Christmas crafting at the MK Design Christmas Workshop

I was very lucky to be invited recently to a Christmas workshop hosted by interior designer Mathilde Kubisiak from MK Design and textile designer Ashley McDow of Occipinti. It was the perfect thing to start the Christmas season and got me feeling all festive! 

The invite promised an afternoon of Christmas faffery - creating Christmas decorations, wreath-making and present wrapping, all to take place in the incredibly tasteful Skandium shop in Marylebone. 

The shop provided the perfect backdrop for the workshop and it was wonderful escaping from the rainy November afternoon outside to spend a few hours quietly making and crafting. Skandium is like a sweet shop for design lovers, and I loved having the chance to nestle among such beautiful pieces of furniture, and observe them at close quarters. 

After a very warm welcome from Mathilde and Ashley, we sat down to begin our first activity, which was making Christmas decorations with quick dry clay. Mathilde gave us a short demonstration and then we were let loose. This was a craft that I had never tried before but has inspired me to order some more clay and make some more at home for the tree.
We used leaves, fir cones, lace and stencils to decorate them and cut out shapes with cookie cutters - very simple but I think they will look rather lovely among the dark fir of the tree, and they could also be used to decorate parcels, as name labels at a table, or as part of a handmade advent calendar.



After a brief pause for some delicious refreshments provided by Cake and Cucumber (faffing is hard work you know) and a refill of the fragrant glogg that was being liberally poured into everyone's mugs, we moved onto the next craft - wreath making.



This was the part of the day that I was most looking forward to, as I LOVE a wreath. We were given beautiful Danish designed Strups brass rings to use as the base, and all manner of foliage, wool and decorations to build our wreaths with. I used bushy sprigs of sweet smelling eucalyptus and some lovely soft grey ribbon, tied in little bows. We got to take the rings home and I have already made a second wreath with mine.


I loved seeing what everyone else did with their wreaths - so much variation and creativity!



After lots of oohing and aahing at eachothers' wreaths, we took another break for tea and cake, before moving onto our final activity - present wrapping.

The presents were already wrapped using Ashley's own designed wallpaper (which was absolutely lovely) and we were provided with a vast selection of ribbons, tags and other decorations to prettify our pressies. Mathilde and Ashley were on hand to give tips about how to make our pressies look tidy and professional.

I used some brown paper ribbon, natural leather cord and sparkly thread on mine and finished it off with a little feather label. Simple but pretty. I particularly liked the presents decorated with sprigs of rosemary and dried flowers - something that I often do with my Christmas presents too.

We left the workshop with a bag of gorgeous goodies and lots of inspiration to use in the run up to Christmas. My mind immediately started turning to all the Christmas crafting I want to make time for this year - advent calendar, more wreaths, tree decorations, cards etc etc!! 

Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop Mathilde and Ashley! 

If you fancy a bit of Christmas crafting and styling yourself, Mathilde and Ashley are doing another workshop on 10 December - details here.