Enthusiastitch: Christmas on a Budget

Don't you just love Christmas Dinner? Everyone sitting around the table, dressed in their best, topped off with the silly paper hats from the crackers; which are, of course, mandatory. The effort made at christmas is never matched through the rest of the year. The best china, candles, who does those things day to day? Of course, it's all those little touches which make the day special. So today, we are making one of those special little touches to make your table unique.

Today, we are making napkin rings:

You will need: Some lace trim, cardboard toilet roll tubes, baking paper, scissors, PVA glue (make sure you get the kind that DRIES CLEAR), a paintbrush, some pins, a pot to pour your glue into, tape (not pictured), and this one could get messy, so you might want some newspaper to protect your surface.

Step 1: wrap your toilet roll tubes in the baking paper (shiny side out), and secure in place with tape.

Step 2: Prepare your lace. The trim I used (because I already had this, and didn't want to go out and buy extra when this would work), was a little too wide for the job. So I cut out the middle and used both outer edges for this project. You may not need to do this, depending on your lace.

With the middle taken out, and the pieces laid together, it now looked like this:

Step 3: Wrap your lace around the toilet roll tube and cut off the excess, leave a slight overlap though.

Step 4: Add a few pins to keep your lace in place.

Step 5: Generously paint your lace all over with the glue.

Step 6: When the lace is completely covered in a thick layer of glue, stand the tube on it's end and proceed to repeating the steps to make as many as you need.

Standing the tube upright like this will prevent it from sticking to anything as it dries.

Step 7: Leave to dry OVERNIGHT

Step 8: In the morning, when the glue is dry, take out the pins, slide the toilet roll tube out from the middle, and then use your fingers to gently pry the lace away from the baking paper.