Favourite Five Cards of 2012

And following on from my favourite Christmas cards, here are my favourite cards for 2012.

If you want to join in you can find all the details on Debby's Blog

Journal Your Christmas 2011 - final part

Days 21 - 24 of last year's Journal Your Christmas

Day 21 - The decorations

 Day 22 - Things Left to Do

 Day 23 - We always open our stockings after Breakfast on Christmas Day

 Day 24 - Christmas Eve party at ours and we opened our traditional silly presents

Journal Your Christmas 2011 - Part Four

Days 16 - 20 of last year's Journal Your Christmas.

Day 16 - a list of all the things that I am thankful for.

Day 17 - I saw this and I thought of you!!  My sister loves guinea pigs, so when I saw a lady making these on Facebook I just had to order one for my sister in the colours of Squidgy, the guinea pig she had for many years.

Day 18 - Christmas Dinner - recently we have started having a very chilled out day on Christmas Day and have bacon baguettes for our lunch and then have Steak & Chips for dinner.  We have a traditional turkey dinner now on Boxing Day.

 

Day 19 - My letter to Santa

 Day 20 - Our annual trip to the Pantomime in Eastbourne

Journal Your Christmas 2011 - Part 3

Days 10 - 15 of last year's Journal Your Christmas.

Day 10 - Gift wrap - every year I say that next year I will use gift bags but then I forget!!  Present wrapping is my least favourite job of Christmas!!

Day 11 - The Tree - last year we only put up a small fibre-optic tree as we had Sky Plus installed on 21st December and it would have been impossible to do with our usual large tree in place.  So it was easier to just have a small tree instead.

Day 12 - Christmas Past - reminiscing about past years, I have been fortunate to have always had good Christmases with lots of happy memories.

Day 13 - Music - the 13th December saw us doing a quick flit up to Birmingham to see Marillion, we stayed overnight and then had to rush back home the next day as Mr P was straight back to work.  It was a fabulous evening and I had a view looking straight down onto the stage and the front row.

Day 14 -it is never easy choosing presents for Mr P as he tends to go out and buy all the things that he wants or needs.  My sister came up with the idea of taking him over to Brighton in the New Year to see Spamalot.  It was a great idea as he is a big Monty Python fan.  She was right he absolutely loved his present!!

Day 15 - Overindulgence - I buy hardly any biscuits or chocolates but we always end up with a huge stack of norty goodies to eat over Christmas.

Favourite Five Christmas Cards

It is that time of the year when I post my favourite five Christmas cards of 2012 and link them up to Debby's Favourite Five blog post.

So here are my cards - it was so difficult to choose favourites but I must admit I have found it very hard to actually send some of these cards out.  Two of them I couldn't part with so have put them back in my box for next year LOL!!

Not strictly a Christmas card but for a wedding anniversary that is just before Christmas, so I am sure it does count LOL!!

(Debby if you happen to see this post could you please link it to your blog as I won't have any internet access when this challenge is live - thanks x)

Journal Your Christmas 2011 Part 2

Here are some more of the 6x4 pages from last year's Journal Your Christmas.

Day 4 - a Perfect Christmas and us looking forward to our 2012 Christmas cruise to the Canaries

Day 5 - Advent and how we use to have to share an Advent calendar between 4 of us, when I left home at 18 I treated myself to a calendar all to myself and I still have one every year!!

 

Day 6 - Memories of Christmas Past - my gran always use to knit my Dad a new hat and pair of fingerless gloves.  This is Dad in 1987 modelling that year's set!!

Day 7 - As always I was behind with my preparations so what do I always do when I need to focus?  I make myself a list!!

 

Day 8 - My favourite card comes every year from Mum's Monkey, it always has pride of place on my mantelpiece along with any other handmade cards that I get.

 

Day 9 - Christmas traditions - one in our family is that if you get a present that can be worn you have to model it there and then!!

 

 

DigiStamp Boutique Christmas

To speed up my Christmas card production this year as I was totally overwhelmed with the amount of orders I ended up with for my fundraising, I resorted to using digi images for the first time.  I got this lovely Simply for Christmas set from DigiStamp Boutique which had a sheet of ready coloured stamps - simply perfect for when you really want to give a handmade card but are running out of time.  Once I had printed all the images I then added some glitter highlights and cut them out with Spellbinder deckle edge rectangle dies.

A small selection of the cards that I made -

Other supplies -
Papers - Brenda Pinnick, Craft Creations. Docrafts vellum
Martha Stewart snowflake punch
Lakeland adhesive ribbon
Gems from stash

Fun Christmas earrings - December's Monthly Make

My final Monthly Make for 2012 and I have a couple of things to share.

Firstly the fun, novelty Christmas earrings I have made to wear on Christmas Day.

 I used some Christmas tree charms and stuck teeny weeny flat backed gems onto them, added a jump ring and hey presto a pair of fun earrings!!

My second make is a set of wine glass charms for a friend who loves anything to do with cats, she also loves wine too!!  And she won't see these before the big day as she doesn't have Internet access.

Happy Christmas Mr P!!!!!

I always have to make a special card for Mr P and this is this year's offering.

The stamp is by Lili of the Valley and so is the sentiment, the paper used is Craft Creations.  The heart dies are from Sizzix and I used Promarkers to colour the image.  White liquid pearls were applied to the Mistletoe berries and lots of Lace Stickles to the fur on the hats and to finish off a liberal dose of Icicle Stickles to the snow and around the edge of the heart.

I am entering this card into this month's challenge on Penny Black and More @ Allsorts

Pink Petticoat Christmas

I left making my own Christmas cards to quite late this year as I was really bogged down with all my fundraising stuff.  What was a bit of a lifesaver this year was being able to use digi-stamps.  I got this set of lovely Reindeers from Pink Petticoat and they were really quick to colour and glitter up before making into cards.  Here are just some of the cards that I made using the digi-stamps.

Other supplies -
Papers - Craft Creations, Brenda Pinnick
Adhesive Christmas ribbon - Lakeland
Martha Stewart snowflake punch
Gems from stash

Glitter and Sparkle

The challenge this month at Penny Black Saturday Challenge is Glitter and Sparkle.

I used a new to me stamp - Penny Black 'Xmas Joy'.  It reminds me of my sister and niece's two little dogs that just love to chase each other round and round.

 

Supplies -

Paper - Craft Creations

Sentiment - LOTV

Seam binding - The Ribbon Girl

Sadly the camera doesn't pick up all the Stickles on the tree and the glossy accents on the baubles.

I hope the dogs don't go too mad around the tree this year!!