Funny Christmas Card

I LOVE this card, spotted in a shop in Christchurch, near Bournemouth ……

…….. sounds a little too familiar!

Santa Sleigh Favours

Another idea I have used before, but I thought I would post them again …….

……… seeing as I managed to snaffle a few packs on the sleighs in The Works January sale this year for just 25p a pack.  I am not sure if they are currently available, but  I think originally they were £1 for a pack of two.

I was also able to find the M & S Italian Chocolate Assortment again, which were a perfect size to act as Santa’s sack on the sleigh.  The chocolate Santas came from Home Bargains, costing, I believe, 79p for a net of 12.

I simply stuck the wrapped chocolate onto the sleigh using a double sided, adhesive, foam pad and then the same again sticking the Santa to the sack.

The silver bows with a tiny bell attached were a present from my dear friend Diane. These were attached to the back of the chocolate with the tiniest amount of glue gun glue as I didn’t want to risk melting any of the chocolate.

So simple, but such a cute little favour to pop into my neighbours mail boxes in December instead of a Christmas card …….. happy days!

Iron Orchid Ginger and Spice Mould Christmas Frame

Aghhhhhhhhhh, I just knew I would come unstuck with this idea, following on from my post of 25th September featuring the Iron Orchid Ginger and Spice mould Marc sent me a while back …… BUT, I think I got there in the end!

I’d given the characters ample time to dry completely, so I couldn’t put off painting them any longer, especially as I’d also treated myself to two new sets of pointed tip paintbrushes from Temu (a posh set for £2.66 and a cheaper one for £1.79), to see what the difference was, in the end, there was very little, but I think I prefer the more expensive ones.

My choice of paint, Wilko emulsion tester pots, was perhaps not the wisest, using acrylics may possibly have been better?

The characters came out awfully dark and even though I was in full blown Christmas mode, I wasn’t really sure about the red and green either …….

……. especially when teamed up with the 33p picture frame I found in a charity shop that I thought would be perfect for the idea …….

……. but again, at this stage it also came over as too dark. Sooooooooo, I put a new background paper in and painted the frame gold.

However, I was still not feeling it! I hated the green and red (red and green should never be seen?), despite gently rubbing the paint to get a more faded and subtler effect, but I felt I had invested too much time to simply chuck it all in the bin and start again.

Yet, despite loathing the green, what did I go and do, only painted the wooden letters green as well, in an effort to try and draw things together?

There followed far too much fiddle fart, before deciding, rather than being an all year round decoration/picture, I should instead “embrace” more Christmas, by going the whole hog, adding wooden snowflakes (Temu, £2.48 for 50) in an effort, this time, to draw the attention away from all the “dreaded” red and green.  The letters were duly Glossy Accented and that is how I left things overnight, still not convinced, this wasn’t an absolute pigs ear!

By the morning it was all change, again everything was wrong, the “home sweet home” didn’t say Christmas, it was all so flat, where was the magic?

The original fabric background was resurrected, with slopes of white glitter card stuck along the bottom to form a basic snow scene.

A new set of letters were painted white and glittered, as were the snowflakes.  A long forgotten gingerbread house was rediscovered, as were some small Christmas trees.  It was finally coming together.

With everything in position, I then set about carefully lifting each piece, one at a time, to glue down exactly where they had been placed. 

When I saw the end result, after all the fuss and bother, I was pretty relieved.  I liked it. It is on the “busy” side, but that’s Christmas for you and I’m not 100% about the bead noses, but again that’s working up close to a project over a period of  long time, from a distance they work.

All it needed then were my signature clusters of three white dots and a sprinkling of confetti snowflakes ………

……… only to then discover that I’d been working with the frame upside down, with the hanger fastenings at the bottom, but nothing that wasn’t easily sorted, duh!

The frame will now be carefully wrapped and given to Marc as an Advent  present for 1st December  ……. after all, it was him who started it all!  Happy, if at times, frustrating days!

More 4ins x 4ins Christmas Cards For School

As promised a few more of the many 4ins x 4ins Christmas Cards I made this year for school and Iris and Bertie to send out ……..

…….. using up an awful lot of my surplus foam stickers (most from Home Bargains) and festive scrapbook papers.  My apologies if there are any duplications.

Iris’s Christmas Tree Door Wreath

Iris sat for hours with me patiently making this wreath to give to her Mum and Dad on 1st December.  From past experience I knew that it would take a lot more ribbon than you’d expect, but that gal stayed with it ‘till the bitter end!

The frame came from the Hobbycraft January sale this year, I think it would have only have cost about £2, it was a bit different and cheap, which is why I bought it,

An awful lot of the ribbons came from the rolls left over from Tom and Laura’s wedding decorations ten years ago now.  It’s lovely to think that after all those years their little girl would also go on to make something wonderful using them

I cut the ribbons into about 3 to 4 inch lengths and then it was a matter of just knotting for your life, while nattering about this and that and young Master Bertie played Minecraft.

I think it must have taken us, on and off, about three/four hours of knotting before finally deciding that if there were any more gaps, we’d simply spread out the ribbon a bit more and then fluff them up as much as we could.

It looked more than alright, the tied ribbons needed trimming a little to get them roughly all the same length, but I also thought that it needed perhaps a bow on the bottom and a star on the top to really finish it off, so if Iris left it with me, I would see what I could pick up in the charity shops, because, unbelievably, I had nothing suitable in my huge stash!

It took a while, but I eventually found an unopened pack of original 70’s (??) decorative bows in the local salvation Army shop for £1. Some might regard it as sacrilege that I opened the pack as they would have been worth quite a bit on eBay, but they were also perfect for the wreath, as the proportions were just right and that’s all that mattered.

The star took me a little longer to find, but out of the 50p bucket, it was a no brainer.  I stuck it securely in position using a glue gun glue .

The last thing to do was to add a loop on the back to hang the wreath up from.

Et voila ………

…… two generations of memories in, hopefully, something that perhaps Iris, in years to come, will hang in her home with her own family, sharing the memories of making it with a new generation ……..  long after Great Nanny Nell has gone! You never know ………