Christmas cards

Hello everyone and welcome to kfranciola who is a new follower this week.

Now all the rush and hard work to get Christmas ready is over, I have been having the best week chilling at home and visiting friends and family. The house is a mess with lots of presents yet to find new homes and cardboard boxes waiting to be taken to recycling, but that's okay, it can all wait until the new year when I hope a clean up urge will strike me so the house will get back to normal.

Before the Christmas season is over I'd like to share some more of my Christmas cards that I was too busy to show you when the December panic was upon me.

same design but different colour and stamp

The next few cards were made without lumpy embellishments so they would be easier and cheaper to post

This was some packaging I made and used the PTI Wine Bottle Tag, cut down and layered to make the tag.

And finally here is the Christmas cake I made ages ago and have been feeding with brandy at regular intervals (actually only when I remembered to do it, which wasn't that often). I usually make royal icing and rough it up into a snow scene but last year I forgot to buy glycerin and thought it wouldn't matter until my son almost broke a tooth on it! Marzipan and fondant icing seemed a good idea after that. It was much easier to work with than I thought it would be and I'm quite pleased with the result for my first attempt.

There are too many cards posted for me to list all the materials but if you want to know about anything in particular, just let me know. Thank you so much for stopping by and for all the kind comments you leave. I hope that you have a good New Year celebration.

Hugs

Carol xxx

Papertrey Ink Birthday card.

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying the festive season. We had a lovely day at home with the family, eating, drinking and playing games, but today I found some time to get inky and play along with the Papertrey Ink Blog hop.

The challenge this month was to "use some type of  leftover materials to create a project. And if you really want to challenge yourself even further, you can try to create a non-holiday card from your leftovers."

I decided to make a non holiday card from this lovely wrapping paper

and I came up with this card:-

This was such a simple card because the wrapping paper takes centre stage. I cut a square that omitted the seasonal greeting and matted it onto hibiscus burst card and then onto Hawaiian shores before applying it all to a textured white card base. I added a touch of glitter to some of the leaves (not easy to see in the photograph),

and nestled a couple of the Little Bitty Birds in one of the trees.

Some ribbon, a sentiment and a cute little Tiny Tag finished it off. Thanks for taking the time to look in and enjoy all the beauties you will see on the hop today.

Hugs Carol x

Merry Christmas

Hello everyone,

I don't have time to do a full post today but I would like to wish everyone a very very happy and peaceful Christmas. I hope Santa ignores all the times you have been naughty and has you on his nice list for his travels tonight. Only one sleep left and so much to do!

Hugs
Carol x

Papertrey Ink 'A wreath for all seasons' Christmas cards

Hello everyone,

Its a very cold and frosty morning here in Manchester today and I'm just about thawed out from last night. I belong to a reading group with a lovely bunch of neighbours and we meet monthly to have supper and discuss a book over a glass or two of wine. Each December we meet with our husbands to Carol sing around the neighbourhood and offer chocolates to anyone who comes to the door to share some goodwill. We did our sing last night on the coldest night of the year here so far but it was great fun and we then met together for mulled wine and mince pies. I love Christmas!

You may remember that back in June I received a gorgeous package of goodies from fellow blogger Margaret

who kindly sent me lots of stamped images from PTI's A Wreath for all Seasons along with the stamp set that I made my Halloween creations with this year.  I made great use of the wreath images for my Christmas cards this year and was so pleased to be able to make different styles of card from the same image - a sign of a good stamp set I think :-

So thank you so much Margaret, your gift has given me oodles pleasure. If you click over to Margaret's blog you will see she has created the most fabulous quilted table runner!

Welcome to Darnell who is a new follower this week and thank you Lucy for your lovely comment that made my day last week. Have you found that Blogger often does not let you link back to people who follow or leave comments? I cannot work out if there is something I am doing wrong or if people have blocked the facility to retain privacy. In any case, I would love to visit your blogs if you are happy to leave a link to them.

Thanks for looking. Only seven sleeps to Christmas Day!!!!!

Hugs
Carol x

Lily of the Valley Christmas card

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a good weekend and are getting on with all the Christmas preparations. We had a busy weekend with friends round for dinner on Saturday and our choir singing on Sunday, so I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. But we did put our tree up today and it looks lovely twinkling away in the sitting room, so I am starting to feel a bit festive.

I have been making Christmas cards over the past few weeks and I've almost finished so I should have a little more time to share them with you over the next couple of weeks.

The one I want to share today uses a gorgeous stamp from Lily of the Valley

click to enlarge

I made a background using Papertrey Ink Background Basics Twinkle stamped in white ink on aqua mist card and tied on some aqua mist twill ribbon. Next I stamped and coloured the little girl onto white card stock and punched a circle to make a moon mask before inking the card with blue ink.  I then stamped the Santa sleigh ( from Inkylicious) and greeting in navy ink across the moon before adding some Polar White flowersoft to her hat to make a furry/snowy strip and some more was placed at her feet for some snow. I bought the flowersoft more than a year ago and didnt get round to using it until now, but I really love how it looks so sparkly on that hat!  I inked a small strip and stamped Believe from PTI Believe and used a gem to dot the i to finish it off.

I'd like to enter this into the following challenges,

Bling it On - Christmas
By the cute and girly challenge - let it snow
The Pink Elephant challenge - snowflakes and sparkle
Creatalicious challenge - make it sparkle
Winter Wonderland challenge - let it snow

Thanks for looking.

Hugs
Carol x

                                                                      

Hen Party creations

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Zajc and Lucy who are new recent followers and apologies to everyone for the lack of postings lately. I'm sure everyone is busy in the run up to Christmas but we have been away for several days to Edinburgh to attend a lovely wedding and our choir is gearing up for a busy round of Christmas concerts, so my blogging time has been curtailed.

I hope to share some of my Christmas cards over the next week or so but today I want to share some of the things I made for the Hen Party that preceded the wedding we attended.

I made up some table settings using Papertrey Ink materials

I stamped some plain white paper napkins with various butterflies from Butterfly Dreams and made a napkin ring

to put it in using the butterfly die and a circle and scalloped circle punch. I made up place cards with the Places Please die and stamps, and stamped the names with Simple Alphabet.

A little gift of chocolates was left on everyone's plate and I followed the butterfly theme through by stamping one on each side of the favour box before wrapping it in cellophane and tying it up with ribbon.

so the final place setting looked like this.

A little gift was left on everyone's pillow and I used the Favor it Box 5 die, stamped with a variety of flowers

and used the Tranquility Trilogy stamps and the triangle dies for the front of the box.

And finally, each person attending the weekend received a little gift bag of a mug, hot chocolate and some more sweet treats

including a gingerbread man with the following poem attached

I passed the bag through my Big Shot with a snowflake embossing folder.

The wedding was lovely and our daughter, who was the Bridesmaid looked gorgeous. The men looked very handsome in their kilts and I discovered that most of them kept a little flask of whiskey in their sporran so that they could have 'a wee dram' to keep out the cold! I did some Christmas shopping at the Christmas markets on Sunday and then it snowed overnight so our long drive home was through the gorgeous picture postcard countryside with the hills covered in snow.

click to enlarge

Such a wonderful trip.

Thanks for looking.

Hugs

Carol x