Happy Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve, which means today is the last day of sharing photos of my printable advent calendar village on my Facebook and Instagram pages.  These are just a few of the ones I took this month...


My shops will remain open over the holidays, although I will be taking a break, so may take a little longer to reply to messages than usual.

I wish you all a Happy Christmas!

Free Printable Christmas Labels

Have you finished wrapping all your Christmas presents yet?  If you still have a few to go and are looking for last minute labels or gift tags here are a few free printables for you!  All you will need is a printer, some scissors, a hole punch and some pretty string or ribbon...
The first set of free printables are ones I designed and shared here on my blog a few years ago, the rest are all ones designed by other people...

1.  Free Christmas Printables; tags and circles with holly, puddings and Christmas trees; download from my blog post here

2. Bright, Fun Holiday Gift Tags; modern, customisable tags; download from Our Best Bites and the Little Umbrella

3.  Christmas Stickers; 8 fun Christmas designs; download from Foodpackaging Labels

4.  Free Printable Holiday Tags; download from Petit Pippin

5.  Free Printable Tags for Christmas Packages; download from Skip to my Lou

Learn How to Sew A Zippered Pouch

I've had the photos for this zip pouch sitting on my hard drive for a few weeks, waiting to be edited and shared.  I thought now would be a good time to share the project as it is quite a quick make and would be perfect if you're wanting to make some last minute Christmas presents!  In this tutorial I will show you how to sew this pouch with a zip and lining; it's just the right size for pens, pencils, small craft projects or make-up.  You can use the same technique though to make pouches of different sizes to fit anything you like - for example smaller ones as coin purses.

The materials I used to sew this zip pouch:
Rabbits on Kona Cotton Fabric (available from my Spoonflower store)
Green fabric for the lining
7 inch zip
Cotton thread

First cut your fabric to size, slightly wider than the zip and allowing a 5/8 inch seam allowance on all sides.  For my pouch I cut 2 pieces of the Rabbits fabric and 2 pieces of the green lining, each measured approx. 8 1/8 x 5 1/2 inches.

Lay a piece of the outer fabric face up, followed by the zip face down, then a piece of lining.

Pin and sew, so your piece looks like this...

Repeat for the other side of the zip with the second piece of outer and lining fabrics.  Open out and press your seams, then top stitch for a neat finish around the zip...

Now open it out so that the lining pieces are facing each other and the outer rabbit pieces are facing each other.  Make sure the zip is open (so you can turn it out the right way again!) and facing into the lining (this gives a neater finish when it is turned out the right way again).

Sew around the edge of the outer rabbit pieces and the lining but leave a gap in the bottom of the lining for turning out the right way.

Trim the seams and clip the corners, then turn out the right way.  Sew the gap in the lining closed by hand using ladder stitch...

Your pouch is now ready to use or give as a gift to someone else!

October and November Review

The last couple of months have been pretty busy and I didn't have a lot of time at the start of last month to write October's review.   Rather than skip out a month altogether I thought I would roll October and November together and look back at them in this one post...

New Designs...
In October I was working on an exciting new design - I can't wait until I can reveal it in January!
I did make some new designs which are not still a secret though; like some new printable designs in my Etsy shop: Colour in Advent Calendar Village, Christmas colouring in pages, Christmas Foods name place cards and Autumn Leaves name place cards.

On Spoonflower my new designs included; Microorganisms, Cephalopods, Tea Towel Calendar and some other new designs which I blogged about here.

Blog projects...
Last week I shared a tutorial on how to make the mini house boxes in my printable Advent Calendar Village - I'm sharing daily photos of the houses for advent on my Facebook and Instagram pages.
Back in October I also shared a couple of diy projects - an Upcyled Jar Flower Vase and Halloween Cookies.  You could adapt the biscuit recipe for Christmas - add more spices and ice with festive decorations!

Social Media...
As I mentioned above, I am now on Instagram!  You can find me at HazelFisherCreations. I've not posted a lot yet, but plan to share more photos of my sketchbook, works in progress, things I make and inspire me.  It took me a while to work out how to post my first picture and I was thrilled to get some likes and  comments almost immediately!  I like that people actually seem to see the things you post on Instagram compared to Facebook, which appears to hide most of the things I post - and I notice that a lot of the people I have liked on Facebook aren't showing up in my feed so often now either.


Other News...
November seemed to be a month for finally starting things I have been thinking about doing - I also joined Society6!  I've been wanting to expand my range of products and have been looking into the various sites which, like Spoonflower, allow artists to sell their designs on products without having to actually produce and ship the products themselves.  I have a very limited range on Society6 at the moment, and am just learning about how to set up my designs to work on all the different products they sell.  I will get more designs up as and when I can - I would love to have got the store up and running in time for Christmas shopping (and probably should have started earlier, but there is always too much on my to do list!), at least I'll be prepared for next year.
So far you will find my Southwest Feathers and Arrows and Budgie designs in my shop...


I'll end this monthly review with a link to my Christmas board on Pinterest, where I've been collecting ideas for decorations, diy projects and cards.  Are you way ahead with your Christmas crafting, or like me and still have a long list of things to do?

Follow Hazel's board Christmas on Pinterest.