sunday craft-in on the cheap.

I must say, there is nothing better than a cold autumn sunday spent crafting and cooking a roast... and what better to accompany a whole afternoon of work than watching Gone With The Wind is all its amazing nearly-four-hour glory!

Ahh.... a perfect sunday in.

Now, make it even a little better because you are crafting and eating on the cheap!

The Meal: Roast Pork Neck Fillet (cheap from the butchers, and made from a Jamie magazine recipe)
The Craft: turn a few rolls of clearance sticky back plastic into a total flat make over.

Ta Da!



Here's how to do it...

Draw a rough design of what you want for your wall (I obviously have a fixation with trees and bird silhouettes and shadows, so naturally this craft lends itself to my own design interests....)... but you can do virtually anything. Basically if it has a recognizable shape and/or casts a shadow, you can craft it.

If you don't feel confident with your own drawing skills... cheat a bit with google images or... log on to fontface a site with tons of free fonts - many of which are not letters at all, but interesting shapes and silhouettes!

Then measure out your drawing, measure your wall, work out a rough scale, cut out the shapes and mount them on the wall.

Ok, so I glossed over those steps for ease - but really, it can be as easy or complicated as you want it to be. If you aren't very confident start with something simple.

For this craft I free-cut the trees as I mounted them piece by piece, measuring each end to make sure the pieces lined up - and then I randomly cut the holes and knots to give a birch tree effect.

The birds are a combination of images of birds I found online, and a bird font I found online as well... I then enlarged them to the right proportions.

Once you have gently laid all the pieces in the right place and you are happy with it, run your library card/credit card over the whole thing to make sure there are no air bubbles and everything is well stuck on.



Note: This is a temporary decor idea, which will stay up as long as you want it to (as long as you don't leave any huge air bubbles)... if you use the right products, they will peel off without pulling the paint... when you are ready to take them down, just use a hair dryer to warm up the plastic (as instructed on the packaging) and it will be far less likely to ruin any paint job.

all this for only £6.48? not a bad sunday afternoon in my books!


And if you are watching films and making nice food, why not share it with some friends who can lend a hand and advise on turning your ideas into a mock-mural.