Merry Christmas to all of you

I want to wish each and every one of you a very merry Christmas, or a happy time whatever festival you are celebrating. I'll be back after the fuss dies down, in the meantime here's a little project for anyone with time on their hands - ooh, I can hear your hollow laughter......

What can you do with a single sheet of double sided cardstock and a bar of soap?

How about a really cute little wrap...........

that opens to show a little box inside......note the position of the little magnet

which is the perfect size for a bar of soap............

 start by cutting your cardstock to 8" x 6 3/4"

score across the short side at 3/4", 3", 4 1/2" and 6 3/4" - I have drawn the lines to show up in the photos

turn your paper, and score lengthways at 1 3/4" on both sides

 this is the only complicated bit, so I have taken a series of photos, showing where you need to cut to form your box.........

 1. starting from the top of your paper, cut away as shown...... 

 2

 3

 4.

 5.

 6.

you will end up with your cardstock looking like this. Sharpen all the folds with a bone folder

use a circle punch to punch a little half circle as shown......

put double sided tape as shown and assemble your box. Set aside while you make the wrap

 For the wrap, cut a piece of the remaining cardstock to 9 1/4" x 4"
Score along the long edge at 2", 3 1/2", 5 3/4" and 7 1/4"
Sharpen folds with a bone folder. 
If you like, punch a decorative border along one of the end flaps at this stage

apply double sided tape to the center of the piece as shown, and carefully center your completed box onto this

with strong glue, attach a small magnet to the inside of one of the end folds (I covered this with a little piece of the remaining pattern paper. Put a corresponding magnet onto the other end, so that the wrap stays shut

decorate your box, I just used a couple of Prima flowers and a tiny sentiment

I got the idea for this from a gift my lovely friend Gilly gave me  - I could do that I thought, and dismantled it to use as a pattern, but it tore badly when I took it apart, and it took me ages to work out the measurements and logistics for the project, so I hope at least one of you finds it useful! I think they would make great little hostess or shower gifts, and once you have made your basic 'pattern' they are a breeze to make. Have fun......

Kraft with Colour

I actually found time to sit at my desk and create a bit today - here's my first card made with the Craftwork Cards project of the month kit, Kraft with Colour.

Everything on the card is from the kit, including the base scallop edge card. The green scroll is a Fiskars die. The center square of paper is gorgeously foiled and gleaming in real life.....

We have mice!!! I went into the garage, and saw one scuttling across the floor - just a small little field mouse. 'That's okay' we thought 'it can't get into the house'

We have a bin on the inside of the cupboard underneath the sink in the kitchen, mounted to the inside of the door, it takes a plastic carrier bag, so a bit of recycling and a handy place to drop teabags all in one..... until I found it shredded, and tea leaves all over the floor of the cupboard.

I was astounded. I didn't know mice liked tea!

I was also astounded because how the heck did it get into the house? I think the answer is that we have Mickey in the garage, and Minnie in the kitchen cupboard.......

So, even though it is the season of goodwill to all men and mice, we got some poison stuff, it has been eaten, and there is a little twitching tail  underneath a box in the garage, I haven't dared open the cupboard door. I feel terrible, poor little things, all they were doing was have a nice cup of tea and now they are gone....

"Twas the night before Christmas

and all through the house

not a creature was stirring

not even a mouse"

well, not in this house anyway!

New digis......

I was sent some new digital stamps to play with from a new company called The Scrapbook Stamp Society - take a look over there, their designs are trendy, fun and a joy to colour. Here's what I made, I love this first one for a male birthday...........

and this image is just so sassy, she would be perfect for a teen who is into clubbing (when did they stop being called discos, and become clubs?) Thanks to my good pal Kath, for the idea for the bow.....

This Christmas image is so different, look at all the little peace signs in the snowflakes......

and I love the manga type images they do, you can use such funky colours on them........

Look what came in the post today, this month's Project of the Month kit from Craftwork Cards, called Kraft with Colour. Anyone who orders this months kit gets a free Cards magazine, worth £10 in with their order. You get a project sheet with lovely designs by Julie Hickey. Julie was my very first cardmaking idol - when I got bitten by the card bug, I bought one of her card books in WH Smiths, and studied it for hours. Little did I think then, that one day I would be on a design team that she leads (and she is the sweetest person you could wish to meet as well as being uber talented, you can see her on QVC, and see her work on the CWC blog).

This is just some of the stuff that was in my pack - look out later this week to see what I come up with.......

Three pots of homemade soup cooling before they go in the freezer (my family loves soup), french onion, broccoli and stilton, and cream of mushroom. We have a family tradition that on Boxing Day, we throw a large piece of pork in the oven, and lunch is homemade soup, followed by hot roast pork rolls with stuffing and apple sauce. I think we all enjoy it more than the turkey on Christmas day

and the tree is finally finished, and the presents are stacking up nicely under it

I hope you are not all too exhausted by the manic run-up-to-the-big-day, I am on top of things, and may even get to delve into my new goodies tomorrow..

Deck the Halls.......

Mike was given a gift, and told to open it because something needed to go in the fridge - it was a bottle of port and a Stilton cheese. I was delighted - I hate port and never eat Stilton, so why the happy smile? Just look at the box it came in, a wooden crate that is just crying out to be altered.......

The tree is decorated.........

and it's always lovely to see old favourites come out of the box of decorations. These little ceramic climbing angels were bought in Budapest, Hungary...............

and these little angels came from a Christmas market in Prague.......

 these silver bells were on my parents Christmas tree when I was a child.....

and this little chap came from Stuttgart, Germany - you put a scented cone inside and light it, he looks as if he is smoking a pipe!

A couple of last minute Christmas cards. This one used a clear stamp by Papermania UK

and this one is Luka by LaLaLand stamps

Things I love about Christmas:
Family
Friends
Christmas carols
Turkey sandwiches
Seeing the house all dressed up
A pile of presents under the tree
The happy look on someones face when they open their present from you and you know that you got it exactly right
Mince pies
Knowing that you have enough food in the house to feed an army, and won't have to cook for at least a week
That warm cinnamon/spicy/fir tree smell


Things I hate about Christmas:
Getting last minute Christmas cards from people you had forgotten
Getting last minute Christmas presents from people you had forgotten
Crowded shops
Crowded car parks
The unhappy look on someones face when they open their present from you and you know that you got it really wrong
Realising late on Christmas Eve that you have forgotten some vital ingredient for next day's feast (happens every year)
Those news letters that some people put in with their cards. Don't bad things ever happen to these people? They are always full of promotions, brilliant children and world cruises (sorry, don't mean to offend anyone, but I would love to have one saying something like 'Aunt Bessie passed away in March, but it didn't bother us, we never liked her')


 Oh no, I can feel a touch of Scrooge bubbling up, I'll stop there.......Note that my likes outnumber the dislikes :)

Resist Embossing Butterflies

I used a set of acrylic stamps by Kanban for this one. I heat embossed the script/butterfly background in white, onto a white background. Then I swiped the whole thing with distress inks, graduating a bit from blue to green. The whole panel was wiped with a baby wipe, hey presto, the white embossing really stands out.

The border punches are by Martha Stewart, and I used a little bowdabara to make the bow. The sentiment (don't know what the little white marks are, they are on the photo, not the card), is Studio G from the dollar bin

The Santa run is done. Monty was wide eyed, and very quiet as we piled the presents under the tree. Apparently, as soon as we left, when his mummy was waving us off, he dived into the pile, and was found busy opening all his Daddy's gifts. Oooops. I suppose when you are two, the concept of Christmas day is a bit vague, and hey, if there are presents sitting around, what's a chap to do? The gifts are now relocated to the top of the wardrobe :)

More tuff boys

Here's a couple more cards made with the new Tuff CD from Polkadoodles, I love this one, it's such a great CD for boy/men cards. The images were coloured with Promarkers, and all the papers are printed from the same CD

I have just finished a marathon wrapping session, without running out of paper/tape/tags, that must be a first. We are doing the Santa run today to deliver presents in London. Monty is beside himself we hear, so he will go into overload when he sees the pile of pressies going under the tree.....
It's a flying visit, so will be back tomorrow, see you then 

Shabby Vintage - With love on your Birthday

This gorgeous pack by Craftwork Cards arrived just as I arrived home from the US, and this is the first chance I have had to play with it. The colours are lovely, soft and elegant, and I love the letter stickers -  so much that I made them the focal point of this card. 

I have had a Cricut cake in an online shopping basket (cricutmachine.com) for about two weeks now, the only reason being that it was at such a knockdown price it seemed too good to miss ($49.99). I overlooked the fact that I haven't actually baked a cake for about five years, a bargain is a bargain. Then, like a lightning flash, I remembered that my daughter in law Annabel makes loads of cakes and decorates them beautifully. So although I had bought all her Christmas presents, she has an extra gift in a rather large box winging it's way across the Atlantic. Even with international mail costs, I only paid about £80 for it, which includes three cake cartridges, which considering Create and Craft have just the machine for £400, must be a steal. If she doesn't like it, I will reclaim it and use it as a back up,  to cut paper. So anyone hankering after a Cricut expression, go over there and grab yourself a deal, they may have some left.......

 I have a curtain that needs to be altered - very expensive fabric so I need to be careful. The plan is that it will undergo a metamorphosis and turn into a blind.  I got as far as taking it down, and it has been folded on a chair for about two months now. I have just moved the chair to make room for the Christmas tree and the blind has been moved to my New Year Resolutions list! Having it neatly placed on this list makes it all seem so logical, and less urgent somehow. Now I will only have pangs of guilt when I go to my list to add something else that I don't feel like doing.....master of prevarication, that's me.

Away in a manger

This has to be one of my favourite Christmas stamps, it is back in the USA, but I am pretty sure it is by Inky Antics, coloured with Promarkers. The starry background paper, which has lovely glitter dots, is by Papermania

Our postman hasn't been near us for about four days now. They did this last week as well, then an avalanche of mail landed on the floor. Is this a not very subtle way of dealing with the Christmas mail - ignore it for a few days, it may go away. Is there one poor postman trudging around trying to deliver to the whole town? Answers on a postcard please - but don't expect it to be delivered before February


No time to burble on today, I am busy packing up parcels and really must tidy up my crafty space, you have never seen such a mess. 

Mermaid

This lovely little mermaid image is by La La Land stamps, available from Scrappy-go-Lucky. I embossed the card front with the spots and dots folder (available in the UK, not sure about the USA), then added some Fiskars sheer blue raindrops to that. The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards

I did a step by step photo shoot of colouring her hair with Promarkers. I started with rich cocoa in the darkest areas....... 

blended that in with cinnamon, going over the area coloured with the rich cocoa, and extending the colour out a little.......

I moved on to Caramel, again going over the previously coloured parts, and extending it out a little more. I left some patches where I thought the light would be catching the hair.....

I went over the whole lot with Ivory, which added some light highlights...

I started the skin, by going around the darkest areas with soft peach, under the hairline, on the cheeks, you can see that I made a mistake and coloured in her bolero top, it made no difference to the end result. I then went over the whole of the skin area again with a Blush marker.....

and here she is finished. I used ice grey 1 & 2, duck egg, cool aqua, grey green, tea green, and cyan for the clothes and tail, and added a tiny bit of a turquoise Spica pen to add a bit of sparkle.....

The label shape was made by scribbling glossy paper with promarkers, and flicking with blender solution - the ink dissolved, and it looks just like bubbles in water (this was the technique I wanted to video until I lost my tripod!)

So there we are, I hope this has been useful

I had a phone call from two very excited little boys (Max and Milo) who had just helped Daddy decorate the Christmas tree. Apparently Max is opening his advent box in a very orderly way, counting the days and carefully removing the contents. Milo has developed a rather unusual method - he opens ALL the boxes every day, has a good look inside each one, then chooses which one he fancies. As my son said, this means that by Christmas week, he will be left with a load of rubbish that he didn't really fancy in the first place!! 

Quick Christmas Cards

The challenge on Polkadoodles this week, is quick, last minute Christmas cards. Well, you can't get easier than this - I printed out the night sky element from the Magical Winter CD already coloured, printed out some houses, cut them out and popped them on with foam pads. A Craftwork Cards sentiment and hey presto, the card took me about ten minutes to make. Do go over to the challenge blog and join in, I would love to see you over there



Today is our daughter Alex's birthday. Have a great day, and happy birthday sweetheart

Outraged comments about the smoking santa I mentioned yesterday. What I forgot to mention was that he was standing at the back of a pub! Obviously a man of many vices.......

I got all set up to do a video yesterday, had a bit of a tidy up, got all the stuff ready, found the Flip camera, ooops,the tripod is back in the USA. So short of strapping the thing to my head while I work, you will have to wait until I can buy another one, by which time my desk wll be all messy again - sigh  

Make a wish......

Here are a couple of cards I made for this month's Papercraft Inspirations magazine, on sale now in the UK, next month in the USA. The theme was birthday/make a wish, so I had to come up with four different cards on the theme. For the first one, I used a real candle................

and this next one had rolled up rectangles of paper with cotton 'wicks' to look like candles.......

Things on my to-do list yesterday fourteen, things crossed off my to-do list yesterday one. The Christmas cards have started rolling in, and so far all of them are from people I had totally forgotten about. Oh dear. So my one productive act was mass producing a few cards
. 
Out and about, I saw a Santa in a rather grubby looking Santa suit, sneaking a crafty cigarette behind a wall. 'Ho ho ho' I said cheerily as I passed, 'I hate bloody Christmas' he replied grumpily. Right, a bit of a problem on the job satisfaction front there then
.
See you tomorrow

Pretty Tuff

Look what came in the post, the super new CD from Polkadoodles, a collection of the most adorable tough boys, this CD is a must for making those boy birthday cards, cards for men of any age actually, as well as doting grandmas!

Available now from the Polkadoodles online shop, they mail free to anywhere in the world. Have a look at the online gallery there for inspiration.

Here are the first two cards I made as samples for Nikky, both coloured with Promarkers, and using papers from the CD

If anyone has children/grandchildren getting excited about Christmas,  go HERE to Santa's Portable North Pole to make a personal video message to send them. I found this site last year, and it is just so neat - Santa looks like the real thing, you can upload photos of the child and give details, so that it really looks like a personal message - and it's free. I made one for Kiki and Max and had great fun doing it. You can send them to adults too, I haven't tried that, bet there's a lot of talk about being naughty............ 

More Christmas cards........

I am finally getting to grips with the Christmas cards - these all use exactly the same design, well, it was working for me, so why not. The die cut oval is by Nellie Snellen, all the stamps are by Lili of the Valley, papers and sentiments by Craftwork Cards

I coloured them very lightly

I changed the colours to pink on this one......

and this one hardly needed any colouring at all, I just coloured the shadows with ice grey 1

The annual hysteria is mounting - the papers and magazines are all full of advice on how to cook the perfect turkey. I don't understand this - it's only like a chicken but bigger, chuck it in the oven and cook it for a bit longer, works for me every time. Then there are the articles on how to dress the perfect house......these articles are illustrated with happy people in red sweaters, sitting around a roaring log fire, surrounded by priceless antiques, with a perfect tree in the corner, hung with baubles that have been chosen to perfectly match the colour of the curtains....... I won't even start on the articles about wrapping the perfect gift, lovingly tied with huge bows and handmade tags.

 My reality is that one day this week, we will climb up to the attic to unearth the Christmas tree, which was shoved rather haphazardly into it's box last January, when I was sick of the sight of the thing. (I gave up having a real tree when I found I was vacuuming pine needles from the carpet in July). Then we will have the annual trauma of untangling the fairy lights, which were treated with the same contempt as the tree back in January - an action I will bitterly regret when I have spent three fruitless hours trying to make them work. Wrapping the presents is a marathon, and usually ends with the last few being wrapped in some leftover birthday wrap, and hoping nobody notices.....then I will be ready to put on my red sweater and smile prettily for the camera

Something Hidden for Polkadoodles

 It is my turn to set the challenge on Polkadoodles this week, and I chose

A card or project for a child with a hidden or secret element

Why?

I have no idea, it seemed like a good idea at the time, until I started to think about it and realised that I didn't have the faintest idea what I was going to do

 Inspiration came when I started to make the Kaisercraft advent box for Max. Lots of hidden stuff here, right? I used the same basic design as the one I made for Kiki, but this time I used the little boys from the Magical Winter CD from Polkadoodles, printed, coloured with Promarkers and cut out, then mounted to the scene with springs or foam pads. The trees were cut from the Jolly Holidays cartridge with my Cricut expression, as was the sentiment. The advent boxes are available from Sir Stampalot in the UK, and Ritz camera in the USA

Little white pompoms made cute little snowballs........

and I added a lot of glitter all over........

This little chap building a snowman was just perfect for the scene.....

as was this little guy with the giant candy cane.......

and finally a real little guy with the finished product. ('hurry up Ma, this is really heavy') Conversation between my son and Max yesterday

Max: "do you and mummy get a Christmas present?"

Ed: "yes, possibly. What do you think mummy wants?"

Max: "a necklace and bracelet…..... and a ring"

Ed: "that sounds expensive. What about something cheaper?"

Max: "um. ur. how about some shampoo?"

Sounds a plan Max, that should do it....

Do go over to the challenge blog to see what the wonderful design team made of my challenge - lots of inspiring stuff on there, and of course, we would love it if you joined in


Random musing for today - do teenage girls have a special built-in thermal gene that allows them to wander about in sub-zero temperatures wearing only skimpy tops and micro mini skirts with bare legs? When does this gene mutate into one where you are only warm with about ten layers and boots?


Second random musing, following on from the first.....how come someone who was brought up in a cold and draughty manse perched on the side of a Welsh mountain, with ice on the inside of the windows in the winter, now needs central heating turned up to tropical levels to be happy - you'd think I would have become acclimatized  in childhood wouldn't you?


Third random musing following on from the second....... in no particular order, my list of favourite things in the world must include cashmere, thermal anythings, ugg boots for warmth not appearance, hot water bottles and hot baths


Just off to get another sweater (did you guess that it is quite cold here today!)