Last post

I do believe I have finally uploaded the last of my Christmas cards for 2017

This last batch of four completes the collection

This first one is for my lovely friend Paulien in the Netherlands

This next card I made for one of Neil's ex-work colleagues and his partner

This bright and funky card is for Paulien's daughter Ashley

And finally, last, but by no means least is the cute card for a lovely young lady I met a couple of years ago, she came to help me in the shop as part of a work placement scheme

She's a real sweetheart and was such a help in the last few months of me running the shop, she wouldn't mind me saying that she has not had an easy life and yet she was so cheerful and willing to do all she could to make the shop and classes run smoothly for me

So, thankyou Shelley, I hope you and your beautiful boy Daniel have a wonderful christmas and a much happier 2018

And that's it for christmas crafting this year

I was much more organised than I have ever been before ( the benefits of retirement !) but  I have high hopes of being even more efficient next year. My aim is to complete all the card making and handmade gifts by the end of November ( I know there are several of you rolling your eyes as you read this, you all know me so well, but if I don't set a target there is no hope of me getting finished at all !)

I will be back tomorrow with a birthday card I made for a very special friend

Love and high hopes

Tracey

xxx

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

These are the fun cards I made for the kids this year

By 'kids' I mean my three young adults, my grown up niece and Amy's partner Ben

None of whom are children and two of them don't strictly belong to me, never the less I call them "my kids"

 Ben's card

Amy's card

Katie's card

Rob's card

AJ's card

They are all a bit fun and a bit silly and I can't take credit for any of the designs this time. 

The snowmen and various reindeer are all over pinterest, so I took several elements from lots of different designs and came up with these five cuties

Hope you are all having a wonderful day

Love and cute christmas kisses

Tracey

xxx

Leaning on the lamppost .......

 Tonight I have a mixed bunch of christmas cards, a batch of 5 similar ones, and then two fun ones

First up I have these lamppost designs, decorated with a variety of flower and foliage dies

This next one was made for my postie, I don't generally use toppers, but, I had this little postbox one squirrelled away and it seemed perfect

I didn't have any suitable embellishments for this card and it looked a little bit plain with just the topper and sentiment so I created these little envelopes out of scraps of card, the postage stamps were made from teeny tiny squares of patterned paper

My postie went above and beyond the call of duty a couple of months ago when I passed out at the front door. I was fine, just got up too quickly, blood rushed from my head and I slid down the wall as the poor chap tried to hand me a parcel

Bless him he caught me before I hit the floor and supported me until he could rouse Neil, who was still fast asleep

Poor man was shaking like a leaf when I came to, I couldn't let his kindness go unnoticed

This next one is for my lovely hairdresser Paige, she is an absolute hero as everyone else shies away from trying to turn my stubborn hair blond. My tresses tend to want to go brassy and harsh but Paige works miracles every time I go and I am so grateful for her patience. 

Paige is the very proud owner of a gorgeous little dachshund, so, when this stamp came into the shop in the summer I  knew the perfect person to send it to

I created the tiny christmas hat by hand and the tree is a wooden ornament from The Works

Everything is ready now, all the cards have been posted, I have one little gift to hand deliver tomorrow and the rest are all wrapped and bagged in santa sacks ready for the big day

The food shopping is done, we drove to Truro yesterday, with Robbie, to finish the last minute errands

I treat myself to a couple of pretties to decorate the dining table and we devoured pasties as we enjoyed the lights, market stalls and festivities around us

We finished with a quick wander around Waitrose where I bumped into Lenny Henry ( almost literally - I can't steer those darned trolleys, even the posh ones !) 

I am forever nudging Neil and saying "ooooh doesn't he/she look like - (insert famous person here)" only for Neil to say "that looks nothing like ( said famous person )"

Only this time I was right, and, there was no mistaking who the extremely tall, very well dressed and softly spoken gent was, he had a little trail of star struck shoppers peeking around the aisles at every turn

Me, I had a one track mind - mustn't forget the christmas pud and the Prosecco !

I still have quite a few cards to share, I ended up making quite a few more than the forty I had originally intended, as we received a few unexpected ones this year, lovely little surprises which I wanted to reciprocate

Love and happy holiday wishes

Tracey

xxx

And Christmas resumes

Good evening

I have another batch of Christmas cards to share with you tonight

I bought a lovely 8" paper pad from the Range last year and these Vintage style papers have been a joy to work with

The Christmas tree stamp is by Stampin' Up and the little wooden reindeer was bought in The Works last year

I seem to have amassed a great deal of DL sized envelopes so tried to use a few up this year

The house die below is an old Spellbinders die, the poinsettias are Marianne, sentiment is Stampin' Up and the trees were made using deckle edged scissors as I didn't have dies small enough for these trees

This next lamppost is a Tim Holtz die, sentiment is once again Stampin' Up

I thought I was almost through sharing all my christmas cards, but checking my camera tonight I still have a fair few to blog. I hope I am not boring everyone with them

I am not sure I will be able to keep this blogging pace up once all the christmas crafts have been shared, but I must admit to having found my crafting mojo lately, so, who knows, maybe next year will be more creative

So, what do you do when you lose your mojo, hit a wall, lack inspiration

Here's 5 ideas to kickstart your creative flow

1. Use the internet for inspiration, join sites that post photos of the crafts you enjoy

I love 

Pinterest

Scrapbook.com

UK Scrappers

2. Connect with other bloggers, create a reading list on your preferred device of creative bloggers whose style makes you want to reach for your supplies

3. Reorganise your crafting space and supplies. Oftentimes, just reacquainting yourself with your bits and bobs is enough to spur you into action, have your favourite colours and styles to hand and make your crafting space comfortable and easy to use

4. Join a class or club. Sharing ideas with your fellow members and taking a course can help you to think outside your creative box, trying new techniques and sharing them with others is inspiration itself. My favourite part of running my classes when I had the shop was "show and tell", I loved it when class members brought in their makes from home and know they inspired me as well as all the other class members

5. If all else fails GO SHOPPING ! Treat yourself to a new piece of equipment, a magazine or a book of ideas. Something as simple and as inexpensive as a beautiful sheet of patterned paper, some pretty ribbon or a new die is often enough to create a little spark of creativity 

Hangin' around the christmas tree ...........

As promised here are the five wall - hangings I made for my friends at work

It was my way of saying thankyou for a lovely year of friendship, support and lots of laughs

This first one is for Sue

I chose colours to match her decor at home

Sue adores green, so I thought I would be safe with this one

The poinsettia is a Marianne die

The ovals are Stampin' Up

Ivy punch is Woodware, as is the small daisy

Small flower is Stampin' Up as are both sheets of the green paper ( stripes and trees)

This next one is for Margaret who likes bright fun colours

Punches as before

Little wooden christmas trees are from a couple of years ago and were bought in The Works

This next one was for my neighbours Mary and Colin

I made this silver snowflake hanging for Gillian at work

Most of the snowflakes were die cuts my lovely friend back in Healing gave me - thanks Trish

And finally this last one was for Janice, who mans the till and has endless patience with me when I try to use it

Another Marianne die for the branches, glitter paper and bauble punch from Stampin' Up

And in case anyone is wondering, the actual circles for the hangings are upcycled from old CD's

The CD's are covered in patterned paper ( I use a Pritt Stick to attach the paper ), once the glue is dry, cut around the CD with your craft knife, then repeat for the back

The holes required for threading the twine/ribbon to hang are made using my trusty Cropodile

I will be back tomorrow with another batch of  Christmas cards 

Love and friendship

Tracey

xxx

Batch baking

I like all of the cards that I create to be slightly different, unique

At christmas time when there is a call for many more cards than in any other month of the year,  I find it much easier, and speedier too,  to mass produce

Therefore, I sketch out several designs and then create little groups of those designs, slightly altering the embellishments, the colours or the positioning of the main elements

I call this my batch baked christmas cards 

Here is one of my 'batches' - I made five of this particular

design

I used a variation of dies from all the main companies

The stunning silver glitter card is from Stampin' Up

As the design only required small pieces of patterned paper, I was able to use many of my scraps up and still get a lovely detailed layered look

I also seem to have amassed lots of die-cut sentiments. I usually prefer to stamp all the greetings,  but, when I looked through them it seemed a shame to just store them away (hoard !) for another year, so I made an extra effort to find homes for them this year

In other news :

It was my last day at 'work' this morning and as Christmas and New Year falls on mondays I won't be back for another three weeks

I will really miss my monday mornings at the the shop, we always have lots to talk about and generally end up in fits of giggles at some point or other

I made all the girls on my shift a little christmas wall hanging this year, so I will be back tomorrow to share photos of those 

Until then

Love and batch baking

Tracey

xxx

Last of the Christmas 2015

2015 was our first Christmas in Cornwall

We did most of our Christmas shopping at Truro, I never tire of seeing this beautiful Cathedral

The last few of my christmas cards

This one was for a commission, I made it for our decorator to give to his girlfriend, he wanted something with the theme of Tim Burton, what could be better than Jack and Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas !

Ben and Amy are completely besotted with all things animal, so I made them a card with penguins

And mum also adores penguins, so this was my card to mum and dad

All the kids made it home for Christmas. Ben and Amy came a couple of days after as they spent Christmas and Boxing day with Ben's parents. They travelled down in the car, got stuck for five hours at Bristol services,  lots of little things went wrong, lost car keys, dying phone batteries, bumbling AA men, etc etc - honestly it was like a scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but they got here eventually and Robbie came home the week before

Seeing Robbie ( on the left in the photo below ) made us realise just how much AJ has grown in the last couple of months, must be all that good clean Cornish air ! You wouldn't believe the taller AJ is four years younger than Rob when you look at the photo - and yes his hair is always like that !

And it was our first ever Christmas with our lovely little lab Molly, look at those beautiful eyes

We bought both the doggies glow in the dark bandannas for Christmas, they look so cute

And my big softie Bruce, awwwwwww

I hope all my friends and family had as lovely a christmas as we did

Love and looking forward to the new year

Tracey 

xxx

More Christmas

A few more of the different designs of christmas cards made for last year

I made four of this one in varying colours

I made four of the Kraft coloured one

These three are variations on a theme, all similar but slightly different, the lovely soft coloured papers were a gift from Neil

Last year was the first year I actually managed to get all my cards made well before the day itself, as most of them were to be posted I really did have to get more organised, it felt a bit strange not having to rush around making last minute cards

I could get used to this retirement lark !

Love and mistletoe kisses

Tracey

xxx

Christmases past

As promised I have a few of the christmas card designs I created for last years Christmas cards

These four were all variations on a theme, lots of layering and die-cutting 

These first four were made for the lovely ladies I work with at the Cornwall Hospice care shop, they have all made me so welcome and I love my monday mornings, we are endlessly busy but always end up having a giggle and quite often cake !

All the ladies I have worked with have taken me under their wing and have helped Neil and I find out all the best local shops, pubs and places of interest, everyone is super friendly in our little town

We all enjoyed a lovely Christmas meal out at one of the locals, it was originally a just a meal but most of us ended up staying for the pub quiz, what an absolutely brilliant night ! It's funny sometimes how the least planned events seem to turn out the best, we didn't win, didn't even come close on most of the categories but we had such a laugh, the Prosecco flowed and if we were being judged on fun then we definitely won!

My lovely 'boss' Sue ( who is coincidentally the least bossy person I know) , Margaret and I ended up with an extra bottle of Prosecco somehow at our end of the table and all I will say, is, the tea towel Neil bought me as a joke definitely came to mind

Just for you Sue 

All new friends, people I will learn more about and spend more time with as the weeks pass by, people I never knew six months ago but who are already a big part of our new lives down here in Cornwall

But not forgotten are my old friends from up country, cherished friends who have kept in touch and who thought of me and my family at christmas time

One very special gift I received came by the way of Jan

She came to stay with us one weekend before christmas and brought with her this adorable little book

Tee book is made up of little envelopes, each containing a handmade tag

All the little tags had been decorated and each of them had a little message handwritten on the back from Jan's class members who were my old class members and friends

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed receiving this gorgeous keepsake, thankyou so much to all the lovely ladies who contributed, my gift took pride of place on my special bookshelf for the whole of December and most of January, it is now tucked away for safe keeping in my memory box

Thankyou for all our cards, handmade and otherwise

Love and belated baubles

Tracey

xxx