Happy New Year!

Now that the majority of the Christmas festivities are over, perhaps I will get back to something approaching bloggy normality!!

I am not often commissioned (in fact never I think!) to make cards for people so it wasn’t a good idea to forget that Dad had asked me to make some cards for his “hire a chauffeur” business!!  What he wanted was some cards (about 18 of them) that said Happy New Year so that he could send them to his main clients offering a 20% discount if they referred people to him.

Anyway, what with one thing and another I did indeed completely forget that Dad had asked me to do this – fortunately it was Dad and not a serious potential client!! Dad was quite understanding and said that I didn’t have to do it, but of course, I HAD to!! 

A quick rummage around the SCS website and I found this fabulous card that I just knew I could make my own.  Although there are only three cards in the photo below (with apologies for the quality of the iphone photo!) I did make five each of the designs seen below and five more of one similar to the middle card but with a plain gold background.

I thought that I had taken another photo showing all twenty cards, but I can’t seem to find that one now!  In any case, I was very pleased with the way that these cards had turned out – just how Dad wanted – elegant and classy with no frills and furbelows!!  ;-)  For your information, I used the largest of the Labels One in the Nestabilities set and either left the light brown sections unembossed or used the swiss dots or the d’vine swirls  embossing folders from Cuttlebug to make pretty patterns!  A fine black pen was used to make sewing “marks” around the edges of the die cuts and then black ribbon that’s almost see through (I KNOW there’s a name for it but I cannot remember it right now – do enlighten me!!) was pinned to the card using black eyelets before the whole thing was finished of using peel-off Happy New Year stickers.

While I am very happy with the whole thing I think that I will never again attempt to mass produce (ok even if it is in small numbers!) cards in one day again!!!  But then again that’s all my own fault for forgetting that Dad had asked me!!)

It’s that time again…

…no not Christmas, but WOYWW!!  Head over to the Stamping Ground to see more creative desks this Wednesday!  My desk looks like this today…

Quite unusually there is chocolate on my desk, okay, okay, so it is not so unusual for me to have chocolate in the house, but I rarely have it on my desk cos I just KNOW that I will get some chocolate on a card that is just about finished!!

Anyway – there is chocolate on my desk because I am making little gifts for people! If you look to the right of the big yellow punch you can see a bag that I received on Monday (you may need to click to embiggen!) from the lovely Hayley at Craft Club – which is another post in itself – will get round to that eventually I hope!!

I thought that this was a lovely idea, so I am now in the process (factory style!) of making my own little bags of peppermint tree decorations for people to enjoy (you can see them just above the scissors next to the stack of ribbons)!  They look like this….

And I am so pleased with how they’ve turned out!!

Wine Bottle Tag

I came across this rather lovely little tag for a wine bottle on Rose’s blog - “Rose’s World” and I just knew that I would need to  make my own bottle tag sooner or later!

Mine is not as fancy as Rose’s, but then I made in about ten minutes flat!! (if that – I was running late for the party on Friday!!)

It just goes to show that even I can whip up something when time is short!!  If you go and look at the tag Rose made, you will see that she gave the punched hole a bit of a collar – that looks lovely and I must try that next time!

Whoops….it’s Wednesday

And that means it’s WOYWW!!  I am rather late to this today but that cos I have a perfectly valid excuse (of course!) as I have been creating cards for tomorrows craft fair at work!! 

This evening I have been making cards other than Christmas ones as I got asked last year whether I had non-Christmas cards, so I thought that it would be good to have a small stash of cards completely unrelated to Christmas.  (unless you count the thank you cards I suppose….for after Christmas – ha ha!)

Anyway…..I think that I have said before that my desk was rather untidy (when it probably wasn’t all that bad), well I think that today takes the cake!  I have a little green mat where I am doing all the work and the mess just piles up at the side…well…see for yourself!

And the floor is slightly better – I want to show you – if only to show you where the cat is sleeping! (keeping me company – at least she’s not trying to jump on the desk like she was the other day.)

I have been slow in blogging this week, so I am  hoping that once the craft fair is over and the pressure is off a bit I will blog rather more!  Don’t forget that you can see more creative desks over at the Stamping Ground!

WOYWW

Today’s WOYWW is a special one for me cos I have cleared my desk specifically to show you what I did on Sunday.  You see, I went all the way to a little place called Tidworth in order to take part in a Christmas Card Marathon as hosted by the Two Scrap Ladies (and two nicer ladies you couldn’t wish to meet!)

These photographs manage to show all the cards that I made.  Unfortunately I did not get round to making all 24 as I just ran out of time!

But I did learn a few new things, met some great people, got stuffed with good food – including some utterly delicious bite-sized brownies with buttercream icing and pieces of chocolate on top – utterly yummy!

I don’t think that I could pick out a favourite amongst these great cards, but I do like the wooden reindeer one, the two-candles one, the tree one in the bottom right hand corner and the very simple mistletoe on vellum.  (Heck I might as well name them all as favourites!!)

In any case, I want to say a huge thank you to Julia and Ally for organising such a great day!  (by the way there is a picture of the event on the Two Scrap Ladies blog – you can just about make me out in the purple rollneck at the top of the table on the other side of the table just by the window – did that make any sense – ha ha!!)

SantaThing!

I have been a LibraryThing member for ages.  If you don't know what LibraryThing is, it's a place where you can catalogue your personal book collection and see what other people have (appeals to the nosy in me as well as the librarian!)

 

Two years ago the fabulous LibraryThing people started SantaThing and I joined in the first time around and got an intriguing book.  The second time around I was a bit nervous of what I might get that time because I wasn't all that keen on the book that I had (which was The Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin - a distinctly acquired taste I think!) even though it was quite interesting and I did enjoy it, but I would not choose to read it again if that makes any sense at all.  This year, I thought that I would get stuck in even though I am bit late to the party!!

 

So late in fact that the deadline for SantaThing is today at 4pm EST which actually means 9pm my time, so if you are British you have plenty of time to go and put your name down for SantaThing!!  Simply put, you need to be a member of LibraryThing which is free up to a certain point and then you need to plunk down $25 (£15) to put your name in the hat and then once the names have been distributed (no addresses given out) you can have fun choosing the right book for this other person that you are likely to never ever meet!! And of course you get to have fun opening a suprise parcel - only a surprise in that you won't know what the book is!!

 

You know you want to do it!! ;-)