My Favourite Five cards of 2011

Well here we are with the last blog post of the year!!!!

I am joining in with Debby's Favourite five cards of the year.  It was very difficult to pick out five cards from all that I have made this year but in the end chose these five -

Get well card to my brother -

Birthday card for my Mum

Birthday card for Richard

Birthday card for dear niece

Anniversary card for dear sister and BIL

I wish all my blog readers a very Happy New Year - hope you are looking forward to the new year ahead.

Christmas card class

I suddenly realised the other day whilst tidying up my photo albums that I hadn't blogged any of the card classes that I did with the lovely Zoe Pierson at the Cardinal Colours retreat back in September.

So here is the lovely gift card holder and cards made in the Christmas class -

Thank you Zoe for a lovely class - I definitely think I need the ornament punch and stamp set LOL!!

Christmas Gifts

I have had some fun in the run up to Christmas this year making some different bits and pieces.

I love Helen's blog It's All Fiddle Fart - there is always lots of inspiration to be had there and she has some great ideas for gifts.  This year I decided to make up some of these decorated mints using Elizabeth Shaw mints.

I made girly ones with pink and purple scallops.

The stickers came from Wilkinsons and I  used a Stamps Away round sentiment for the back of the mint.  The scalloped circle is a Stampin' Up punch and the plain circle is Creative Memories.

 I used more traditional colours for the boy's mints and I also made up one set with white chocolate coins for my Dad as he can only eat white chocolate.

These went under the Christmas tree and were given out at the end of my Christmas Eve party.

I also made some wine glass charms to give to a friend as a gift - I had seen some photos of charms on Facebook so I found this tutorial and came up with these -

I did find these fiddly to do as my hands are very clumsy and I find it hard to grip small things, but I persevered and only said a couple of norty words when I broke some of the wire earrings.  I loved the butterfly ones but they are for a gift so I made these snowflake ones for my own use.

I will definitely be making some sets of these for my fundraising stalls next year.  DH is going to get me a proper tool set so hopefully I will find those easier to use than the large pliers that I had raided from his tool box LOL!!!

Favourite Five Christmas Cards of 2011

Like last year Debby is hosting her My Favourite Christmas Cards of 2011 so I have just had a little look through my photo gallery to find my favourite five.

I haven't blogged the first favourite which is the card that I made for Richard

I only bought this jolly snowman and his wife last week and so have only had time to use him on one card - I think this is going to be a favourite next year as they are quick and easy to colour and a good image to cut out.  I embossed the white mat with the Cuttlebug snow flurry folder and the scalloped lace circle is a Nellie Snellen die.  The snowflakes were punched with various Martha Stewart punches and I glittered the edges of the card with Stardust Stickles.  Richard is not a fan of glitter so he got a lovely shower of glitter as he opened the card - LOL I am so wicked to him!!!!!!

It was really hard to choose another four cards for my favourites - I have made so many this year.  But anyway I think these four make it into my top five -

As you can see the kissing stocking mice make it twice into my fave five - I just adore that stamp and it is one that has featured on a lot of my cards this year.

And I haven't forgotten that I promised a template for the candle box card - from 28th I will have some time to myself and it is top on my crafty to do list!!!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY BLOG READERS - THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE LOVELY COMMENTS THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO LEAVE ME OVER THE YEAR XXX

Red Squirrel Christmas Card

I sometimes get asked to make very specific cards and at one of my fundraisers I was asked if I could make a red squirrel card for a class teacher.  At first I thought that I might do a cross stitched card but then realised that I just wouldn't have time, so I did a hunt for an appropriate digi image to use.

I found a lovely image at Crafty Ann's Digi Shop and with the addition of some holly stamped using a Kanban stamp I made this card -

The background paper is from Craft Creations and I watercoloured the image with Derwent watercolour pencils.

I then decided that this would make a nice card for my Dad for Christmas so this is the version that I made for him using the same digi image.

The mats were cut using Spellbinder nestabilities and the sentiment is by Stampin' Up.

This is the first time that I have used a digi image for my cardmaking and I would certainly use them again if I didn't have the right stamp for the card that I wanted to make.

I am entering the bottom card into this month's Scrapology Card challenge which is to use leaves, leaf shapes and colours on your card.

Meet the Family - November 6x4 love

We are very nearly at the end of Shimelle's 6x4 love and the November class showed a fab way to include eleven photographs on a double page layout by the clever use of a 6x12 three pocket page in the middle.

I didn't have a page the right size so I just cut a 6 pocket 12x12 page protector in half.  I had plenty of photographs to do this page from my niece Milly's horror themed fancy dress party - you may remember the party photos from this blog post.  It was hard trying to choose which photographs to use - I still have plenty more to make layouts with.

Close up of the left and right hand sides

And with the 6x12 page protector added -

A close up of the 6x12 page protector (both sides)

I used Kraft cardstock and My Mind's Eye 'The Spider Web' and two different sets of AC Thickers for my title.

Anita's Christmas Class

We usually do something a bit different at our pre-Christmas class with Anita aka The Inky Blossom and this year we decorated this lovely frame from The Range.

This is Anita's frame

And this is my version of it - I had to do it a little different as I was using a 5x7 photograph instead of a 6x4.

Please excuse the odd angle - the light is so bad here that I could not get a front on photograph without half of it obscured by the flash.  I do struggle making the spiral flowers so after making a cluster to go at the top I gave up on them and added some punched butterflies instead to the bottom corner!!

The papers that we used were Lost and Found 2 from My Mind's Eye.  Thankyou Anita for another lovely class - it looks lovely on my unit.

Last mad rush with Christmas cards

I feel like I have been making Christmas cards all year - and to be honest I have as they have sold very well again at my two fundraisers.  So when I did a final count up the other day I was still 16 cards short, luckily I was spending the Saturday with two crafty friends so I got stuck in and got a big pile of cards made -sorry this post is a wee bit photo heavy

For speed I kept them all fairly simple and not too layered as most of them will have to go in the post.