If you're a keen baker I would guess you have a bottle of vanilla essence in your cupboard, but have you ever thought how easy it is to make your own Vanilla essence?

I hadn't, but last Christmas I was on a mission to make as many of my Christmas gifts as possible, because I love handmade and crafting but also because I think something handmade has more of a personal value and no time is this more prevalent than Christmas

I decided to make up some hampers for family and combine lots of handmade goodies and one of the elements I made was handmade vanilla essence. It was so easy to DIY that I also made up a sneaky batch for myself and I have been using it throughout the year in my cake baking as its much nicer than those tiny shop bought bottles and lasts longer.

If you think this might be something you would like to make as Christmas gifts I would suggest making it soon as it needs to steep for at least six weeks to get a strong vanilla flavour.

To make your own Vanilla Essence you will need:
10-12 vanilla pods per bottle - I bought mine here
250ml Glass bottles - I bought Kilner ones here
Vodka
Knife

The first thing to do is sterilise the bottles - I did this in the dishwasher with no detergent and then leave the bottles to air dry overnight.

The next stage can get a bit messy! You need to run the knife along the length of the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds, leave them on the pod but not trapped in side. As you scrape each pod put it in the glass bottle, its okay if the seeds fall off in the bottle.

Repeat this for all of the pods, I managed to get 11 in each bottle.

Fill with vodka, seal the lid and give it a really good shake.

Store in a cool dark place for at least six weeks or longer but each week give the bottles a gentle shake to mix up the essence. Eventually the vodka will turn a gorgeous shade of brown and smell delicious!

Like many crafters I love my Tim Holtz Distress Inks for papercrafting and I have collected quite a few from the various ranges.

I love Distress Inks because they are great for stamping but also painting with if you use a water brush.

The problem however with the inks is that you cannot get a true colour representation from the lid of the ink pad. To rectify this, I decided to make a colour swatch which I will keep with my inks and can reference when stamping but something that I could also add to as I purchase more inks - which I most definitely will! The colours all together just look so pretty!

To make a colour swatch like this one you will need:

• Distress Inks
• Distress Inks Blending Tool
• Blending mat
• Small rubber stamp
• White stamping card
• Shaped punch
• Hole Punch
• Ribbon
• Pen

1. First of all punch out the shape of your choice in the white stamping card for how ever many inks you have.
2. Using the blending sheet and the blending tool ink the card shapes making it darker around the edges and gradually lighter in the centre so that you can see the range of colour shades you can create with one ink pad. 
3. Using the rubber stamp, stamp the image in the centre of each colour swatch so that you can see what a stamp in each colour will look like.
I hope this will be a helpful addition to your craft organisation techniques and save you a little time with knowing exactly what the colours will look like!

I think it is a sad but true fact that Autumn is on its way with the chilly and wet weather we have been experiencing in Cambridge this past week, I am thankful for my heater next to my desk at work! Although I dont like the cold weather, I do love the colours that come with Autumn and the beautiful oranges and reds on the trees when the leaves turn.

With this in mind I was really pleased to see that fantastic card stockist Papermill Direct have created an Autumn themed challenge with the winner becoming part of their design team. You can read more about the challenge over on their blog.

For the challenge we have to create something that represents Autumn and I came up with this card (and then whilst in a card making moment I made the second card too!).



The card is A5 in size with a cream base and I firstly made mask cutouts of the leaf stamps and inked through the cut outs on to smaller squares of card edging with distress ink, and then stamped the leaves  with brown embossing powder to give an overlapped appearance and showing the veins of the leaves. The panel of text started as plain brown card which I then stamped with the Autumn themed text stamp in an embossing powder with a sheen so it shows up and shines. Finishing with a tied ribbon.