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 

Happy birthday Dawn

A little break from all the christmas crafting this evening

Tonight I have a birthday card to share

This one was created for my lovely friend Dawn

I used a Prima luggage tag as the background, most of the flowers are Prima too with the small roses coming from Wild Orchid Crafts

Stamped sentiment is one of my favourites from Stampin' Up

Hope you have a lovely day Dawn and are spoiled rotten by your family, much love from us all

Love and birthday kisses

Tracey

xxx

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