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Yay! I'm back - for this week anyway. Maybe I need some lessons in time management, because I never seem to have a spare minute these days, to post on my blog, nor to comment on everyone else's. But tonight I have been busy chopping up several bulbs of garlic and a huge bag of root ginger, to make a new batch of my Hot chili and ginger jam. It now has to simmer gently for an hour so I am going to use that time to prepare this post for the morning. Excuse me if I pop back to the kitchen to stir the brew every now and then. And what am I back for? Well, of course it is for the weekly blog hop hosted by the lovely Julia over on her Stamping Ground, so if you would like to see what crafters around the world are getting up to, pop over and join in the fun.

Obviously my 'work desk' tonight was the kitchen table, so here is my desk from the night before, when I actually did do some crafting.

I am so far behind with my Christmas cards this year, and with the way my life is at moment, there is little chance of me catching up in time, so I made the decision to do a batch of digital cards. Not something I have done before, and not my first choice, but it certainly was a lot quicker. I used Photoshop and a digital scrapbook kit called Cameo Christmas by Pamela Rose designs. I chose a backing paper, a frame, and a swathe of flowers and greenery, and constructed my page. I then found a reasonably decent photo of Chris and I that we took to send to our African boy whom we sponsor for his secondary education. I resized it to fit behind the frame and saved the whole thing as a jpeg file. I was then able to use Publisher to size it down to fit on a 12cm square card, and could fit six of these on an A3 sheet of paper. So what you can see here is one of the sheets about to be cut up, plus green and red card for the bases, a very untidy box of ribbons, a sentiment stamp and ink pad, and my tower of stickles glitter glue. And of course a grumpy Arwen who objected to being moved to the end of the table. I have done so little craft recently that she thinks she owns the whole space and is extremely disgruntled when I move her off it.

So in one evening I was able to cut out four sheets of images (two dozen in all), cut score and fold 24 base cards, stamp 24 sentiments, and the worst bit - tie 24 little red bows, and then put them all together. And just to prove I did, here is a later shot of my desk, with all twenty-four cards, spread out while the glitter glue dries, with Arwen banished for an hour!

That is the closest shot you are going to get of them as I haven't decided who I will be sending these to yet. I shall make a list now and see whether I should make a few more. I am also trying to get a few sets of 'proper' cards made for my friends locally. The digi ones will be good for posting to UK, so most of them will go there.

Well that's it for this week. I think my jam is just about ready to bottle up. The kitchen is very pungent right now, but as I said to my sister earlier, at least I should be breathing clearly tonight!

I'll be back tomorrow to link this up and hopefully to visit as many as I can of you.