Friday 20 February 2015

Not just chocolate...

Easter is quite a big deal in my family. Other than Christmas it is the only time of the year that all the family get together for a big meal and catch up. Most of my family are based five hours away from me with one of my cousins having to travel just as far to get to see her family too...

At Easter when I was a kid chocolate was always exchanged and everybody, young to old, got an Easter egg. However, as the years have passed, and our waistlines have expanded we have become more aware that chocolate from all members of the family seems far too much so we usually find a little gift instead.

This year I wanted to make a little something for everyone...

My husband bought me a cross stitch kit from Hobbycraft as I had expressed an interest in trying out the art of cross stitch that he had excelled in. However, the kit lay dormant for sometime as it seemed very daunting.

After completing the duck and chick cross stitches (as covered in previous posts) I had a bit more confidence to work at the design for each person.

I decided to give personalised keyrings - all with a letter corresponding to their name.

I had ten to do.

I bought the acrylic keyrings from amazon (link below)...

When you unfold a huge piece of aida it feels so daunting... So I folded it into quarters making it smaller and easier to work with.

Following the pattern in the kit I started doing the letters... Some were harder than others... 's' was particularly difficult for me...

My other problem was that I needed to do something to hide the back of the keyring which was thin to fit with the aida... So I had at look in my box of crafts (an aladdins cave of craft odds and ends) and found some scraps of decoupage paper and thought this would work wonderfully.

These were trimmed down and fitted nicely into the keyrings... The aida had to be trimmed carefully as it was quite difficult to get it flat in the keyrings...

And here they are....



I am pleased with the results... And a few less calories than chocolate!

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