It’s been a really busy week or so, preparing for my craft stall, fulfilling orders and making for some local good causes.
My latest makes are 10 cards, the ideas for which, I’ve had in my head for a while. I’ve made some of the stocking cards before, and I loved the flocked paper I found whilst browsing in TK Maxx one day! It’s from a Laura Ashley collection. It just screamed at me to be used as stockings for some reason. So I thought I’d add a fluffy top to them. The trees were again cut from some of the Laura Ashley paper pack and I wanted to do something a bit different for me. I loved the small flowers on the paper and they give a really subtle pattern to the tree shape. I added some tiny gems in green and red to some of the flowers and greenery and used some small hand-tied bows around the stems of the trees. I then raided my craft stash for some stars and found a good selection, tiny padded ones, stickers, peel-offs and gems. I think the stars give the trees a lovely striking finish. Simple but effective. The cards are all finished with inserts.
My next project was to make a couple of personalised knitted stockings, in gold! Finding some gold yarn proved very difficult. So I decided to use some Sirdar chunky yarn that I had leftover from a jumper. It knits up beautifully and the stockings are larger due to the thicker yarn. Using a finer yarn for the initials and adding a gold ribbon bow really gives them the ‘golden’ feel. They are to be used as tree decorations hiding special little presents for two little girls. My customer is very happy with them as they fit in with the tree colour theme perfectly.
I’ve also been crafting for a couple of local events raising money for local causes. The first was for the Christmas Market at St Jospeh and St Bede’s School, where I had a stall and was providing a prize for the raffle. The second was the Christmas Fair for the Friends of Walmersley Village, where I provided some baking (Christmas pudding tiffins and mincemeat parcels) and some cards, gift-tags and tree decorations for the craft stall.
Finally I was asked by a colleague for another couple of personalised bow Christmas cards. I managed to fit these in as I had a couple already made, that just required the appropriate personalisation and inserts adding. These bow cards have proved very popular this year.
Phew, what a week. Now I’m finishing off my own cards this weekend and starting on some Christmas crafting with my daughter. We’re decorating a large plastic cup as a snowman for her Christmas Fair!
Happy Christmas crafting
xx
