Tuesday, 30 March 2010

5 Tips for cute Easter Decoration











1. Unusual and cute vases


Have a look in your cupboard and see if you have any beautifully shaped jars and bottles you thought you’d never use again. Hexagonal jam jars, chunky sauce bottles and glass yoghurt pots make perfect containers for small flowers like daffodils and crocuses.

2. Color your own eggs

If you boil your eggs with the shells from e.g. red onions, the eggs will turn into a light reddish shade. If you use white onions, they will turn a golden shade. Cooking eggs in coffee powder gives them a beautiful mocha color, whereas using tea results in lighter shades. Be creative and experiment with beetroot, red cabbage, spinach, you name it!

The longer you cook the egg, the more intense the color will be. Start off with one and a half hour and see whether they look ready.

Extra tip: If you rub the eggs in oil after cooking, they will become beautifully shiny!

3. Silly egg- holders

Bring odd sherry and liquer glasses, the last of their sets, out of the cupboard to hold cold, hard- boiled eggs at the table. Tuck in a few clean flowers or tiny leaves.

4. Carrot Muffins with a nest & chocolate eggs

Ingredients:

300 g brown sugar, 200 g rapeseed oil, 4 eggs, 275 g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla essence, 375 g grated carrots

150 g flaked coconut, green food coloring, mini chocolate eggs

Mix sugar and oil, and add the eggs one by one. In a different bowl, mix all the other ingredients together apart from the carrots. Finally add everything together and fill into muffin shapes, for about 15- 20 min, 175 degrees.

When the muffins have cooled, combine the coconut with a few drops of food coloring until it has become grass- green. Place it on top of the muffins to make it look like a nest. Arrange a few chocolate eggs on top

5. Cute salt & pepper bowls

When you set the table for your delicious Easter lunch, place two cut- in- half eggshells filled with salt in one, and pepper in the other, to act as functional and cute decoration.

Friday, 26 March 2010

No money for wall art? 5 tips to make it yourself!

















1. Cheap frames with giftpaper as background

Have you seen some of that beautiful gift paper they sell in e.g. Paperchase (I always thought it’s too nice to just use for wrapping presents and then throw away). However as a pretty background in a cheap IKEA photo frame, it looks awesome! Some of it is textured and soft, some of it is shiny. Use 2-3 or more frames with the same or different paper, and then you can stick postcards or photos on top of it. I love this look!

2. Map of world with pins

Another interesting idea is to fill the space on an empty wall with a big map of the world, or a particular country, and then stick pins into the places you have visited. Perhaps one color for that, and another color for places you’re dying to see?

3. Make a ribbon note board

This is perfect if you want to keep track of old photos, bills and other things, and make it look pretty at the same time! You need:
-frameless cork notice board or off- cut of woodchip about 60/80 cm in size, a piece of felt big enough to cover the board and still have a 5 cm border (looks great in one color or with print on it), 6 m ribbon, drawing pins, stable gun, a hook, string.

1. Lay out the felt and put the board in the middle. Then fold the fabric carefully to the back of the board and stable it.
2. 2. On the front side of the board, use the ribbons to make a criss- cross pattern, and push in drawing pins where the ribbons cross (for an extra effect, use different colored pins, e.g. green pins on purple ribbon). Use the stable gun for the loose ends in the back.
3. Insert the hook at the back of the board and hang it up using string.

Now the notice board is ready for you to creatively decorative!


4. Make your own wallpaper

I looks really cool if you decorate you wall with photocopies of a print that you like, e.g. animals, flowers, anything abstract etc. Simply stick the pages on the wall with white glue (PVA glue), and smooth out any wrinkles using a soft cloth. Once the glue is dry, create a finishing by covering the paper with one part PVA glue, and six times water


5. Indian scarf with postcards on it

I’ve got two of these on my wall! I love collecting postcards from around the world, so I got a big scarf with a nice sheen to it, hung it on the wall with 4 small nails, and used cello- tape (folded to a circle and stuck 2 on each backside) to fasten the postcards. I think a dark background color looks particularly cool, with lots of bright colored postcards on top!