Christmas cards for the first day of autumn

Yes, you read that correctly! I bet at least one of you is now sitting there thinking “But it’s September”… and believe me I muttered those exact words at the display of Lebkuchen and other Christmas treats that have somehow snuck their way into the supermarket in the past week. But if you saw the length of my Christmas card list you would understand why I say when it comes to crafting it’s just different, okay? Anyway, I recently received some new wooden buttons I had ordered and I was desperate to try them out!

Of course, I don’t really have to pester my poor readers with thoughts of the festive season when autumn has only just begun, but I haven’t posted for an entire week and I can’t think of anything else to day, so Christmas cards it is. If you don’t like it, you should have looked away by now 😉 For the rest of you, here are some of the fruits of my labours.

 

As well as being the first day of autumn, apparently in Switzerland today is the day of the apple. I know this because the local supermarket was giving away apples to celebrate. Free fruit? I’ll take it!

Happy first day of autumn, happy apple day and, most importantly, happy Friday everyone! Have a great weekend.

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Card, sweet card

It’s very rare that I make a card that doesn’t involve any cross stitch whatsoever, mostly because I feel like my plain old hand made cards just aren’t as good. I’m not all that talented at card making, so I tend to let an awesome cross-stitched picture do most of the talking. But occasionally I will be struck by inspiration, or I’ll want to make someone a hand-made card but just won’t have the time to stitch something to go on it.

In this case, it was a bit of both. Loads of Post Pals and siblings have their birthdays this month, and there just isn’t going to be time to stitch a card for all of them (especially since I should really have stitched at least a few designs for Christmas cards by now!). With the sixteenth birthday of one of the pals coming up, I knew I wanted to do something with sweet sixteen. Then I remembered some buttons I had that looked just like the tops of lollipops. And so this sweet card was born…

Usually when I make cards they don’t turn out the way I imagined them, but this time I’m actually quite proud of what I came up with!

In case you’re wondering, no I’m not that good at writing… the “Sweet” was made using a stencil and “Sixteen” involved a printer, tracing paper and more luck than skill 😉

If you want more card-making inspiration, check out this one Kezzie made by recycling one element of a different card. Very clever (and good for the environment too!).

Stitching for boys

I find it incredibly difficult to stitch for the little boys in my life, mostly because my stitching magazines tend to feature cute, anthropomorphic animals, flowers and things that are generally more often associated with girls. (Yes, I am aware that boys can like cute things and flowers just as girls can be into superheroes, cars and dinosaurs, but quite frankly most of my friends’ children are boys and they are into stereotypically boyish things, while the one little girl I stitch for is perfectly happy with fairies and cute critters. I’m not about to make something up just to prove how open-minded I am am!).

Occasionally, a cross stitch magazine does include a “stitching for boys theme”, but they’re few and far between. So when I ordered a cross stitch book entitled “Babies & Children” I was over the moon to discover it contained entire pages of dinosaurs, rockets and planes. Between that and my magazines, I was able to stitch up quite the collection for all the boys’ birthdays I needed to cater for within a 27 day period in August and September! (All my friends’ little boys seem to have their birthdays close together as well…). Here are some of the boyish birthday cards I stitched up this year.

If you took part in this year’s guess the cross stitch game, you should recognise the dragon.

Which of these is your favourite? What would you stitch for a little boy? Give me some new ideas for the next set of birthdays!

Christmas cross stitching

Are you all sick of hearing about my cross stitched Christmas cards yet? I’m certainly sick of the sight of them! Luckily I’m all done now and this will be my last post about them (for this year, at least). I must apologise for the quality of some of the photos – I have no idea why I find it so difficult to get Jan’s camera to work for me! At this point I’m pretty sure it just hates me!

I’m sure you’ve all been dying to see the design I did for my dad made up into a card – at least that’s what I like to tell myself 😉 Here it is:

I took two photos of that card and the above turned out best… so you can imagine how terrible the other one was!

The design I was working on when I asked you to guess what I was stitching also became a card:

I liked the little snowman so much that I decided to stitch him a friend! This is actually among my favourites of the cards I made, along with the bah humbug one. I just love the pretty snowflake paper I used for the background.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into detail about all the cards I made. Here’s a selection of photos of the rest.

There are more, but I think that’s enough for one post!
And now for something a little different… I decided to use a pattern from one of my magazines and try my hand at making a Christmas tree ornament. I chose a snowman because it looked like it would be fairly easy to cut to shape at the end. Here he is:

I think he turned out quite well 🙂 Mr snowman is now all wrapped up and on his way to my grandma, who will hopefully love him lots and give him a happy home!

I’m linking this up to day 7 of Becster’s 12 Days of Christmas, which was Christmas crafts. I don’t think I’ve done this many crafts at Christmas ever, not even when I was a small child and we made decorations and things in school! I think the end products are worth all the effort though.

Auction in aid of 4Ellie-Phant

You’re probably all sick of hearing about my charity efforts by now, and I promise I won’t go on about them (here) for much longer).
However, I must post about it at least once more 🙂
My charity auction in aid of 4Ellie-Phant is taking shape! The site is online and most of the items are already up! Bidding will start on 15 November, at which point commenting on the posts will be opened. Until then, though, you’re welcome to go and preview the items. I’m especially fond of these red earrings:

In fact, if they don’t go I might keep them for myself 😉 (would it be weird to pay for something I made myself? Even if the money is going to charity?).

If you don’t know what 4Ellie-Phant is check out their website: http://www.4ellie-phant.webs.com/
Or read the about page on the auction site: http://4elliephantauction.wordpress.com/
Then check out all thelovely, lovely handmade items that will be for sale very soon. 9 days to go… 🙂

All crafted out

Today was Reunification Day (Tag der deutschen Einheit), Germany’s national holiday, which meant my office was closed. ABout time a holiday fell on a useful day! A long weekend is never to be sneezed at. I decided to seize my extra day off and take the opportunity to get some crafting done ready for my auction – which I promise to actually explain to you all one of these days. I now have a grand total of eleven cards. For those of you who couldn’t believe I was starting on Christmas cards in September, now you know why. I am slow! I really must get on with things though, if I want to make all the Christmas cards to send to my family as well. Have I taken on too much, I wonder? I’m actually quite proud of a few of my cards. I’m definitely getting better at this creativity lark – surprising really, seeing as I had absolutely no talent for art at school. I’ve grown up knowing that my sister was the artistic one. The intelligent one as well, come to think of it. I wonder which one that makes me?
I’m planning on making some more cards after work one evening this week. For now though, I’m all crafted out. I shall dream of glitter tonight, I’m sure! At least that will be better than dreaming about being pregnant, which I have twice recently. And no, I am not before anyone gets any ideas!!