Sunday 27 November 2011

Busy, commissions, Christmas & wind!! (The weather, not me)

Well, It's been a manic couple of weeks. I've managed to finished the three commissions for Crafts Beautiful. It's packed up and ready to go, I'll post it off tomorrow. Between doing the commissions, I've been doing the housework, washing, ironing etc, blah blah. Plus, I've had a couple of fun filled trips Christmas shopping. I have finally finished, just waiting for a couple of items to come through the post. I'm really chuffed with what I've got everyone this year. Hope they like them! (If not, I'll have them back lol!!)

So, it's now back to making the Christmas cards, I'll just keep going until the last possible minute. Every year I keep promising to start them earlier. I think I definitely will next year. Maybe just keep doing the odd one in between commissions and other stuff. Though for distant relatives etc, I've cheated and bought some, ooer!

The main topic for today is wind. It's a bright breezy day here in Norfolk. The wind was a bit rough last night. I can tolerate any weather, but wind, it's seems to get me really grumpy. I think it's the noise it makes and that it can be so destructive. The worst is the really annoying wind and rain combo. I mean, if you go out and it's just raining, you can wear a hat, take an umbrella, you know. But, if it's a combo of both, then you've got no chance, you can't wear a hat because it'll blow away, your umbrella will turn inside out and you spend most of your time grappling with it, eventually it tries to take off with you hanging on the end (I'm not much of an umbrella fan at the best of times, I prefer a hat). Also with the wind, there is no point what so ever trying to make your hair look nice, whenever you arrive at your destination, you look like you've been for a ride in a tornado.

Well that's the lecture on the disadvantages of windy weather. Here are some of the Christmas cards I've recently made. It doesn't matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get the photography right, but then again, I'm a card designer not a David Bailey.


I used the Christmas Reindeer (CL540) clear stamp set from Hero Arts, Sizzix 'tis the Season phrase die and a Cuttlebug Snowflake embossing folder.


This was a quick simple card to do, perfect for sending to a male recipient. The paper and die cut are from the K&Company Peppermint Twist collection. I really love anything retro, and doing cards like this are my favourite.


This card was fun to do, I used the Jumbo Snowman (SSC1009) clear stamp set from Stampendous. It's great, because you can stretch and stamp him in different shapes. I used some American Crafts paper for the background and kept to the chocolate and aqua colour theme (reminds me of a hot cocoa on a cold day).

Off now to make a brew, and get on with some more cards. I've made about 55 so far, I'll post some more of them next time. Enjoy!!

Friday 11 November 2011

Pumpkins

It's been a while since my last post. I've been really busy with the Crafts Beautiful commissions and trying to get my Christmas cards done as well!

Here are some pics of the pumpkins I carved for Halloween. Some are in daylight by the front door and the rest are after dark. They looked really good. We don't have many children in the village, so it was a fairly quiet night, but I still like to do the whole Halloween thing.






It was my dad-in-law's birthday yesterday. He loves birds and I found this stamp (Wading Birds 2) on a site called The Rubber Stamp Gallery. They have some wonderful and unusual stamps that they make to order. They come unmounted so you have to put them on some EZ-Mount, but the quality is brill. I've put a link to their site in the 'Fab places to visit' section. It's worth taking a look.

Dad loved the card, my skills with a camera don't really do it justice.
  
To make, stamp and emboss the image onto white card, colour in and die cut out. Adhere to a larger die shape black card, then mount onto aqua card and trim. Tie a length of garden twine, black ribbon and black bakers twine around a kraft card base (with the fold at the top) keeping the knots to the right. Fix the image over the cords with foam pads on the left. Add a button threaded with bakers twine to the bottom of the image. Stamp 'Happy Birthday' in black on the bottom right of the card and round off the bottom corners. 

Right, back to work. Happy crafting!