Create Your Own Special Christmas Decorations
How to make bunting!
Welcome to Apple & Radish Chronicles: Where Handmade Meets Homegrown. 🌷🌈Creating comfort, joy and meaning with simple, sustainable handmade and homegrown projects - sent to your inbox weekly - with fun tutorials, recipes and classes! Think of this as your ultimate cottage core homesteading guide - but with a little more spice. 💐 🌼
What subscribers can expect from The Apple & Radish Chronicles:
On Wednesdays you’ll receive a newsletter that contains a lesson/how-to/guide or mini workshop (and occasionally a podcast or video) for a simple, sustainable, handmade project for your home, kitchen or garden. Woo! Upgrade to paid to access all the classes and workshops including every previous downloadable pdf lesson. You can check them out here with a new one sent to your inbox each week!
Then on Saturdays (or Sunday depending how my week is going) I’ll be sharing a short and sweet letter called 3 Lovely Things. As the name suggests it will contain 3 lovely things that made me smile during the week in the hope they bring you a glimmer of happiness too! 🥰🌷💜 This bit is free for everyone but I’d still be delighted to welcome you as a paid subscriber!
Hello There!
One week until Christmas! Our Christmas decorations are getting a bit ratty. It’s easy and cheap to pop out to Kmart and buy a trolley full of glittery baubles and fat shiny tinsel. They do look pretty but I don’t love them. I’m not a fan of anything that’s destined for landfill - whether that’s next week or next year. Most of these plastic decorations lose their sparkle after a year or three and with no other value attached to them except their bright, shiny, sparklyness, they usually get tossed in the bin.
These kinds of things do creep into our home. We’re not perfect. I am sometimes tempted by the bright shiny objects and It’s difficult to avoid waste altogether. But my preference is to adorn our home with beautiful, sustainable and meaningful decorations. Whether that’s handpainted cardboard stars made by our children in primary school or garlands of dried cinnamon and orange slices.
These ornaments may not be ‘instagram’ perfect but they do more to evoke family memories and making garlands, wreaths or clay decorations can be a lovely activity to do together - weaving beauty and meaning into your traditions and holidays.
What a lovely goal it is to create a simple but meaningful collection of lovingly handmade decorations that will last year after year.
This week, with a view to freshen up our collection, I made fabric bunting. This could be brought out at Christmas and other celebrations as our special family celebration bunting. I’ve used various offcuts of fabrics - not strictly christmassy fabrics - although you definitely could use festive themed fabrics if you choose.
Bunting is a simple project to sew and a great way to use up scrap fabrics. You might even choose to upcycle special items of clothing as a wonderful momento of a certain person or season of life.
I hope you enjoy the tutorial. I’ve added all the instructions directly in this email and the printable pdf is below if you prefer to have it in hard copy….
This tutorial is for paid subscribers. Each week I send you a simple, sustainable, creative project for your kitchen, garden or home. 🌷🌈 Paid subscribers receive printable instructions, classes and resources and can access all past classes as well. Most projects can be done in an hour or two. Perfect if you find yourself with a free afternoon and want to do something creative. Or you’d like to build valuable skills and know-how when it comes to making, sewing or growing. Think of this as an ever-growing cottage-core homesteading resource. I’m sharing everything I know here after raising my family and living this way for most of my life. I’d be absolutely delighted if you upgrade to become a paid subscriber or gift a subscription to a friend!