Boxing clever

I made this little box as a Christmas present for my Gran. She always says she doesn't need anything at gift giving times but always seems to like the things I make. She doesn't read my blog so I'm OK posting pictures of it. The box is a wooden, shop bought box, coated in acrylic paint onto which I painted a cardinal. Now, we don't have cardinals in the UK but I think they are are beautiful birds. I found the pattern in a book called Joy to the World: Painting Holiday Heirlooms by John Gutcher. It was my buy of the year as I picked it up for a few pence. The box has been filled with Gran's favourite candy sweets so I hope she will enjoy it on all levels.

The ATCs are for a swap entitled Arabian Nights so I had to take part. They are done in shades of purple and pink with mulberry paper, metallic paint and a little bling. Also shown are some magnets I made out of mini collages. I put some on Etsy to see if they are of interest to anyone.

Bob, bob, bobbin'

I finally decided to go with a robin for my third exhibition painting. However, he refused to scan nicely. The colours look a bit funny here. He is actually a little guy who visits my garden. After feeding the birds one morning I thought I would take my camera outside and see if I could get some nice photos. Of course, robins being the characters they are, he posed for me sitting on a branch and on the garden fence. Then he flew off to beat up the other birds in the garden that were trying to feed. Robins can be very territorial and will fight with anything that crosses their path. Not just a pretty face then.

The card is a shaker card I made for someone to give this Christmas. But I like it so much I will have to make another one. The only problem is that I had to use gold and silver micro beads which makes the snow look yellow. I'm sure there is a joke there somewhere.

I was thinking about wrapping a gift this week and was struggling to come up with a neat idea. The gift is long and thin and I find that wrapping something that shape can look a little sad. So I figured that a Christmas cracker shape would work. I was given a gift in a cracker shaped box many years ago and vaguely remembered the shape of the box so I had to try and recreate it. The cracker shown here is the result of the template I made. Decorated with some stickers and sparkles, I think it looks OK.

A few other crafts that I have been playing with this week - some needle felted toadstools, inchies, digitally altered photos made into magnets, a notebook and a Christmas card.

Making an exhibition of myself

I have not been posting much lately, have I? I'm not really sure why, other than the fact I have had nothing very creative to post. Where is the time going? I seem to get up in the morning and suddenly it is night time again. The end of the year is galloping towards us at high speed now. I seem to have so many plans but cannot find the time to get them all done. Argh!

Still, I have an exhibition taking place in a couple of weeks and have to prepare some work for it. The two paintings here are finished and ready to go. Now I have to come up with a third. I always find it hard deciding what to paint. As this is a Christmas exhibition I figured wintery subjects might sell well. I'm contemplating a robin but that might be taking things a bit too far. Robins may be the typical Christmas card front but I don't know that it would sell. One thing I learned from my summer exhibition is that small sells better during the credit crunch than anything big. People might be able to find a few pounds for a painting, maybe to give as a gift. Anything larger tends to have a larger price tag too. A little extra cash would be very nice just before Christmas.

Whimsy Stamps

I just discovered a new stamp company today called Whimsy Stamps. It is brand new and doesn't have a web site yet so it only has a few stamps available for pre-order. The stamps are of cute style animals but are not sickly sweet in style. The are animals with attitude. So far there is a duck, a frog and a turtle. Can't wait to see what else they have in store. To learn more take a look at http://denisesstampingpage.blogspot.com/

This is another ATC challenge. The theme this month is Time. I made a shaker ATC with mechanical cogs cut from card on the inside. Then I added some micro beads as the Sands of Time. I hope whoever wins it will enjoy it.

Inching towards Christmas

I signed up for a swap of inchie Christmas ornaments. I thought it was such a great idea that I couldn't resist. So here are my attempts - decorated with jewels and silver plated wire. Hopefully the other participants will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Crafty at Halloween

Just some pictures of the results of my Halloween crafting. I saw some 3D pumpkin stickers for sale somewhere and thought them very expensive for what they were. So I whipped out my Sizzix die cut pumpkins and made some of my own. I took a yellow pumpkin and an orange one, cut a pumpkin face on the orange one and stuck them together with 3D foam. I thought they were kinda cute. I did the same thing with the ghosts but instead of using a black die cut I drew around the white ghost onto black card, cut it out then stuck the two together. That way the black card shows through the while die cut's eyes.

I also made some inchies, decorated some paperclips with rubber stamped and cutout images and made some mini embossed envelopes. Forgot to photograph the envelopes though. Doh!