Christmas 2011

We spent a quiet Christmas Day with my parents at the house of a great family friend – we usually try to spend the day together. This year it was a doddle getting there compared with last year when the weather was not conducive to travel – snow and ice everywhere, and loads of events had to be cancelled!

As usual we all contributed in different ways to the meal – my parents providing the turkey and stuffings, our friend the pudding and everything else (not to mention her beautifully decorated home and table) and we brought the vegetables.

On our arrival she treated us to Bucks Fizz and smoked salmon canapes. Then in for dinner!

This is my contribution – mashed carrot and parsnip – being different colours I thought I’d make a star!

My dinner awaiting the gravy!

I was absolutely delighted to see my Christmas present from last year being used as a table centre! It was my poinsettia explosion box!

She had decorated the table so beautifully.

Our gracious hostess presenting the Christmas pudding!

Cracker time!

Coffee after dinner.

We had great fun opening all our presents, and after a cup of tea, left for home.

The next day my hubby and I visited one of his brothers for our annual Boxing Day family gathering with his side of the family – this year the party was severely depleted because the older two nephews were spending Christmas with their in-laws.

After all this, I’m shattered, so resting today.

Hope everyone reading this had a great time over Christmas.

Bag Skirts Part 1

So – I’m finally putting you all out of your misery and revealing the answer to the question that so many of you have been asking, “What on earth’s a bag skirt??” It’s an idea I got from Penny Duncan – you can see her mouthwateringly gorgeous bag skirts on her skydrive here.

A bag skirt is basically a rectangle of card folded in half, with a slit in the fold which fits over the handles of a paper carrier bag. It holds the top of the bag closed, and the edges can be cut to whatever shape you like, and of course you can embellish it however you want.

Many of us take several presents with us when we visit family or friends over Christmas, and what better way to present them than in a pretty bag that you have decorated yourself? Gone are the days when I turn up with a grotty cardboard box or a Tesco bag!! If you don’t put the person’s name on it, they can keep it and recycle it next year.

These are the plain brown bags I used:

I got them from Unipack-Worldwide on Ebay, which supplies all sorts of cool packaging stuff, and is post free too! Unfortunately they didn’t come in time for me to use one for the presents for my aunt and cousins which I took up with me to the funeral – I did have one in my stash though, which did well enough, although it wasn’t quite as strong as these. This supplier also does them in plain white, and (I think) one or two other colours like pink, and stripes. You could decorate the bag as well, if you wanted, with some rubber stamping or distress inks. I have decided to leave mine plain, and have chosen colours for my bag skirts which will co-ordinate nicely.

In this “Part 1” post I am dealing with the first ones I did, based on Penny’s “baroque” design – I took her holly border design and amended it to fit what I wanted to do. I think Penny’s designs may be for quite small bags - she has designed the cut file all in one piece. I didn’t have any paper large enough to cut on the cutting machine for this, so I redrew her shapes to make a front and a back piece with an overlap for gluing, and created three different sizes of each one, to fit the different sizes of bag that I’ve got.

The first one is the bag I made for my aunt, and then (since we got back from the funeral) I have made two more – another large one and a medium one. This is my aunt’s one:

You can see that the handles aren’t quite so nice on this bag, and the paper is a lot thinner, too.

Penny’s design comes complete with poinsettias in the cut file, so I’ve used those, although I prefer her other poinsettia design (she’s done two). This bag skirt uses a combination of drawing and cutting on the cutting machine.

On my aunt’s (Version 1) I drew the design of the holly border using the Cricut pens in the pen holder instead of the blade; I filled the design in quite heavily with marker pens afterwards; here’s a detailed photo.

The holly leaves are actually green, and the berries red, although they look black on the photo. I also added some clear embossing powder to the leaves and berries, which I did not do on Version 2 of the bag skirt.

Here’s a detail of the front panel.

On this photo you can see the detail of the background paper I used for the text frame. This was a background I created from some scans of the ancient parish records from our church which you can read about here and here.

The main paper is some 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper I’ve got in my stash. I’ve inked all the edges of the papers with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

This is the back of the bag skirt. In this case I’ve redrawn Penny’s holly motif to form a rectangular border to fit my bag skirt, and repeated the framed text, slightly smaller, and without the poinsettias.

You can see the overlap where I joined the two pieces together. On subsequent bag skirts, I’ve overlapped the back piece on top of the flap of the front piece so that the join doesn’t show as much. On this photo you can see the metallic gel pens I used to colour in the design of the border, catching the light.

These are the poinsettias that I made for these bag skirts:

They are very simple and quick to make, and are stuck together and to the bag skirt with hot glue. The centres are yellow Stickles – Penny has created an element in her cut file for the flower centres but I don’t get on very well with these – possibly because the Cricut doesn’t cut them very well. I think the Stickles work really well!

Here’s Version 2 of this bag skirt, complete with one of the new bags.

As you can see, the handles are a lot nicer than the bag I used for Version 1, and I have also used different papers this time. The holly border is different, too – less heavily coloured in, which I prefer. I did the outline drawing on the Cricut with a gold metallic gel pen and then just added the red and green with marker pens afterwards.

Again, the papers are inked around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

This is the back of Version 2.

You can see I’ve made a matching tag. I punched a small hole in the back piece through the slit for the handles – I’d originally thought of simply tying the tag onto the handles, but then I thought it would be difficult to remove the bag skirt; this way, the tag and bag skirt come off together, and the tag can be easily removed if the recipient wants to recycle the bag skirt next year.

Here’s a detail of the holly border on Version 2. I think you’ll agree it’s better than Version 1.

Perhaps it would have had more impact with some clear embossing on the leaves and berries as before, but I forgot to do it, and then thought it looked OK without.

Finally, here is a detail of the text on the front of Version 2.

I did the outline with the Cricut, using a black glitter glue pen (this doesn’t show up as metallic or glittery on the photo – just black!) and then filled it in with a red marker pen. If you look closely, you can see a distinct “wiggle” in the drawn line – I think Jiminy Cricut must have Parkinson’s Disease! Apparently the Cougar doesn’t have this problem and will draw nice clean lines. From a distance it’s not too bad, though.

See Part 2 for the other design, and the video.

WOYWW 132 - Bag Skirts and Present Wrapping

What? - we are all saying – yet another week gone by? Christmas is now just around the corner. Welcome to another “What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday” blog hop courtesy the lovely Julia who organises us each week as our Chief of Desks, so that we can travel around the globe (virtually) to enjoy everyone’s messes and creativity.

Thank you everyone for all your good wishes recently, over my ill health, and over the death of my uncle. The funeral is on Friday, and weather permitting, and my hubby permitting – he says his throat is bad tonight (he had a bad throat recently – the one he was generous enough to share with me, so hopefully he’s not going down with another one…) we shall be travelling up on Thursday (tomorrow) and returning on Saturday. As a result, I doubt if I shall visit many desks this week – when we get back there will be a lot to do. Since I was out of action for over a fortnight with my throat infection, and now having to be away for 3 days, I am seriously behind with everything.

Anyway, to my desk! Here’s a picture of my brown table which is in utter chaos today, with piles of scrapbooking paper and cardstock ready to hand so I could get at it to make my rather exciting project for this week! On the left you can see my big laptop running Make The Cut. My Cricut is out of shot to the left, all  connected up.

On my main desk is a project I completed yesterday evening – a bag skirt.

I’m going to do a separate post about this so I won’t go into any detail here or it will get too long.

I’ve got a bit of a rush on because we need to take the Christmas presents with us when we go to the funeral, to save posting them. In addition to finishing the bag skirt, I have also wrapped all their presents to go in the bag.

I’ll also be blogging about my gift wrapping in due course so won’t say any more here.

One bit of good news – I discovered that my new Black Cat Cougar cutting machine will be coming from Derby, which isn’t very far from where we will be spending the next few days. I contacted the lovely Dawn and she said of course I could collect it in person! I am thrilled because a) I shall get to meet her and b) I shall save myself the fairly hefty carriage and insurance costs (it’s a heavy and valuable parcel). So as long as we actually get there, I shall be returning home with my new Kitty!

Hope you all have a great week. When we get back I’ll try and visit a few of you but I’m afraid I won’t have the time or energy to do too many!

Altered Boxes–Part 2

As I was doing the post about the village harvest exhibition, I realised I hadn’t posted the photos I took of the boxes I made for the show.

I ended up making 8, in different sizes, and decided to put poinsettias and Christmas roses on them, hoping they’d be bought by people for Christmas presents – I only ended up selling one!

Thanks to Penny Duncan, as always, for her excellent cut files and flower designs. I was hoping she’d done a Christmas rose one since I last looked, and sure enough, she had! It’s a beautiful design. She uses little gold beads to embellish the centres, but I preferred to use yellow Flowersoft.

On her blog (see my blog list in my sidebar) in her tutorial for these, she shows how beautifully her Lynx cutter cut the centres of the flowers, which are extremely fine. I had absolutely no joy with the Cricut which is just not accurate enough. I made several attempts and each time it didn’t cut them correctly, so I had to print out the pdf file and then cut them out by hand – very laborious! Makes me want a decent cutting machine more and more…

I used her original poinsettia design (“3D Poinsettia”) because I prefer it to her later one.

Here are the boxes laid out with the strips of scrapbooking paper I cut to cover the sides, with their respective flowers laid on top, ready for assembly.

Three poinsettia boxes:

Details of the flowers on top:

For the centres, I added little spots of yellow Stickles.

The lids of the boxes had very pale green fluid acrylic paint added with a dampened natural sponge on top of the cream emulsion that I painted all the boxes with. I started with a very pale green shade, and then went over it twice more, each time slightly darker, so that the sponged effect had a dimensional look.

Three heart-shaped boxes with Christmas roses:

and a detail of the lid of one of them – this picture shows the sponged effect a bit better, and also shows the red leaf trail I used in this case.

I also made an oval and a round one with Christmas roses.

As you can see, I embellished the sides of the lids with ribbons, and used my bow-shaper tool to make the bows, which were adhered with hot glue.

Village Harvest and Art Exhibition

It’s been a weekend of harvest! Yesterday we saw all the harvest displays in Exeter Cathedral, and today we had our harvest songs of praise service in our local church. The harvest supper was on Friday, but I didn’t go to that, as I knew it would be a very busy weekend and I had to pass on something or I’d get totally exhausted!

The weekend has been full of church and community events to celebrate the harvest this year. Starting on Friday, the church was open to show all the lovely harvest displays, and the art exhibition, and the harvest supper was in the evening in the village hall. Then yesterday there was again an open day in the church, and in the early evening, a concert called “Words for Voices” with the theme of food, in which four people took part, with a combination of songs, readings, and little sketches. We hadn’t planned to be there because of being in Exeter most of the day, but we decided to call in to the church before going home, to see the displays, and found them to be in the interval, so we stayed for the second half. It was very entertaining.

In the evening there was a marvellous hog roast in the pub garden. I think it was the best I’ve ever tasted. Delicious locally-bred pork with perfect crackling, served with apple sauce and stuffing in a nice big bread roll! Lots of people there, and a good time was had by all.

Today, Sunday, again the church was open all day for people to view the displays. In the mid-afternoon there was a cream tea in the village hall – I am supposed to be watching my weight but just couldn’t resist fabulous home-made scones and jam and cream, and a slice of absolutely delicious home-made coffee cake!

After this, we had the songs of praise service in the church, with the choir, and the children singing a song, lots of congregational singing with the old favourite harvest hymns (could you possibly have harvest without “We plough the fields and scatter” and “Come, ye faithful people, come”??) and then someone read John Betjeman’s absolutely gorgeous poem, “Diary of a Church Mouse” which made us all laugh, as always!

Wine and cheese was served afterwards, and the opportunity to chat, and look at everything.

Here are some pictures of the harvest displays in the church.

Each year our local organic farm donates a selection of their vegetables for the big display at the foot of the font.

Here is one of their magnificent cabbages. I just love the design of cabbages! All those tightly overlapping leaves, gradually expanding. I’m sure there’s evidence of the Fibonacci series somewhere here! God the great mathematician!!

These were some more of their fruit and veg, on top of the font. They always put in some of those fabulous ornamental cauliflowers which are definitely geeky – living fractals! I can’t resist them!

Here are some photos of the beautiful floral arrangements around the church. I admire tremendously anyone who can do this. I may be creative in other directions, but flower arranging is definitely NOT my strong point! I’ve got no patience for it, and the results are horrible. I think it makes me appreciate what others can do even more!

Here are some of the window displays. This one depicts the harvest of the orchard. Our area of the UK is famous for its apple growing, and the production of cider and apple juice. See how the apple juice in the bottle on the left glows with the light from the window shining through it!

This arrangement was so pretty, with the delicate mauve flowers and the lace.

This next display depicts the harvest of the sea, with rod and line, fishing nets, and shells.

These stars are made from tissue paper, and they glow with the light passing through them from the window.

This church has a fine example of the sort of carved wooden screen for which Devon is famous. This year someone has made a beautiful garland, complete with lights, to adorn it! He first made one last Christmas, and someone visiting the church on that occasion, who is getting married soon, has requested that a garland be made for her wedding. I think it may become a regular feature!

Here’s a view of it from the back of the church. This photo also illustrates what a huge building this is, for a small village. This weekend has been partly about raising funds for its maintenance, as a little village is ill-equipped to keep up such a demanding mediaeval building.

Also in this photo, you can see the children rehearsing the song that they sang in the service.

While I was going round photographing everything, the bellringers were busy summoning everyone to the songs of praise service. Here is the steep, narrow little staircase that leads to the ringing chamber.

The following are photos of the art exhibition. Both my hubby and I put things in. I was hoping to make a nice lot of sales, but eventually only sold one mirror (the butterflies one with the glass bead gel medium) and one box!! Yesterday someone said she was going to buy one of my mirrors today, but nothing happened, so I don’t know if she’s changed her mind or just forgotten. If she wants one, she can always contact me.

On the table they put out some of my boxes, and also the two frames I made (not for sale!!), one for my hubby for our silver wedding, and the other for our nephew’s wedding. (I’ve just realised I haven’t put any decent photos of the boxes on my blog – I’ll do another post with those.)

On this board are displayed my small flower paintings at the bottom, and at the top right, two little silhouettes my hubby did, and also his watercolour underneath, of a narrow boat in a lock. Unfortunately he didn’t manage to sell anything.

At the further end of the table was the glass blowing and the wood carving.

Everything is being returned to us tomorrow. I shall decide what to set aside for Christmas presents, and then I am thinking of starting an Etsy shop. Our village shop now has an exhibition corner where my hubby has had some of his watercolours, and I may put some things in there.

It’s strange. Everyone loves to look, and admire, and show enthusiasm over one’s work, but when it comes to parting with cash, it’s another matter! I certainly don’t think I overcharged – far from it – if I’d charged realistically for the time put into making the items, NOBODY would have been able to afford them!!! I thought that people might have liked to buy my stuff which was reasonable enough for Christmas presents, and I especially made the boxes with poinsettias and Christmas roses to attract the Christmas market.

The man who was organising it said that everyone who’d exhibited and managed to sell anything, sold stuff to approximately the same value, which was strange. I was pleased that one of my little flower paintings which was selected for the silent auction to raise funds for the church, received 2 bids and the final one was more than I’d charged for the other ones. So I really sold 3 items, but will only be paid for 2.

It’s been a very full, and very tiring weekend for me. I have neglected my emails and all my wonderful blog followers, and the WOYWW blog hop – my apologies to everyone! Over the next few days I shall have to rest, and also catch up with different jobs that have been neglected while I was trying to finish everything in time for the exhibition, but I will get back into some sort of routine soon!

Poinsettia Explosion Box – Part 4

This final post on the Poinsettia Explosion box includes the video I have made, along with the final photos, after I’d added a bit more detail.

This is the white poinsettia on the lid. I was quite pleased with how this came out, because it actually shows the iridescence of the perfect pearls, and also the Diamond Stickles along the edges of the petals. The final touch was to add a few dots of Fruit Cocktail Stickles onto the centre after the thick layer of Diamond Stickles had set – it took over 24 hours, which was probably partly due to the extremely cold weather we’ve been having.

This next picture shows a detail of the other two poinsettias on the lid.

Both these pictures show up the hand embossing on the petals quite nicely.
The next picture is a detail of a couple of the side panels of the box, showing the Ornamental Iron embossing design, inked in black.

This detail shows the hand-embossing on the poinsettia petals inside the box. I did this with a ball-ended embossing tool onto a piece of funky foam; I did the veins first, from the front, and then turned the petal over and embossed the spaces between the veins. Finally I went back over the veins from the front again. Unfortunately the delicate crazed pattern that I rubber stamped onto the bright red petals hasn’t shown up at all in the photos or the video, but believe me, it’s there, and it does enhance the look of the project!

My final picture is a detail of the centre, which I made from a collection of bits from a cake decorating shop; little crystals and silver beads mounted on wire, and small pink and white stamens, which are double-ended; I folded them in half, and wired everything together at the base. After attaching two little flowers I’d cut from green card on Jiminy Cricut, and decorated with gold Perfect Pearls, I pierced a hole right through the octagon forming the base of the inside of the box, and spread out the ends underneath, glueing them well to prevent them from moving. I was pleased that they were not as lumpy as I’d expected.

Now for the video:

I am going to make a second Poinsettia Explosion Box, during the course of which I shall be amending some of the instructions given in earlier posts on this project – I need to alter the original layout plans to incorporate side strengtheners for the lid panels, for instance. Once this is done, I will change the post titles to indicate that this has been done – so if anyone is planning to follow these instructions, please bear with me until this has been done! Doing a second box will help me iron out any problems I experienced, and hopefully will give a better final result. (These amendments have now been done.)

I hope you have enjoyed this project! I really enjoyed making it, and again I’d like to thank Laura of the Paper Trail blog (http://followingthepapertrail.blogspot.com) for allowing me to post my interpretation of her lovely design, and also Penny Duncan for so generously sharing her extensive collection of lovely cut files – her own designs for many flowers and other items too, which are all available for free download via her blog (http://pennyduncancreations.blogspot.com).