A different christmas ornament each day

This year at work i decided to gradually decorate my school hatch by adding a home made ornament each day!  Seemed a good idea at the time but it has proved to be a job and a half and the time it has taken me i now regret doing this even though the children appear to have enjoyed finding a new item each day!

Same picture different cards

After the christmas fair i was asked by one of the school teachers to make her two christmas cards. One for her parents and one for her sister and husband.  She wanted names on them and as her brother in law is from south africa and called Werner it wasn't exactly an off the shelf name lol.
In the end these are what I came up with.

Aston by Sutton Xmas Fair

A month ago I paid the PTA £10 to have a stall at their xmas fair.  Since then I have made christmas cards and decorations to sell.

Well yesterday was the sale!  To be honest I was surprised by the supprt as this is the first fair I have been to since starting work at the school.

i was really pleased with the comments on my work, its so nice to hear positive comments from people who you don't know, at least you feel they are honest and not just said to appease.

The card stands that my hubby had made for me worked well but being wood are far to heavy, it meant more trips to and from the car, but that is a minor moan!

I actually took £86, not bad when you look at the prices set on items.

The only downside is that my knee has taken a hit from me standing still for so long.  Having gone back to work last week after only having a week off after tearing the menisci in my right knee, standing without moving  was just too much too soon, but at least i have a day to rest it before work tomorrow.

Have a heart

Have heart and craft!

So i got this patchwork heart from handmade harbour, and one evening inspiration struck!  I decided to make a flower with the heart being the petals.  So armed with my trusty promarkers i set to work.  A tad fiddly with some of the smaller sections but well worth it.

The left over coloured hearts i used to make a notelet card,    

Santa sweetie decorations

I have been watching youtube recently for more ideas to make christmas decorations.  There were a number of  films showing santas made with punches.  Now as you will see from previous posts I am having ongoing problems with the punces i own.  But i do have a selection of spellbinders dies.  So i sat down and had a play with the ones available to me.

A scalloped oval cut down for the beard works well, and with careful cutting can produced two beards.  My five petal flower was converted into the moustache, and yet again made two!

The smallest flower and there was the pom pom on his hat. The smallest circle makes the nose and the third smallest is great for the face.  A bit of scissor work and i had the hat fur, finally a hole punch supplied me with the eyes.

Must be fairly good as hubby actually recognised it as a santa lol

The cats decided to "help" by throwing items off my worktop, feng shui kitty style!

Christening card

So a friend of my daughter wanted a christening card made for her nephew.  Not a theme i have made before, but armed with two rubber stamps from Lili of the Valley, i had a go.

Coloured with promarkers and layered over doileys cut using Spellbinders dies.  The finished accents were the three matching blue flowers made using a die from Spellbinders.

Quite happy with the finished item, to make it complete i stamped the church on the insert for the inside.

As this fits the theme of men and boys i have decided to submit it to Handmade harbours" challenge at 

http://handmadeharbour.blogspot.co.uk/

Halloween treats

I wanted to take part in the handmade harbour challenge this week, the theme being Halloween.  The shame is unlike the states we still aren't big on the whole event over here, although it is becoming more popular.  So it was abwaste of time making cards.  But having been making tree sweet decorations this past week for Christmas i decided to make treat packs for any trick or treaters that come to our house.

I used the ghost image from handmade harbour,  coloured with letraset markers and cut out with spellbinders dies.  The sweets the little ghost is holding were made shiny with crystal glaze.

A few sweeties later and the bags were atapled shut, with the image covering the wrong side of the staples.  I think the kids that call here should enjoy the finished items!

Xmas tree decorations

So to deviate away from just christmas cards i decided to make some christmas tree sweet decorations.

Of course before i could start i had to get some plastic bags, which after some searching i got off ebay.  I also want some really narrow bags like some on youtube have used in the USA, but so far have failed in finding them in the UK, but i digress!

I purchased some decent chocolate and put five balls into each of the bags.  I didn't want the staples showing so had to use the oldbrain before starting, but i think they look good and i am really pleased with the end results.

Something to smile about

Well after a mammoth weekend of card making i have completed all these christmas cards. 27 packs of six cards in each and a few single cards left over!

I have used up a load of envelopes that my mother had for god knows how long!  Coloured card that i just can't face using in any other type of card has been used up! Oh am

Nd some dratted glitter card that covered me and the room, the cats and half the house in glitter!!

I have used digi stamps from pink petticoat and digistamp boutique.  My spellbinders dies got some heavy use and my poor big shot is wondering what happened lol.  Finally my poor friskars circle punch died. Poor thing, but it died for a good reason!

Anyway having had the home where my mother is now living selling my cards for 25p........not happy at that, but what can you do after donating them for their summer fair, well i digress.......i decided that i needed to mark the cards up with a price that people would pay, but make it obvious.  So i decided to use the image from handmade harbour, colour it and make it into a label, stating the cost of the card packs.  If i say so myself they really look the business.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfullness

John Keats. 1795–1821

627. To Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,	5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,	10
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;	20
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,	25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

As we harvest our garden my thoughts turn to the above poem that i had to study and learn so many years ago.  Whats sad is how much i had forgotten.  We have a bumper crop of grapes and a good number of apples.  Today even saw me dashing through the rain to pull rhubarb to make crumble.

I'm a winner!

Wow talk about being made up, i have won at Handmade Harbour with my cards I entered.  It is so much more about someone saying that i did a good job as opposed to the prize ( which is great, don't get me wrong).  Too m.any times i can show a card to hubby and he says oh that looks ok! Well ok is no help at all lol.

We all need constructive criticism, there is always something we can do to improve.  But we don't always know what it is.

Anyway, today has seen me finish more xmas cards , at least i have plenty to spare this year.

When good things go wrong!!

My crop-o-dile died today, it was only making a hole through some laminated sheets and shoot......look what happened!

So thats not good, and for the past couple of years I have been in love with these, to the point that I got rid of my Silent Setter.

The next problem was silicone glue that refused to set and instead made a grease spot through my card :(

What a shame!  I used the birthday tag from 

Handmade Harbour and made the flowers from magazine pages.

Happy Birthday card

So at the moment I am quite in to colouring the wonderful images from http://sassy-cheryls-stamps.theshoppad.com/#/ the images are lovely with the children and their poses reminding me of my kids when they were younger,  the image I used is Backpack Max and I coloured using my copic and prisma markers.

The check and brown papers are from http://www.pinkpetticoat.co.uk/ a company that i have downloaded from for many years.

The happy birthday banner i actually printed off in works and coloured using my markers!

Finally, the happy birthday tag was downloaded from http://handmadeharbour.co.uk/, that was yet again coloured using my markers.

Just a quick note, the image was cut out using a spellbinders die, and i edged the papers using distress inks.

After making this card i decided to use up the leftover papers so I made the following card........

Sympathy cards

The other week I made a number of sympathy cards.  You never feel able to make them when you get the bad news and i know it seems morbid being ready in advance, but i wanted to create something  less dreary than most shop bought cards.

The digi stamp is from www.pinkpetticoat.co.uk  a company i have downloaded from for years, i think that their images and papers work really well and i return to them to see what new. Items they have on a regular basis.

The other cards are made using scraps to the best if their advantage.

Christmas is coming!

So Christmas is coming and as each year I make cards thinking I have enough cards, until my daughter comes along and helps herself to her chosen card selection!  Then my mother ends up having some cards to send out, with the result that I either have a mad rush to make more, or horror of horrors I have to buy cards!

Well this year I refuse to not have enough cards in my stash, so I have started making.

BUT

I have set myself a challenge to use up as much of the bits and pieces from previous years card making.  Even down to using up tiny pieces of paper to make Xmas trees to use on the cards.

Anyway, I have to get on and cut, stick and create, I hope you like the cards made today, and don't forget...........,.,,,,Christmas is coming!

Congratulations Anita

Well I would like to congratulate my good friend Anita for getting accepted on the design team for handmade harbour.  Looking forward to seeing more of her creations!,

Boys Birthday cards

So my daughter was complaining the other day that she needed some more cards from my stash........freebies of course!  But she also specified that she required some boys cards, as she was getting more occasions to use them now that Jacob is getting older and attending birthday parties.

well as it happened I had very few cards to suit her criteria, but I had recently purchased some digi stamps from Sassy Cheryl's website which I had every intention of using.  Plus I had some stamps from Lili of the valley which I wanted to use.  So with a relatively free weekend and some cardmaking  enthusiasm at the ready I created the following.

Decoupage Birthday card

Really needed to get a better picture of this card.  But all that aside this has been done in three layers and put onto the circle.  The picture is a digi stamp from http://www.sassycherylsstamps.com/ I thought it was really cute and ideal for boys and their grams alike.

Mainly blue chunkies

Made two chunkies so far for the mainly blue swap. Need to get moving and complete the others so I can get them posted off to. New Zealand