Arts and Crafts for Mother’s Day

Arts and Crafts for me involves painting, drawing and getting glitter everywhere that you’re still finding stuck to your forehead a couple of days later. I didn’t realise that there was another side to Arts and Crafts until I was watching a couple of videos demonstrating that you can make some fab gifts for loved ones, especially in the run-up to Mother’s Day. In just under a weeks time we will be celebrating Mother’s Day, so my daughter and I decided to get creative by making a few unusual gifts including coasters and a hanging plant pot.

Both items are super easy and cheap to make involving a number of items from Homebase, along with you and your child’s creativity. This time it was mostly me getting my hands dirty as my daughter is still fairly young. But it was fun to do, she was my demanding assistant, here’s what we go up to.

Personalised Tile Coasters

What you need:

• White tiles
• Homebase tester paint pot – we are using Matt Jazzberry colour
• Paint Brush
• Felt pads
• PVA glue
• Plastic sheet to protect the floor or table
• Your child’s drawings

We started off by doing the all important prep. Making a safe and clean area to work with. Our table is wipe clean, so I didn’t need to use a plastic protective sheet to protect the floor or table, but I would really advise that you do.                     

We started off by applying one coat of Matt Jazzberry to the two tiles and then letting these dry. During the drying time I tried to get my daughter to draw some pretty pictures with stamping pens. Pretty challenging with a 19-month old so I helped out (or did it all).

A second coat of paint was applied to the tiles and we had lunch whilst waiting for this to dry. When the tiles were dry, the drawings  were cut out and stuck onto the tiles with the PVA glue. Here’s the fun part, my memories of PVA glue are painting your hands at school and peeling it off. We did that, and then painted over the top of the picture on the tiles to seal it all together.

Our last job was applying the felt pads to the bottom of the two tiles.

So there you have it two personalised coasters, that are the perfect gift for Mother’s Day.

Macramé Plant Hanger

Next up is creating a Macramé Plant Hanger. This looked fairly complicated to do, but was actually fairly easy. In case you don’t know what a Macramé Plant Hanger is, here’s a little snapshot of the end-product. Pretty good?

Here’s what you need to make this:

• Plant
• 11cm Plant Pot
• Irwin Quick-Grip Handy Clamp
• Polycotton Sash Cord
• Curtain Ring
• Scissors

We started off by painting the Plant Pot in Matt Jazzberry paint to match the coasters. I gave the pot 3 coats of paint for an even coverage.

Next up we watched this helpful video that explains how to make the Macramé Plant Hanger. I took the following steps to do this:

• Cut two pieces of cord that are 80 cm long

• Decide how long you would your plant pot hanger to be. I settled on 80 cms, and cut 4 pieces of rope to double this length.

• Next up, thread the curtain ring so that it sits in the middle of the ropes. A trick here is to use your Irwin clamp, clamping the curtain ring and ropes to the table edge, making it a lot easier to work with.

• Tie one of 80cm rope pieces into a gathering wrap knot around all 8 pieces of rope underneath the curtain ring. This is the bit that I had to watch a couple of times, but is actually really easy once you know how.

• Then take each pair of ropes, and tie in an overhand knot. The knots should all be at the same level as these will sit around your plant pot.

• Next take a piece of rope from each pair and tie together in another overhand knot.

• Lastly group all the 8 ropes together with your remaining 80 cm cord, and tie together in another gathering knot.

• I sniped the ends for neatness and so that they were all the same length, and added my plant pot to the finished Macramé.

So there you have it, a finished Macramé plant hanger with plant. Looks good?

Dads, or anyone struggling for Mother’s Day gift ideas why not get your children to make some presents. The coasters and plant pot hanger make excellent gifts, along with chocolates and fizz too!

I was provided all the materials from Homebase in exchange for this review.

Claire x