All packed up for Christmas

We've finally finished all of the Christmas making, baking and packaging.  I had help from the family, Alan made port and stilton chocolate truffles with the help of Jasmine, Chloe (AKA Cookie) helped me bake the shortbread cookes then we iced them.  All of the little holly and candy cane embellishments were Cookies own work:) 

All packaged up

What would I have done without my spellbinders?  The boxes were made with centura pearl card which I inked with the christmas red distress ink from Tim Holtz.

Chocolate truffles with port and stilton, Liqueur soaked cherries dipped in chocolate, and marzipan logs with apricot conserve



A gift wallet for those awkward people
 who want money for Christmas!

Peppermint creams made by Chloe and myself.







And finally, it took me a long time to make this cushion, the knitting with pom pom yarn wasn't too difficult to learn but then I was stumped as to how I was to sew it together, onto a black backing fabric etc. In the end I made a black 'pillow case' style liner which I put onto the insert. I then laced the pompom fabric around the cushion. To ensure the outer cover doesn't move I sewed the tapes onto the corners of the liner before lacing them up. I just hope the recipient likes it.



Christmas crafting

How is everyone else getting on with their seasonal preparations?  I've not much to show here yet, but I've been busy making preserves, and making packaging for some food gifts.  My Cake is done to a Jane Asher design, I'm afraid i'm not proud enough of it to show it off, my Christmas roses don''t look like hers and my Ivy is a mess!

Christmas crackers

I've been making these for the last few weeks and finally finished 10!  The basic crackers are pinflair and the embellishments made from spellbinders and beads I had in my stash

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new job card

Update - I've redone the card after getting some good advice so here it is

I spent the best part of today playing with the MCS Important Date cd.  There are some fantastic papers and images and I had the idea to make a masculine card first.  I thought the basic card was a little unbalanced so I spent half an hour or more failing to find my 'coathanger' paperclips to make an embellishment before resorting to cutting out the spellbinder borders.  I was still not happy as at this point the message was not in the right place so I moved that.  I think it's still unbalanced!  As I went to photograph it I discovered that despite several checks I've stuck everything on the wrong way round and the card opens from the bottom!  Still I am posting it here as a record and hoping to get a few constructive comments on how to make the next one better.

Christmas cards posted

I've just posted a selection of Christmas cards in the section on the right.  We've been working on some projects suitable for Guides to do and have come up with the holly wreath made up from leaves punched from various green papers, some of them embossed.  Apologies for the slightly blurred image, there is a new lense on the camera and I don't think I'm used to it yet.

Card made with revitalised paper and Spellbinders

Crafty Tip - Revitalising old or uninspiring papers

Like all Crafters I have a number of old and dog eared papers that I really don't think I'm going to use.  This is not really my idea, I wonder how many ideas are really new, but I was pleased to win a competition recently by mentioning it and am going to pass it on here,  A long time ago I saw someone using cosmic shimmer sprays to change the look of paper and have done it many times to create original papers for card making, scrapbooking and book covers.  Check out the mini book page for more ideas.

First protect your table and any nearby walls with plastic bin bags, this really gets messy!
Choose your papers, you can use quite lightweight ones.  Spritz them lightly with mica sprays of your choice, at the first stage I just used one colour.

Screw the papers into tight
balls then smooth out and spritz with plain water, respray with mica spray adding a second colour if you like and scrunch and again. By this time the paper will be quite damp so unravel carefully.

Lay out to dry and voila, some nice new crunchy papers with a fantastic sheen.  You might want to iron them before use but I like the rumpled texture,  I think running them through a die cutting machine or embossing folders will be fun.