Festive Gingerbread Men Recipe

As it’s Christmas, and I love baking, I thought I’d have a go at making some Gingerbread men this year! I found a really good recipe online, tweaked it to my liking, and came up with this!

You will need:
350g Plain Flour
1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
2tsp Ground Ginger
1tsp Ground Cinnamon
125g Butter
175g Dark Brown Sugar
1 Medium Egg
4tbsp Golden Syrup

For the Royal Icing:
2 Egg Whites
2 Cups Icing Sugar
Food colouring (I prefer using gel as it doesn’t seem to affect the consistency of the icing)

Here’s how to make them!

1.   Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two trays with greaseproof paper and set aside

2.    Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon until combined well. Add the butter and rub through the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add in the brown sugar and mix further.

Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, then slowly add to the dry mix until it starts to clump together.

3.   Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

4.   Take the dough out of the fridge and roll out to a 5mm thickness onto a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out your gingerbread men shapes and place onto the baking trays, leaving enough space inbetween each one. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden brown, then remove from the oven and leave on a wire rack to cool completely.

TIME TO DECORATE! 

You can use whatever you want to decorate these, but I wanted to go for a more traditional piped royal icing design.

For the royal icing, I combined 2 egg whites with 2 cups of icing sugar and whipped this mixture together until smooth and glossy.
I separated the mix into different colours, and used piping bags to pipe the icing carefully onto the gingerbread men and left them to dry completely. I find icing these with royal icing makes them much easier to package up without being ruined, if you’re making these as gifts (which I am!)

I really hope you enjoyed this post, if you want to watch the video of me making these, go check out my Youtube channel, where I have a few more Christmassy-themed videos!

Hey guys!

If you’re a subscriber to my Youtube channel, you may have noticed last week I posted a DIY Christmas wreath and garland video. I enjoyed making these so much that I decided to do a blog post on the DIYs too, so here it is!

I started with my supplies, most of them were conveniently from Wilkinsons in the UK, this place is surprisingly GREAT for crafting at Christmas so I highly suggest you take a trip there as everything is so affordable! I managed to pick up my rattan wreath from there for £5, and my luxurious 2m garland for £10 (quite a bargain in comparison to some other I’d seen around!)

Other supplies were priced as follows:
- 50 pack of berries for £1 
- 2 packs of 5 cinnamon sticks for £1 each 
- 3 berry stems for £1 each 
- A can of snow spray for around £1.70 (all from Wilkinsons but you can find all of this online) 
- 42 snow covered pinecones for £2.99 from B&M

I also had to purchase myself a glue gun which I found on Ebay for around £6, but you might already have one of these!

I roughly worked out where I wanted everything to go on my wreath, and used my glue gun to attach everything down when I was happy. I stuck down the larger items first, then used the smaller berries to cover up any obvious patches of glue. 
When I was happy with everything, I sprayed the snow spray lightly over the majority of the wreath. I then coated the entire thing with a light spray of clear lacquer to keep the snow spray in place!


When making the garland, I decided to use the snow spray first to cover the entire length in a layer of snow before adding the decorative bits. I then sealed the snow spray with clear lacquer. 
I pulled apart the berry stems so I had more to work with, and distributed these evenly along the garland. I placed the pinecones and cinnamon sticks evenly along the garland, then stuck them all in place with hot glue. 
I used the burlap ribbon that was originally wrapped around the garland to make hanging loops to hang onto my fireplace, and then as an added touch, I hung some IKEA fairly lights along the garland.

If you’re interested in watching me make both of these, go check out my Youtube channel for the video! 

Hello Autumn!

So its' officially October (I don't know where September disappeared to!) which means it's definitely okay for me to start obsessing about autumn.

For the past two weeks I've literally lived on Pinterest and been super inspired by all the cute home decor DIY's people have been pinning! 

So I thought this year, I'd have a go at spicing up my decor a bit! 

To get into the fall spirit, me and my boyfriend went for a walk around our local park on the weekend and managed to pick up some pinecones to use in my decor crafts. I also cut down some thin branches from a corkscrew willow I have in my garden, as they are such an amazing curly shape! I'll be leaving these out to dry for about a week and I'll be using these for some of my fall DIY's too!

So keep an eye out for my autumn/fall DIY decor video and blog posts coming up within the next couple of weeks!
Can you guess what I'll be making?

DIY Frame Trays and Dry Wipe Boards

Hey guys! So it's been a while since I posted on here, but I've been so busy finishing my second year at uni, so hopefully I'll make up for it over the next couple of months!

So I decided to try a DIY I've been meaning to do for a while -
DIY frame trays and dry-wipe boards!
You'll probably already have most of the supplies for this super easy DIY (I did!)

Here's the supplies you'll need:

- Old Frame

- Paint or Spray
- Scraps of fabric or patterned paper
- Scissors
- Paintbrush (Optional)

Hopefully the photos above are easy enough to follow, though I will be posting a video up on my Youtube channel for this DIY very soon, so stay tuned!

Brown to Blonde Ombre Hair!

Hey guys!
So FINALLY I managed to ombre my hair! (after many failed attempts at getting a colour I liked!)

I've made a YouTube video explaining how I achieved it and the products I used, so go check that out below.

I achieved this within 1-2 days, because as you'll probably know, I'm very impulsive, however I would recommend letting your hair settle down for at least a week inbetween products as damaging as bleach and permanent dyes.

I am considering dying the ombre pink at some point, so if I do, I'll be doing a YouTube video on that too! 

So I hope you enjoy the video, and go check out some of my other hair tutorials/videos on my channel!

Melted Crayon Canvas Art

So for the past year or two, melted crayon canvas art has been all over Pinterest, and surprisingly, I hadn't tried it myself until now!

This is simply the technique of gluing wax crayons to a canvas or board, and using a heat gun or hair-dryer to melt the crayons into art!

If you want to see my Pinspired video, go click on the photo below!

It wasn't quite as messy as I thought it would have been, but its still best to take precaution!

So It's almost mid-way through December (a slight depressing thought!) but I've been super busy getting festive so far this month!
If you're a subscriber to my YouTube channel, you'll probably have noticed a couple more Christmassy videos, including how to make this incredibly simple lined stocking in my 'Pinspired' episode 3, so go check that out!

I'll also be putting up a few more videos next week including this adorable reindeer makeup tutorial/GRWM which will be up tomorrow!
So stay tuned, and I'll see you all very soon!

Hey guys! So I've just opened up the first door of my advent calender, which means CHRISTMAS IS HERE!

I've been wanting to get extra Christmassy this year, especially on my Youtube channel, so I've decided to do a mini Christmas crafts series throughout December!

The first video is this super cute origami star garland, so if you want to know how to make this, click on the photo to take you to my YouTube!

Also, stay tuned for the rest of the videos which will be up throughout the month!

Bar Stool Project

Hey guys!
So as promised, here's the results of my reupholstered bar stool! I actually completed this a few months back but never got round to taking photos but I'm absolutely in love with it and it looks gorgeous sitting in the corner of my room!

As I said, I've never done a project like this before but it was so much fun and I definitely recommend you try something like this if you get the chance!

    

DIY Polaroid Magnets

Hey guys, long time, no see eh?
I've been super busy with uni work but trying mega hard to get some DIY tutorials made in time for Christmas, so I came up with this perfect, super cheap gift idea - Polaroid Magnets!

You could use Instagram photos for this, but I used a bunch of old family photos because this is going to be a gift idea for my parents!
Hope you enjoy!

Bar Stool Project

So I was coming home from the gym today and passed a super bashed-up pub that was being refurbished near my flat, and I came across this little cutie sitting by itself outside! Obviously it probably looked like complete junk to anyone else, but because I'm slightly odd, I wanted it. Obviously the owner of the pub let me have it, so I wondered home with it! (looking like a complete weirdo!)

Obviously I have plans to strip this down and reupholster it (which is something I've actually never tried before), so you may see this some time in the future! (looking a little happier!)

Space, The Final Frontier...

How To: Studded, Galaxy Print Cropped Top

A current trend that's been very popular for a while now has definitely got to be the galaxy print...

...and another one that is still booming...studs....

...oh and there's been another trend that's becoming ever more popular over summer...Cropped tops...

wait, this DIY incorporates all three!? and it's super cheap!?

Get the following items ready:
-Black T Shirt
- Pins
- Scissors
- Bleach
- Spray bottle
- Fabric Paints
- Paintbrush
- Toothbrush
- Metal Studs

and check out the video below on how to do it!