First Christmas Flashback

No, not mine! This is my DS1, the one who is getting married next year. As his birthday is in January he was able to take in all that was going on on his first Christmas in 1987.

The story begins...

Yesterday I showed you the front cover of my Christmas 2009 paperbag book, today you can see the first two pages. Hopefully I will manage to do some more pages and will post them as I go along.

Page 1 features my Secret Santa Advent parcel from Bubbly Funk Forum. We were all allocated a forum member to send a 'crafty' advent calendar and we have a lot of fun every day telling each other what we got in our little parcels and trying to guess who sent the
m! They are small things like buttons, gems, die-cut shapes nothing too expensive but it's just great to open a little parcel every day. My Advent parcel came beautifully presented in a box lined with vintage images and every little package made from folded gold paper with a red tag. I included the first tag in my page. There is a journallying tag tucked under the photo explaining about the swap.

Page 2 is about my Christmas Tree which is an eclectic mix of ornaments that I have chosen, made or have been given as gifts and there are a few that the boys made too. When I considered my tree I was very aware that it leans towards a 'folk art' style with a bit of bling thrown in, which probably sums me up too lol!
I wanted to show some of the tree decorations, so I made a little concertina book. Mickey and Goofy came from the Christmas Shop at Epcot in Disney World, my Mum gave me the rag doll angel last year and my crafting friend Tracey R gave me the gorgeous glittery shoe dec when we met at the NEC in November 2008. The one Karen gave me is on the tree too, but I couldn't take pics of them all or there would have been nothing but tree ornaments in the book!
On the back of the concertina, I have a pic of a salt dough wreath that I made about 15 years ago, I resurrected it this year as it hasn't been out for a while. The last pic is of the holly branches and pine boughs that I cut from the garden, they are soaking in a bucket of water....but you will have to wait and see what I did with them next, hee hee.

Paper Bag Writer

As usual I started out with good intentions. I signed up for the Jessica Sprague class, 'Holidays in Hand', however I have to say that it just didn't hit the spot for me. I'm not sure what it was, most of the prompts were really geared for people with children and things like 'taking a photo of everyone in your family' falls a little flat when it's only me, DH and MIL!!!

Anyway, I decided that I would just play it by ear and not be driven by a fixed plan, this seemed to work with my stated 'values' of being more relaxed about Christmas (not something I find easy). I decided to make a paper bag book after seeing the one made by Sarah on Bubbly Scrumptious blog, I left mine full bag size rather than cutting it down to 6 x 6 the way Sarah did.

I have done two pages so far, I'll let you see them soon.

Papers are Dream Street, label is digi by Ellie Lash.

Once upon a time...

... a very poor woodcutter lived in a tiny cottage in the forest with his two children, Hansel and Gretel.

When I saw that the weekly challenge on Bubbly Scrumptious was 'Fairytale' I knew that the time had come to open the Maya Road 'house' that I had won in another BS challenge and turn it into a Gingerbread House for Hansel and Gretel!

I painted the cottage with acrylic paint to get a 'gingerbread' finish. I had almost finished the cottage last night but hadn't put any decoration either side of this window. I'm so glad I left it because I found these little Gingerbread people when I was putting my Christmas decorations up, they were right at the bottom of the box and I remember that my Mum had used them on her Christmas cake one year and gave these two to me. They were just the perfect finishing touch.
I had to make my own candy canes and they are probably the thing I am least satisfied with, however, they are recognisable as candy canes.
Here is the opposite side of the cottage. I am most pleased with the roof which is simply made with punched circles of different coloured brown card. The 'snow' is made with the 'velvet' pen I bought last year at NEC, you use your heat gun and it puffs up.
The little hearts came with the cottage set and the charms were in my stash, I remember I bought them for the Recipe card swap we did on Bubbly Funk and I did the gingerbread man recipe.

Finally, the lid lifts off and there is a little book which you can make up and put inside. Of course, you could fill it with yummy treats!

Baby look at you now!

Many thanks to everyone who left kind comments for me about the loss of my cat, Jenny. They are really appreciated.

It's Daring Card Making time again and this week the dare is:

Say it in "Sepia"

This was perfect timing for the card I needed to make for my Great Aunt whose birthday is next week, she is one of those relatives who really appreciates my home made cards and I had this cute scan of a photograph of her as a small child on the beach. Now as she will be 89 on her birthday, you can imagine how rare a photo like this would be! Inside the card is an insert with a photo of her as she is now.

Background: download from Stampington
Text paper: K&Co Verbena
Watch image: Last Door Down the Hall
Vintage Lace/flowers/brads etc : from my stash

Oops forgot to say that I used Kathy Black's latest sketch (#17 ) for this card.

Goodbye Jenny

We took Jenny to the vet first thing this morning and she was put to sleep. She was 17 and painfully thin, over the last month she had deteriorated considerably and had not eaten properly for a week. It was kinder to let her go now than have her carry on in such a state.

I would rather remember her when she was plump and sleek with her beautiful pink nose. Here she is sitting on my paperwork with a self-satisfied look on her face in April 2008.

Easel does it!

My friend's nephew will be 21 in December and she asked me to make a special card for him. From her description he is a kind of a classic type of guy, so I blagged some Cornish Heritage Farm stamped images from a very generous Angelnorth.

I've been looking at all the easel cards that people have been making and wanted to have a go. I made a little circle of mirror card and stuck on some glitter thickers for 21, I had to make a little tab for the easel as I wasn't convinced it would stay up without it and didn't want the thickers to come unstuck with the pressure of the card.

Papers - Papermania, Touch of Teal
Stamps - Cornish Heritage Farm, car is 1955 Corvette and registration plate from Camaro Style.