Christmas Creations

Thank you for the buck-up. Sorry. I think I may be past the worst of it. I had a better day today.

Well I couldn't leave you all on such a sour note for Christmas, could I? So I have -at last!- got round to doing the photo's of all my Christmas creations..... cards and felties :) I hope they make you smile!

 -these are envelopes that I decorated. Colouring all the snow in white gel pen was really relaxing :)

more envelopes.......put a post-it note in the middle, stamp all around and over it, outline the square and then remove the post-it. Ta-daah!

These are felties I made for some people at my mum's Tai Chi Physio class.

I made them in line with their Chinese birth year.

So, this one is for someone born in the year of the rooster....

this for someone born in the year of the monkey:

....and the year of the rat!!! I like this one best, I think!!!

I made this wee cat for someone who's birth year I didn't know, but didn't want to leave her out :)

I also made some Babooshka dolls but can't find the photo! But I sent one to Di and she very kindly posted about it on her blog, here: Pixie's Crafty Workshop. 

Oh and look! We managed to replace the tree!!!

 And cheeky Scooter has sussed out which of the presents is his. Hmmm must be the catnip inside, do you think?

I hope we all have as good a day as we all possibly can!!!!

Have a good one!!

Thank you!

Thank you for so many messages following the loss of Fluffy. I was overwhelmed! I have never received so many comments. It has really helped, really it has. Thank you all so much!

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Mum is OK. She had a little cry but, thankfully, it hasn't hit her badly like I feared it would. Here is the Christmas card I made for her. Actually it's the second one as she lost the first (!!!)

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 Here is a photo taken on Fluffy's last evening.... Scooter is taking a drink and Fluff is by the fire... if you look closely you'll see that she didn't have the strength to rest her head on top of her paws in that Sphinx pose that cats love- her head is resting to one side of her toes....

 Luvbug took this photo of us on her last morning.....

I have cried buckets this week and my arms ache to cuddle and hold her.

I keep thinking I can hear her in the house. I don't know if this is the auditory hallucinations that I get under stress with the Bi-polar, or if it's just normal grief. I think probably the latter, so I shan't worry...

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This morning a special parcel arrived from Ginger Jasper! Look at the gorgeous card- GJ in his Christmas finery!

He send me a beautifully soft bear, and some things for making momentoes of Fluffy.....

 ...a little album, and an empty bauble- you put a photo in it and hang it on the tree.
 

I think it would be a lovely tribute to Fluffy, especially as she always loved Christmas sparkly things. She used to lie underneath the tree belly-up and daze up through the branches at all the twinkling lights. She also used to attack tinsel and go worra worra worra........

Thanks, GJ! I was very moved to receive these things. It is very kind of you. Look- your photo is now overlooking our crib!

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 Here is Scooter by our tree...

We bought ourselves a little 3ft one! It has fibre-optic tips that change colour slowly and it's quite relaxing to sit and gaze at it! Scooter really enjoyed himself like a kitten when I got the decorations out.

Here is our mantelpiece lit up.

We bought little LED strings of lights that work by battery. I put a bunch in a couple of vases, which are the big glows in the picture. These are good lights as they don't get hot.

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I am trying to keep my chin up and have a good Christmas- I have wrapped all my presents and all the shopping is done. It's difficult when others say how miserable they are though! Mum told me straight she can't wait for Christmas to be over, and Luvbug has been down over lack of work- the schools just haven't been calling in supply staff these last few weeks. I do see their point of view and I do sympathise, but mood is contagious, isn't it? So it is hard to keep plodding on at the moment. I am managing ok, but feel like I'm using my emergency tank, know what I mean?!

Decoupage Christmas

I must say, I don't think 3D decoupage cards look as good as drawn or stamped cards. But they are soooo relaxing to do! And when I saw this design I'm afraid I couldn't resist it. It's so cute. I might send the card to my dad, as he always prefers a religious card for Christmas....

What d'you think?

Would you like some???

Apologies for lack of posts!! We're actually meant to be away at the moment, in the New Forest, but I had tummy tantrums :( so we've postponed it till next month now. Hey ho! I'm still not quite right. But I promise to catch up with visiting all your blogs soon!

I've made a few cards, but can't show them here as they're on their way to people who might log on here and see them early. (Oonagh, Bill, you'll have to wait and see. Haha.)

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I have taken on a couple of big orders and some for Christmas cards (AARGH! I DID IT! I SAID THE "C" WORD IN AUGUST! - I dooo so apologise...)

Well this got me thinking about putting together little packs of assorted Christmas cards for people, a real mixture, but all hand made, all different. Sometimes cards for "special" people are really expensive and if you need more than a handful it can really add up. So how about a whole pack of "special" cards at less than £3 per card? Any takers? Here is what I've come up with:

6 Christmas cards, lined inside, plus envelopes;
individually wrapped;
no two packs exactly the same;
all to contain one each of the following + 2 others:

• "Penny Black" hedgehog (of course!)
• 3D medallion decoupage
• religious (serious/arty, e.g. hand drawn Madonna and Child)
• religious (cute)
• (I'm not specifying the other 2 as I'm getting some new stamps next month!!!)
  

Price to be:

• UK: £16 + £2.75 postage by recorded delivery
• Ireland: E18.50 + E7.50 for intn'l signed-for delivery
• USA: USD25 + USD10 for intn'l signed-for delivery
• other currencies please contact me!!!
  
• **payment by sterling cheque or PayPal**

How/when to order and pay:

• If you'd like a pack please let me know as soon as possible. I'd like to have them all done and sent by the end of October!
• -Leave a comment here or email me.
• When the cards are ready, I'll email you and let you know; if you still want to go ahead, only then will I send a PayPal invoice if that's how you're paying.

Other info:

• If you have a favourite verse or poem etc., let me know and I'll print it on the inside.
• All proceeds to Miss Fluffy Vet's Bill!!!! LOL!
  

Lastly, here are some examples of Christmas cards I made last year:

all these images are water colour painted..
hand drawn & glazed "stained glass":

ahhh! It's the Penny Black hedgehog!

My own design, hand drawn and painted with metallic paints...

I'd love to know your feedback on this idea, whether you go for it or not, so please leave a comment if you've time!!

A few cards, and lots of heating problems!

One rotten side effect of having a bug at the start of the year is that all the good intentions you had stored up for "new Year" get sidelined. It's hard to stay psyched up for them.

Hence, my intention to lose weight was put off with "not while I have a cold, I'm going to treat myself!" The one about tidying up and re-organising much of the house had to be dropped and the one about crafting and writing seems a long time ago now!

But the calendar keeps pushing forward and new, important dates come around... 4 birthdays this week! Here are two cards I managed to make last night, one for my mum, the other for a friend I made in an online depression support group 9 years ago (good grief! NINE years???? It can't be!)

I used the last of the papers Julie sent me in the one for my mum (above). I like the ribbon- I'd seen something similar in craft shops but it was very expensive. This one was 90p a metre (about $1.75 for 40 inches) at a traditional haberdasher's shop in Colchester.
I decorated the envelopes and the insides this time, too...

-I haven't met Donna (yet?) but she has been a great friend over the years. She has MS and has ups and downs with that. At the moment she isn't too well. Her husband, John, is a vet and they have adopted lots of animals- 11 dogs at the last count, lots of semi-feral cats out in a barn, plus a family of gliders (google them, they're really cute!).

Luvbug bought me these metallic watercolours for Christmas:-he let me have them early so that I could do these cards, one for his mum, one for mine :)
I only started making cards last August, so I've done mainly Christmas cards. I'm feeling a bit lost now I'm to make 'normal' ones. I suppose there is Valentine's and Easter coming up though.... I have been visiting a few crafty sites (see list, left) for inspiration and to get back into the mood. Seeing what others are doing, I feel more left behind than ever!

The study/craft room, where I organised all my arty stuff, is as cold as the garage. I made these sprawled across the living-room floor, in front of the fire! Remember the heating engineer that came and went? He left us with one working radiator, out of nine. Unfortunately it wasn't one of the downstairs ones.

As an experiment, I left a plug-in radiator switched on in the study last night. I went in there today around noon. The heater had been on its highest setting for about eleven hours, and had barely made any impression at all; still too cold to work in there, even with fingerless gloves. OK, I can put on extra layers, but I would still be breathing in cold air. With asthma, that isn't a good idea!

It's really frustrating to have parts of the house you can't use. It starts to affect how tidy the rest of the place is- you know where things need to go, but put off taking them there because it means opening doors to draughts and freezing cold rooms.

We've put our heating problems on the 'rated people' site, hoping for a few quotes from engineers. Hope we can get it sorted soon.

I want to get stuck into things before long, as I am starting to feel the year slipping away from me. I want to shout, "Wait for me! Come back!" but I need some damn heating, and to shift this cold/bug once and for all, first. I'm wary of getting bored, as boredom really does lead to depression.

Soooo frustrating....