Tant Therese

Last year has passed and it went very fast, especially the last month. So much to do at work and home to prepare for Christmas. I didn’t even decorate my home this year. I did however make a lot of Christmas cards, mostly for selling at work where we had some sort of market/shop with stuff I and three other people make and or sell. I don’t think anyone of us sold as much as we hoped for. I did however sell two cards, one bracelet, eight angels and got 4 orders. Not too bad if I may say so myself!

Here are the cards I made and sent to my friends and family. My goal was to use up a few papers from a Christmas long, long ago. Barely made it!

My new favourite technique: coloring the card and stamping in the lighter middle, coloring parts of the stamp with promarkers and or stickles. Just love this stamp!

The Christmas presents all wrapped up and ready for Christmas eve!

All the ingredients for my Christmas candy this year, didn’t use all of it but quite much!

Chocolate dipped marshmallows with sprinkles and sort of Mozartkugeln

Mozartkugeln wrapped in stashed aluminum sheets and a few without, rocky road and my favourite: nougat and marzipan bars covered with chocolate and cut into slices. So easy to make and so damn delicious!

Most of the candy I made was wrapped up and sorted in cellophane bags as giveaways for my family. Another use for my old stashed paper and stickers! The labels which I stapled on the bags. They were very appreciated!

A very special Christmas gift for my oldest brother, I used one of my caldendar presents to color the tag, stamped the text and tied it to a bunch of papers.

My awesome Christmas calendar! I want one next year too!

The stuff I got from the calendar:
Washi tape
Fabric tape
Embossing powder
Stickles
Distress ink
Different type of decorations
Brads
Stamps
Paper pads
Nail polish

A colleague of mine wanted a special Christmas card for his mother, she likes Santa so I made this one for her!

I like the beard, and the fact that I got to try one of my new embossing powders (very nice) and! I used some of my old Christmas paper too!

I recently created a bunch of Christmas cards to sell, we are a few people at work who sell or create different things in our spare time. I decided to put up the jewelry I made a few years ago and some cards, and of course, my angels!

Here are all the cards I created for this, a total of 40 cards, that’s about four times more than I use to create for all my friends and family but it was great. It has been too long since I got myself so caught up in doing something I like. I spent two days just crafting (more or less). And I got to use my stash, that’s the best part!
I’ll put the left over cards up for sale in my etsy shop for next year.

I asked my mom to make me an advent calendar with gifts instead of chocolate (I usually get myself a bunch of chocolate calendars). We used to have one when I was a child and I loved it, I think my brothers did too. She said I was childish but apparently she liked the idea as I received this a few weeks later, just in time for the first present to be opened!

How about that? Isn’t it awesome?
Here I was thinking that my interest for crafting solely came from my grandmother, clearly I’d forgotten how crafty my mother can be when she feels like it.

So I made a few cards last Christmas too, of course! I even made a few more than I usually do and surprised one or two friends. They were very happy! Unfortunately I can’t remember who got which card since I randomly put one in each envelope, I don’t like to choose. Maybe I should go for one design and ten copies this year? Problem solved!

Here are the cards I started in September but didn’t finish until December.. sigh! I’ve had such lack of inspiration lately and it’s really annoying but hopefully this year will be better.

I went nuts with warm embossing and the last card is the one I’m most satisfied with. I embossed the stars with white powder and used distress stain to color the background. I used the distress stain weathered wood from Tim Holtz on light blue cardstock.
The brown card has the recipe for gingerbread cookies but in Swedish. I practiced using my ProMarkers for coloring the stamps and it’s getting better and better, the techniques differ a bit from ordinary aquarelle but once you get the hang of it it’s a lot less wet and messy! I do believe the coloring is much easier if I stamp on aquarelle paper rather than plain paper or cardstock. I got the feeling the aquarelle paper dries somewhat slower which makes it easier to get the color even, but maybe it all depends on technique. I will give cardstock another try one day when I’m even better with using my ProMarkers!