Kinda the Same but Different

Hello Everyone out there and I trust that you all had a safe and very enjoyable Christmas and that now you are looking to cut back a bit on eating so many good things. Last of the left-overs went here today and so it's back to more humble things like sausages and beans on toast!!! Santa was very kind to me and I have some lovely gifts - some of which are yummy papers and a gorgeous TH stamp. I have two in that series already and I love them so it was great to get a third one. The other day my SU order arrived with my Christmas stamp for 2012. I hope to try it out later but time may run out on me as I have lots of January birthdays to make cards for. These are the first two and as you will have guessed they are for dear friends. I liked Joan's one so much that I decided to repeat it for Anne but just changed the embellishment of it a bit. They are both bound for the UK and usually I don't put 3D embellishments on but couldn't resist so I hope I don't have to take out a mortgage to cover the postage!!! Must go as I can smell the sausages burning. Thanks for visiting.

Never Ending Card

Christmas Eve 9.14am and here I am posting on my Blog!!! I have been up to the shops twice and paid a visit to the cemetery already. We were at the greengrocers at 6.15am to get all our fresh goodies ready for tomorrow. We then came home and had breakfast and now Harold has gone to golf (It is an absolutely GORGEOUS day) I nipped back up town, where I expected things to be hectic but was pleasantly surpeised that it was still quiet. I sailed into the supermarket, got my 3 items and sailed out again. Job done!!! Have a busy day ahead of course but I have plenty of time to plod along doing whatever needs to be done ready for tomorrow. ............In the meantime ............. I finished this Never Ending Card last night. We are going to make it a class in early 2012 so this will be the shop sample, I think, although I do need a birthday for a friend in the UK for Jan 6 so might use this one and make another for the shop. Took me quite a little while to work out the decorating/embellishing but subsequent ones will be a piece of ease now!!! I do love butterflies so I am quite pleased with the finished article. It may be a few days before anyone has time/chance to see this but that's OK. Have a lovely day tomorrow with your loved ones. Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Just in case things get tooo hectic in the next few days I will post my Christmas Greeting to you all now.  Thank-you all who have visited my Blog over the last year and I hope you have enjoyed your visits and maybe I have even inspired some of you to have a go at some of my projects.  I have had my Blog for just 2 years now and I still enjoy sharing with you both my projects and my little stories which accompany them.  I have had a lot less posts this year than the previous year.  I'm not too sure why that is but there you go.  Now as we all head towards a little R&R I send peaceful wishes from our house to yours.  May you have someone you love and someone who loves you to spend this Special Time with.  If you are travelling I wish you safe arrivals and happy times wherever your destination is.  May 2012 bring you all good health and good fortune.  Love and hugs from Crafty Granma.XO

Final Snow Globe Card

This is my final Snow Globe card and is for my lovely husband. He is so supportive of all the things I do and this is my Thank-You card as well as my Christmas card to him. I don't remember to say thank-you as often as I should so I always make sure I say it in my Christmas card. All my other snow globes were with blue card and I thought white might be a bit boring but when I tried it our BEFORE sticking anything down I was pleasantly surprised and so decided to go with the white. I have NO more snow globes left now so need to replenish my stocks and maybe do some globes WITHOUT snow but with flowers and butterflies inside. I'll post them on here if/when I do some. I have all my Christmas crafting done now and have made a start on NEXT year's Christmas cards!!! Only joking!!!!! but I have made a start on January Birthdays and on class samples for 2012. If only the organisation and efficiency continued on (sigh!). Hope your week is going OK and you're not too frazzled. Thanks for visiting and I hope your visit was a pleasant break for you.

Success!!!

Hi Everyone on a freezing Saturday evening. I find it VERY hard to believe that it is Mid Summer Day next Wednesday!!! Anyway onto my post for today. Another watering can you say. Yes BUT this time it is big enough to be useful!!! I used the 150% enlarged template and it JUST fitted onto a 12 x 12 scrapbook sheet which was perfect. It is SOOOOO easy to assemble and SOOOOOO much fun to decorate. I love it. My butterflies are Peel Offs stuck onto acetate and carefully cut out. My flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the little catterpillar I made from seed beads and he is so cute!!! Inside I put a small gardeners soap (Lemon flavour) and a tiny tube of handcream both nestled in white tissue paper. A perfect wee gift for any gardener. Full marks for perseverence Elaine, full marks to Kate who had the idea to enlarge the template AND full marks to Ali for the suggestions of wee goodies to go inside the watering can. Thank-you ladies for your ideas I am well pleased with my wee gift. Right I'm off to find somewhere where there is a heater on and get warm. I hope you are cosy wherever you are tonight. Thanks.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

These cute little watering cans are just too gorgeous and so quick to make BUT they are too small to fit anything inside!!!!! So I took the template to the photocopy shop and enlarged and am ready to go with version two. I thought it would be a good wee gift for a keen gardener with a couple of packets of seeds and some plant labels inside it. (or something similar. If you have any ideas then please put them in a comment) This wee version fitted on an A4 sheet of card. The enlarged version JUST fits on a 12 x 12 scrapbook sheet. Right that's me done for tonight on the computer. It's back to the work desk to work Watering Can Version 2. How bad is that? Two projects on one day not quite working out as planned!!! B****R!!!

A Little Centrepiece

Hello all of you people in Blogland I hope you are well and happy despite the awful weather we are having (here in NZ anyway). First post is a wee Christmas centrepiece. I started out making a larger one but was quickly running out of flowers and so had to remove what I had done and make a smaller one instead. The foundation is a polystyrene cone and the flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts. I think the flowers are a bit too big for the cone here and I will order more flowers and make the larger one but it will have to wait until AFTER Christmas now I'm afraid. Love the idea though and am looking forward to making the larger one. Another post coming up soon.

Fruits of My Labours

I am nearly there!!! I have just one gift to finish off and wrap and then I'm done!!! Had serious doubts at times but once again I've scraped in pretty close to the deadline. My photo today is of some of my labours of love all wrapped up so you can't actually see the finished articles BECAUSE the person who this little lot is for is my biggest viewer!!! I got them in the mail yesterday so they should be in Katikati by the end of the week. Plenty of time for Santa. Right back to the desk to make an envelope for a card I have to deliver, along with one of my lanterns, at lunchtime when we go for our Wednesday swim. Hope you are all coping well and not tearing out too much hair. Thanks for looking today even if you could only see wrapped gifts.
P.S  This year I have wrapped all my gifts in brown parcel paper and just put a band of Christmas paper around the middle of the parcel with the odd bow here and there.  I am rather pleased with them if I do say so myself!!

Three More Snow Globes

Hello Everyone. How are you all coping? A bit better than I am I hope. Every day I have such good intentions BUT something always seems to crop up and thwart my plans. I am SLOWLY ticking off things but there are still quite a few gifts to be made/finished. Anyway last night's task was to finish these snow globes off before bedtime. And I did it so I'll take that as a positive and persevere with the rest. Have a good day all and enjoy your weekend.

Ahoy There Me Hearties

Hello again on another miserable day here. Never mind we have been very productive as you can see. This is a joint G'ma and G'dad effort for our grandson Trent's 10th birthday tomorrow. I baked and iced the cake and rolled out the fondant icing ready for G'dad to move in and cut out the skull and cross bones to go on the top. We had fun doing it and feel pretty pleased with the end result and I just know that Trent's face will beam tomorrow when he sees it. Right I'm off outside to bring in my washing which, I might add, is VERY SOGGY. It isn't very often I get caught with my washing in the rain but I sure did today. Thanks for visiting today.

Pretty Pastels

Good Evening All. I hope you have had a good day if tou are in the southern hemisphere or a good night's sleep if you are north of the border. Just a pretty little card in pastel colours which I threw together quickly a couple of days ago when I suddenly realised it is my niece's birthday at the end of the week. I am not doing very well with my forward planning just lately am I? Must be the time of the year!!! I was hoping to get all these things done whilst I was immobile but it was just too hard to get my craft stuff organised in a place where I was comfortable working. Then once I became more mobile I was spending 2-3 hours a day at the pool exercising my knee. Consequently I am in a mad mess!!! I did post the overseas cards today along with this birthday card. When I got back from the post I looked in my Birthday Book again and saw two more birthdays which hadn't registered in my brain. At least I have until next week to do them. Right now I'm off to make some gifts. See you next time.

Thank You Christmas Cards

Good Monday Morning Everyone (even though it's rainy here in Upper Hutt) and I hope you all had a nice weekend. I did manage to get these cards done but not much else towards Christmas as we had our daughter and eldest (22) granddaughter staying and so it was far more important to spend time with them. These cards (there are two of the larger one) are for the two water aerobics instructors who take our Nift Fifty class and the smaller is for the staff at the pool where we do Nifty Fifties. It is our Christmas lunch on Thursday this week and the final class next Monday. This means the deadline for the cards was today as everyone likes to sign and write a wee message inside which takes quite a while. Anyway another deadline met but certainly getting a bit panicky about some of the others!!! Have a good week all and thanks for looking today.

A bit more Zentangle

A sudden panic moment when I realised that it is my nephew's birthday TOMORROW!!! and he lives in the UK!!! So I created this Zentangle AND calmed my stress at the same time. Card is in the post tonight with apologies for it's lateness. Hope he likes it. It is certainly different!!! Thanks for visiting today.

Overseas Cards Written

At last I have written all our overseas Christmas cards and Harold is busy writting the envelopes. As promised ahve photographed a couple of the envelopes so you can see his beautiful handwritting and it is beautiful isn't it? The most remarkable thing is that it always just as neat at the end as when he starts even if he writes many pages. Somewone once asked him which font it is on the computer!!! If we take a cheques in to somwhere to pay he ALWAYS gets complemented on his handwriting.