Christmas Time

New year, smew myear.

I'm still riding the Christmas train!

I just finished putting together this video of all my festive gatherings.

The song is It's Christmastime by Mr. Speaker, a local band who write songs for charity.

I saw them performing this December, and last December, when they were at the Letchworth Arts Centre and I was working on the bar both times. They are guaranteed to put you in the Christmas mood. I'm not saying now, but bare that in mind for next year!

They even have a whole album of original Christmas songs. These are my kind of people.

All their music is available to buy from here and you make a donation to their chosen charities in the process.

And, I guess I should wish you a happy and healthy new year. Or whatever.

I love Christmas!

This Week I...

...celebrated Christmas!! Yay!!

Who likes my Cookie Monster pyjamas?

Many Christmas movies were watched, Christmas songs were sung and a lot of food was eaten. And is still being eaten. Does anyone want a mince pie? We've got quite a lot.

My sister gave me a sword ruler!

I think we can all tell from this photo who the favourite daughter is.

Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the 28th were spent with family which was lovely.

On the 28th there were so many of us we had to gather in a church hall as we wouldn't all fit in my cousin's house.

What festive things did you get up to this week?

Wooden Decorations

At one of the Christmas craft fairs I had a stall at, my Mum bought these wood cut decorations.

The stall was being manned by a boy selling the things his Grandfather made, including wonderfully finished boxes and nativity scenes. And lots of these decorations - 4 for a £1.

I decorated them by painting the picture part in the middle with water colour paint so the texture of the wood would still show through.

Then I painted the rest with gold acrylic paint and finished them with a coat of gold glittery nail varnish over the gold parts. Because glitter = Christmas.

Then I strung them up with invisible thread and added them to the tree.

 

Have a merry Christmas everyone!

Secret Santa Gift

My latest painting is a gift for my friend Stef, who I got for Secret Santa

In October she went on a trek across Jordan to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, so I took one of her photos from the trip off Facebook to paint.

This is her shocked face.

I think she liked it - I made her cry!

I got her a few other things including a mug with photos of us from last year's Annual Gift Exchange, ordered from Photobox, along with tea and biscuits.

She treats those teabags like gold!

I was given Laguna Beach season 2 on dvd and a whole lots of Bueno!

I love Christmas!

Christmas Card Hanger

During our latest trip to the Scrap Store my Mum picked up a roll of what we thought was just star sequin waste.

You know that stuff with holes in where the sequins have been punched out?

When we got it home we unrolled it to find a pre-made Christmas card hanger!

So we hung it up on the side of our CD shelf.

It's got 3 star bursts at the top.

And mini gold pegs already attached to hang cards on.

We usually hang Christmas cards on the side of the stairs in the hallway, so we've reserved this hanger for cards from each other.

And this is our tree!

I think my Dad put every red and gold thing we have on it. I love it!

Bring and Share Desserts

As I said on Sunday last week my friends and I had our Bring and Share Christmas Dinner.

For a look at past dinners click here.

We always split up the meal so each person brings something and this year I was given desserts.

I made an apple crumble, Christmas cookies and a chocolate cake.

This was the recipe I used for the apple crumble. Just some notes I jotted down from my Mum's instructions.

I'd never made one before but I think my first attempt when pretty well.

It was just your standard apple crumble, but I added some dried cranberries in with the apple for a festive touch.

I used a simple sugar cookies recipe for the Christmas cookies and made some into snowmen...

...and some into snowflakes complete with a sprinkling of edible glitter. Because it's Christmas!

There were also some angels, stars and Christmas trees.

The cookies were a big hit with my friends wrapping up the left over ones to take home.

And finally the chocolate cake.

I used this recipe and it is a winner.

I finished it off with some dark chocolate curls from Jordans Mill.

Jordans as in the cereal company, so these chocolate curls are the same ones you get in the chocolate Country Crisp.

We had way to much food so some of these came back home with me - but my family weren't complaining!

Christmas Pudding Baubles

Here are some more Christmas decorations I've been working on.

Christmas pudding baubles!

These are a fun alternative to the winter scenes I usually paint on baubles.

First I painted the whole thing brown. Once that had tried I painted the white for the icing.

Then I covered the icing in glitter. I used clear glitter that on mass looks white.

I painted the top part red for the holly berry and stuck on some holly leaves made out of painted green card.

Really simple but really fun.

These ones I made have already sold at the Letchworth Arts Centre's Christmas Craft Fair. I may have to make some more!

Movie Quote Ornaments

For fun I decided to make these Christmas movie quote baubles. Or Christmas moments in a movie, in the case of Mean Girls.

Firstly, writing with paint and a paint brush is hard y'all! Especially when it's on a rounded surface.

But I did my best.

I'm not even sure this quote is in Home Alone, it might just be, "keep the change, ya filthy animal", but some store had made a jumper with the Christmas version on so if it was good enough for them, I'd go with it.

Starbucks have started selling candy canes at the counter and when me and my friends saw them we came out with this quote from Mean Girls. Then a little while later when we were sat down we heard some girls do the same thing!

I painted some candy canes on the sides of this bauble, but you can't really see them in the photos.

This one is my favourite. I'm really happy with the way I painted the letters.

And I love the film Elf, and I do come out with this quote whenever someone mentions Santa.

What are your favourite quotes from Christmas movies?

Christmas Speech Bubble Decorations

I'm well and truly in Christmas mode and for this little project  I was thinking of more alternative Christmas decorations.

I was inspired by this plaque that I made many years ago and have hanging in my room.

The hanging speech bubbles are made of Sculpey rolled flat and cut to shape.

You can't really tell from the photos but they're about palm size.

I painted them with white and black acrylic paint.

I like the uneven black lines. I think it gives them character.

That and I find it hard to paint smooth, straight lines.

I think these would look really fun displayed on a Christmas tree but would also work as decorations for other parts of the house.

Do you have any Christmas decorations that aren't the traditional red, green or gold?

Felt Stockings

In this photo I posted about the Christmas Craft Fair I did the weekend before last you may have noticed the little stockings I had for sale.

 They came about after a trip to, yes, the Scrap Store where my Mum bought this bag of Christmas coloured felt pieces for £2.00.

I think I owe her £2.00.

On the drive home we came up with the idea of making little stockings to sell.

I printed a stocking template of the internet, cut out the pieces and stitched away.

I decorated the stockings with shiny stars and ribbon. 

This particular chocolate bar is the perfect size to fit in the stockings so I stocked up on those.

I made 6 stockings for that craft fair and sold 4, with one woman wanting 8 so I gave her the details of the next fair I'll be at where I'll be ready with more that enough.

Gingerbread Men Ornaments

It might be a little bit too early to be thinking about Christmas, but I've got some Christmas craft fairs coming up so I need to think ahead.

In addition to the things I make for Etsy, I've been adding to my stock with some seasonal items.

This gingerbread man ornaments is made out of Sculpey - a flat base with the features added on - and then painted with acrylic.

I also made some smaller gingerbread men.

Gingerbros, if you will.

For these I painted on the features, using the tiniest brush, instead of making the bits with Sculpey first, as I thought that would get a bit fiddly.

I love how these turned out and I'm looking forward to seeing what people think of them [whether they buy them or not!]

My first craft fair of the season is this Saturday.

For anyone local reading pop down to the Letchworth Settlement between 10:00 and 4:00 for the Garden House Hospice Arts, Craft & Design Fair.

Secret Santa bracelet

This bracelet was one of the presents I gave my friend Lizzi as part of our Secret Santa this Christmas.

I picked out all the charms from a bead shop in New York called the Bead Center and it's also where I bought my E6000 glue.

The shop had tables full of different charms (and beads and findings and stones and strings) and I was given a tray and some small plastic bags to put my chosen charms in.

Lizzi had spent Christmas 2011 in New York so I made sure to pick out some related charms, like this I heart NY one, and the Statue of Liberty. Then I picked some charms relating to her other interests, like the shoe and cupcake. And I also picked out some I thought were cute, like the star and the umbrella.

I think she liked it.

And it turned out that Lizzi had me for Secret Santa!

I got socks.

Ha.

And an ArtPass which looks pretty cool.

This Week I...

...celebrated Christmas with my family.

I love Christmas!

And Santa, you are too kind.

I got 5 seasons of CSI on dvd, Taylor Swift's Red album, John Green's Looking for Alaska, Suri's Burn Book, maple syrup, and many other goodies.

I hope you'll forgive my absence this week but I was busy seeing a lot of family and eating a lot of food.

Often at the same time.

And Christmas isn't complete without a game of monopoly (matching jumper optional). 

This Week I...

...got very excited about Christmas!

But I still had to work.

But when work involves making this giant string balloon it's not so bad.

I had to buy balloons that inflate to 3ft for this, and to make it look more planet-y I covered it in tissue paper.

I like how you can still see some of the string through the lighter colours.

As I showed you during the week I made these chocolate truffle pops for my friends at our Annual Gift Exchange.

They were so good I'm going to make more for Boxing Day.

There was a lot of other baking this week, including making this gingerbread house with my sister.

My sister made the gingerbread, cos she's better at that than me, but I was in charge of assembling the house.

Check out my mad piping skills on that roof!

Merry Christmas everyone!