different lengths so you can make up your own workout.
For a time we also had a free trial of Apple Fitness+ which was also very good. I don't have an Apple watch myself, but my husband does, and I was still able to do the workouts. We enjoyed the trial but decided that we could find everything that we needed on YouTube, especially as we have a premium subscription so we are advert free.
Here are a couple of my favourite short workout videos:
Savage 10 Minute Leg Burner by Joe Wicks - it's only ten minutes long but the clue is in the title, it's not an easy one and will definitely leave you with wobbly legs!
10 Minute Lower Abs Workout by Rachel Gulotta - definitely an area of my body that I need to work on and this workout is brilliant. If you can manage the ten minutes every day then you can feel and see results within a couple of weeks.
I also have a few bits of exercise equipment. A yoga mat is probably the most important and they can be picked up for a few pounds from the supermarket. I also always have a small towel nearby. I recently purchased some resistance bands which I find really good for a different type of workout, and we have a few hand weights that we bought years ago.
I like to keep my exercise equipment neatly stored but also easily accessible. At the moment I keep the rolled mat and resistance band on the bookshelf in my study. Having it in plain sight makes it a good visual reminder to pull it out!
If you are serious about working out regularly at home then it might be tempting to invest in a larger piece of exercise equipment. Last year we bought a cross trainer which we are very pleased with and which is still in regular use. But we are lucky enough to have the space to use it comfortably and to store it out of the way.
It's important to think about the sort of exercise that you want to do and which can't be replicated elsewhere. For example I wouldn't buy a treadmill because I enjoy running outdoors for free. Think about how a larger piece of equipment would fit, both into the physical space that you have and into the time that you have available for exercise.
I hope that these tips were helpful if you were thinking about upping your exercise this year!
I love crafting with mini Hama beads, you can make some really detailed and delicate pieces which are great for embellishing cards or adding to other decorations around the home. Today I'm sharing some designs that I've created for mini Hama bead snowflakes. The mini Hama beads are so tiny that each snowflake measures about 1.5cm - 2cm in diameter.
Just a quick note to say that I know a snowflake should have six sides, but having spent ages with my graph paper trying to design a six sided snowflake upon such a small scale I sadly had to admit defeat!
I began with these simple snowflake designs. These snowflake patterns will also work beautifully for all pixel art crafts, for example cross stitch, diamond painting or digital artwork.
However these snowflake patterns will not work for Hama beads unless you create a background using the beads as they are too fragile and the beads cannot fuse properly. If you want the snowflakes to be used with Hama beads but without a background then you need to add some transparent beads to the design. The finished snowflakes are still fragile, but have enough stability to keep them together. The light grey squares represent the transparent beads.
These designs will work for all Hama bead sizes, but I have chosen to make my snowflakes using mini Hama beads as they are so delicate and I think they make perfect snowflakes. The beads are very tiny, about the size of a single cross stitch. If you are new to crafting with the mini Hama beads then you might like to read my helpful post - A guide to mini Hama beads which has lots of tips for using these tiny beads.
The snowflake designs are created using the square pegboard. Make sure that you are using the correct size pegboard for your beads. The best way to work with the tiny Hama beads is to use tweezers to position them on the board.
When you are happy with the layout of your beads you can cover them with ironing paper and iron to fuse the beads together. You need to be very careful when ironing mini Hama beads. Make sure that the iron is on a low or medium setting and only press for a second or two. You can find more tips for ironing Hama beads here - Ironing tips for Hama beads. I like to iron my designs lightly on both sides to make sure that the beads are firmly melted together in place.
Here are my finished mini Hama bead snowflakes! I do have a craft or two in mind for them which I will be sharing shortly here on the blog.
Please note that this craft uses mini Hama beads which are not the standard size Hama beads. Make sure that the beads and pegboard you buy are both same size, as the beads and boards are available in three sizes - mini, midi and maxi. If you buy a bag of mini Hama beads in mixed colours then you should have enough white and clear beads to make some snowflakes (although you'll have to sort through to separate the colours!)
This is probably my favourite book about books and reading. It's a story about the author's relationship with books, her work involving books, and how books helped her through tragedy. It was interesting to read about her work in a bookshop and I was pleased to read about many books that I've also enjoyed. But for me the best part of the book was the themed sections of recommended reading. I went through the book with my local library app and the Amazon app next to me, busy reserving and adding to my wish list all the books that I wanted to read!
This book is a similar style to Dear Reader, but with more of a focus on children's books and childhood reading. Being of the same generation of the author I found most of my own favourites covered, with only a few that were unfamiliar to me. It really made me think about how important books were to my childhood.
This book is a collection of essays about books and readings rather than being about specific books or recommendations. Among many things, the author discusses the difficulties of merging a library with a fellow book loving husband, the delight of reading a book in the place in which it was set, her family's obsession with proof reading and about collecting new and interesting words. It's a lovely little book which I often pick up and browse through.
Same title as above, but a completely different book! This book is a collection of 100+ books to read and re-read. I consider myself to be quite well read, but I hadn't heard of many of these books. There is a lot of non-fiction and a definite bias towards books that cover topics of American history and politics that don't interest me a great deal, but the book does have beautiful illustrations which make it a gorgeous book to leaf through and feel inspired.
This one isn't so much about books but it would definitely appeal to a reader. It's a book filled with words, one for each day of the year. Most of the words are familiar but there are a few more obscure ones mixed in and as well as discussion about the word it's a fascinating look at how language develops and changes over time.
I hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year. We had a really nice family Christmas break, the children had three weeks off school and the end of term seems a long time ago now! Luckily it looks as though the children will be returning to school as normal, and as over half of Mia's school went down with covid before Christmas hopefully there won't be any more issues.
We enjoyed our usual Christmas traditions. The Elf on the Shelf came back of course, the children might be getting older but the magic of Christmas is still alive and well!
Our school breaks up a week earlier than most of the country so we returned to the fantastic apartment in Torquay where we spent the same week last year. It's an amazing place with its own pool, which we used several times a day. I treated the children to an enormous inflatable unicorn, we went for walks, visited to the harbour, and went to the cinema to watch the new Spiderman film.
We ordered so much food that we ended up eating a roast dinner for three days in a row! We did our Christmas food shop with Tesco online and we bought a massive box of prepared vegetables, a sweet potato and red cabbage Christmas log for the main course and a chocolate yule log for dessert. Along with all the other snacks and party food of course.
This was my Christmas dinner, going heavy on the roast potatoes along with my token Brussels sprout!
We didn't get out too much over Christmas as we were trying to avoid the covid, but we did spend some time with both sides of the family. At home we enjoyed lots of family Christmas television. I had my annual sob over The Snowman on Christmas Eve and we also enjoyed the film Encanto with some great songs. We've made a start on Around the World in 80 Days which is shaping up well. Mia and I spent an afternoon watching the latest Little Women film which I love, although I think it's quite confusing if you don't know the books so I had to explain quite a lot to her. She's now made a start on the books herself which I'm pleased with.
I also did lots of reading. I worked through some of the books that I had stored up on my Kindle from the Amazon First Reads and Prime Reading selections, there were some nice easy books that I didn't need to concentrate on too much. I also received some books for Christmas - I've enjoyed several books by Haruki Murakami and the first few pages of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle suggest that I'll enjoy this one too. The Swish of the Curtain is an upgrade to the old paperback copy I have which is missing an entire chapter! And The Almanac is something new that I spotted while browsing for books. It has a chapter for each month of the year with things to look out for in nature - the night sky, birds and so on - with a folktale theme this year.
I was also lucky enough to get an Amazon voucher and I've already bought three books. I bought The Betrayals and Ten Thousand Doors of January, both of which I borrowed from the library last year and loved enough to want my own copy. Then I bought Atomic Habits which I'm hoping will help me to work on a few things that I want to achieve this year.
Now it's time to make sure that all the homework is completed, the books and bags are ready for school and the packed lunches are made. I'm looking forward to getting the house back in shape for the New Year, picking up on the neglected housework and hopefully having a bit of a sort out with everyone out of the way!
