It's nearly here...

The Christmas holidays have finally arrived (YAY!) and I've already made myself a new years resolution! The Christmas crafting goodies will not be going away this year as I plan to make Christmas cards all year round (trying to make 14 cards in one night after a long day at work including a nativity play was not a great idea!)

I haven't been able to post as much as I would like during November & December but I hope to make up for it now. Today's post is of 3 different advent calendars I've made- 2 using a 'House of Zandra' template I modified and 1 using a fab-u-lous wooden tree from the MDF man!

For the first two, I used the House of Zandra 'crafty drawers' template but made 2 of each piece so that rather than having 12 drawers, I had 24 (enough for a proper advent calendar). For the first one, I made half of the pieces in red card & half in green so that I could mix & match when I put the drawers together. The second one was made completely in lilac. It was a really easy template to use and rather than cutting all the pieces by hand, I measured each of the template pieces and then used my paper trimmer (I may spend some time making up all of the shapes into my Cricut craft room to make it even quicker next time). I put all of the pieces together with super sticky tape arranging the drawers into a red, green, red patten for the first one. I then used some 12x12 paper to decorate each panel before adding the mirror card numbers (cut using my cricut) & the decorations (Dawn Bibby stocking peel-offs using the waste to fill in and add the colour, peel-off snowflakes & mirror card snowflakes cut using the cricut).

The tree came about after I spotted the small star shaped pots in my local Carole's Crafts shop- they were having a 50% off everything sale so the pack of 24 pots was only £2.50 (bargain!). I have had them since the start of the year and wanted to make some kind of advent calendar with them. I was originally planning to mount them onto a circular shape to make a wreath but when I saw the 3d wooden tree from The MDF Man at the Lincoln Sincerely Yours show I knew it was perfect. I had taken the pots with me hoping to find a wooden circle but this was even better- the mdf tree was just £4 too!

I painted the pieces of the tree with a flat green paint and then sponged it with a metallic green paint over the top to add texture. I then attached the pots to the tree with a hot glue gun, putting 3 on each side (I did this with the tree put together to make sure that I didn't get any pots too close together). I then used the lids of the pots as a template to draw the star shape onto 3 different patterned papers to insert into the lids so that the goodies inside can't be seen. I used peel-off numbers in black to number each pot. I then finished the tree by simply adding some red mirror card candi as decorations.

I am entering the advent calendars into a new challenge blog I have just found:-
Crafting for all Seasons 'anything but a card'

wedding book

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently got 2 new templates from the 'House of Zandra' stand at the Sincerely Yours show in Lincoln. This is the first thing I've made using the book card template and I can see that there will be lots more to come.

From the front it almost looks like a normal card-

But actually it's a 3d book card-

When you open up the front, there is a deep recess inside creating various opportunities for creativity!

Here's a close up view of the insides-

I started with 2 pieces of black A4 card, using the templates to cut the shapes required. I made up the box element using super sticky tape to attach it. I then used my ScorPal scoring board to emboss the detail on the book cover and then used some gilding wax to add extra detail. I cut some 'gorjuss' backing paper to fit inside the box and to cover the sides. I then added the 3 black paper flowers with card candi centres. I stamped the bunting using white ink onto black card and attached across the front of the box on some cream coloured string. I then decorated the front of the book with the 2 cream hearts (Kanban) with peel-off letters. This is quite a simple box compared to what can be achieved but for my first go, I'm really happy with it.

I am entering this card into the following challenges:-
Crafting Musketeers 'use a stamped image'
Cute Card Thursday 'ebony & ivory'
Catch the Bug 'going to the chapel'
Challenges 4 Everybody 'anything goes'