It's Christmas Market time again

Yes, I am having my usual panic crafting sessions to make items for a couple of charity stalls that are coming up in the next few weeks. We had the first one last Saturday but I only took jams and pickles to that one, as it was a joint effort from our church, and other folk did baking, knitting etc.

But now I have my own stall to get ready so here are a few of the things I have made. Starting off with a huddle of sock-snowmen.

They were relatively easy to make, and I love the way they turned out. In fact the hardest part was finding the coloured sock with long enough tops. There were plenty of stripey socks in the market but they were mostly very short, coming just above the ankle. Basically each one is made from the 'foot' of a plain white cotton sock - adult size - that is filled with round grain rice and tied at the top and around the neck. The hat is the top half of a coloured, preferable stripey, sock, and the scarf is cut from what is left over. I glued on a red pear-shaped pin for the nose, and punched black felt circles for the eyes. Then I glued on some matching buttons and used a promarker to add pink cheeks.  I also added a snowflake with a matching gem at the centre, to each hat. So these are very much for decoration only, and are not toys, but I still think they are fun.

Next I called my silhouette cameo into service and using a file bought from My SVG hut, I cut out a stable and assembled it. It was a little bit fiddly, but it all went together quite well. I would like to have stamped the roof with a wood-grain stamp but I haven't got one, and my embossing folder is too small, so I bought some craft, corrugated card, and used that instead. The stable is quite deep, with a vellum backdrop about half-way back.

This leaved enough room to put a battery tea-light behind it which gives the scene a really nice glow.

Again using my silhouette machine, and this time with a cutting file bought from Etcetera4U, I cut out a star.

I saw a photo of this star on Facebook and it looked as though it was white, with a golden light shining through cut out angels and stars. However, when I opened the file in my software, I found it was a solid star, with sequins glued randomly over it! Not deterred by this, I used some stars and angels from my file folder, making them much smaller, and added them over my star sections before I cut them out. The back is another star but without the cut-outs. I wasn't sure whether such small shapes would cut from card but they did. I was using a gold card bought from our 'todo' shop, at 75c for five sheets, so I didn't expect the quality to be as good as it is. Before I glued the last piece in place, I put a small string of 20 Led lights inside it, with the battery case and on/off switch left outside. They are almost too bright, but it does look rather nice lit up.

Each side of the star was cut from an 8inch square of card, and if I have time, I want to make a larger one, using two 12inch squares.

And finally here is a little amigurumi elephant that I crocheted using variegated Danish sock wool, bought from a shop below my son's flat in Aarhus when I visited him this summer.

I am not sure whether he was worth the effort, but he is rather cute.

So I have a few more items in the process of being made, so I am sure I will back in a day or two.

Reindeer for Rudolph day.

Finally I am getting back to some semblance of normal, after a long hot summer and lots of visitors, suddenly it is autumn. We have had several days of rain (my visitors timed it well because they had sunshine every day!), and last night the duvet came out,  and today I need a cardigan handy! So hopefully i can also get back to doing some crafting. 

Yesterday I did a quick browse through my very long Bloglovin' list and commented on as many posts as I could manage, so I didn't get my Rudolph Day post written. But the challenge is open until the end of the month, so I can still do it today. Fortunately I knew I would be busy so I made my cards at the beginning of the month!

I noticed that I had a lot of snippets of mirri-card in my box. I always seem to need a new sheet when I want to use it. So I matched up the gold ones (aren't there a lot of different shades of gold!), and cut out a set of frames with matching sentiment frames, and then set about finding something to put in them.

Once again I resorted to using my digi scrapbook kits, and used adobe to make a card layout, resizing a 12" x 12" backing paper to fit a 15cm card , and adding an image from another set, resized to fit in my frames. I also added a sentiment from a third kit, to fit my small frame. This is all a bit time consuming, but the complete card is now saved in my files, so I can quickly print off more should I need them. They just needed to be cut and glued to the front of a basic white card, with the frames added, and a little stikles to add some sparkle. I also glittered a wooden snowflake to go in the top corner.

I started by printing off two sheets and was a bit non-plussed when the second one came out a pinky-mauve. My yellow and blue cartridges were almost empty and only the magenta one was working properly! I thought they still looked quite pretty, so rather than waste them I rummaged through my mirri-card snippets again and found enough pink to cut frames for one, and purple for the other. They are a warmer shade of mauve than they look here!

I then replaced my two cartridges and made two more yellow and gold cards, using two different frames and die-cutting a snowflake from the frame centres for the corner.

While having my original play around in Adobe, I also tried out a second image that I liked, on a darker background, and I printed one off to try. I thought it was a bit too dark, but once again I didn't want to waste it, so I mounted it on a base card and made a frame from dimensional glitter paste. (It didn't quite fit in my cut frames!). I printed half a Christmas tree and fussy cut it to add some dimension, and added some stickles for sparkle. I also glittered the snowflakes on the backing paper and added gold peel-off sentiments.

So that's another half a dozen cards for my collection. I am linking these up with the Rudolph Day Challenge at  Scraps of Life by Scrappymo, and also at Pixie's Snippets Playground, where it is Di's 200th week anniversary, so do pop over and visit her if you can.

Bobbin' Robins

You must think I have gone on strike. I am really just busy with visitors, but with more visitors and a very busy time to come next week, I thought I would just pop in with a set of Christmas cards that I made.

While looking for some inspiration among the remnants of old cards, I found a jolly little robin made from pieces of felt. He was a bit big, and heavy for my cards but I decided to try making him with pieces of paper. So I took him apart and scanned the separate elements, and then imported them into my Silhouette cameo, down-sized everything, and made a cutting file of them. 

Then I rifled through my Christmas paper off cuts and found a lot of little pieces and cut one set out.

Putting it together was relatively simple, and I thought he was quite cute, so I then cut out several more sets.

I mixed and matched the pieces until I had assembles twelve robins. I gave each one a black glass bead for an eye. I also found a cutting file in my library for a branch and added some holly leaves and again cut and assembled twelve of these. Then it was just a case of going through my boxes to find card large enough to make base cards, papers for the backgrounds, some extra scraps of paper, and an assortment of dies, stamps, punches and embossing folders, and getting them all mounted up.

I was given a big sheet of red card that had been very badly folded into rough quarters, and I was able to make several cards and some embellishments, from the uncreased parts of this. I also used some from a similarly folded up sheet of blue card, and some green. I had a couple of large paper surrounds from old cards that I made use of too, and I ended up with a dozen cards that are all different, but are all linked by a little paper pieced robin somewhere in their design.

There were two blue ones;

Two green ones;

Three red and White ones;

And five red and cream ones.

The only new sheet of paper I used was the cream and white snowflakes one which I printed off specially for the cards. All the rest came from my snippets boxes so I am linking these up at Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Then I had better go back and join my visitors.