..and so this was Christmas ...

... and now it's all over for another year.  Reminder to self "I must start Christmas cards earlier next year, I must start Christmas cards earlier ...".

I did do some cards early in December for our Christmas stitching night - mostly large tags, but forgot to take a photo as I was in a hurry to finish them.

I spent (wasted ??) an inordinate amount of time just trying to decide on the design for the majority of my Christmas cards - the ones that were to be mailed to family and friends both here and in England.  Those cards needed to be "mail" friendly so this was the design I made.  I cased this from a card I saw at a paper show a few months ago, so not an original idea, but I liked it at the time and bought the necessary bits, ie. silver stamp pad, stickles etc.  The tree stamp used is a Penny Black "snow dust" and the words are also Penny Black "a wonderful Christmas".

Not the best of photos but here is a close up of all that glitter.

and here it is on the production line along with my other card which is not at all mail friendly and so only hand deliverable. 

The other card is a lovely little folded number which features Dasher from Stampin Up - just love him!  I got the idea of the folded card from Sandi's blog and then had to decide what to put on the front.  Dasher only just fitted.  In retrospect I should have made the card a bit bigger.  Isn't hind sight a wonderful thing?

The designer paper is also from Stampin Up but it is from last year - and it looks so good with the Real Red.

Again, I had a production line happening for these.  Stamped my greetings on the reverse with the white kraft ink.

and just to keep it all matching, I used Dasher again for my gift tags, along with the new SU Finial Press embossing folder - believe me it looks fabulous on the real red but you can't see it from my photo.  

 I was pretty happy with them, but as I said earlier, I just need to start much sooner next year, so I can enjoy the process.

Back in November my Brother had a gift of chocolates delivered to me.  They were from "Lollypotz" and were a novel idea with Ferrero Rocher chocolates wrapped in tissue and wired into a little bucket to look like a pot of flowers.  They have been sitting on my bench since then because I knew I just had to have a go at doing something like it.  I bought a kilo of Heritage chocolate bells and this is what I came up with.

I have made five of these now and while I don't think the other company is likely to be worried about my competition, I think they turned out well.  They are quite time comsuming because everything has to be wired (not good on the fingers!) (and this is why they are so expensive to purchase). 

I was determined to make a banner for Christmas !!! but I didn't get around to the one in my head because I needed to do something for our "front door decoration competition".  Obviously a normal banner wasn't going to fit across my front door so I made this funny little one .  I reversed the pennant shape into a tree shape and just went with "Ho Ho Ho", but I should have made it a lot bigger as it didn't have the same impact as a banner.



So that's about my lot for now.  Thanks to all of you who have made it to the end of this posting.  I will be much briefer next time.

I wish all of you a very happy 2011 - may it bring you good health and happiness and lots of paper crafting.

Cheers,

Mary