Happy New Year!

Happy New Year people! 

Let's hope it's a good and lucky one for each of us. 

For all my crafty blog buddies, I also wish lots of creative ideas and successful craft projects in the coming year.

Christmas Cards 2013 (14): Scandinavian Vintage (1) Nisse

I swear I will bore you to death with  my Christmas cards. Sorry my dear blog readers, I'm not done with my festive ones yet LOL  How on earth have I managed to make so many this year? I must have been at the full throttle with my creative mojo. Definitely a proper big production this year.

This time it's a style of cards I've really taken to and I would call it, let's say Scandinavian vintage. Remember this post about my stamp printed papers? I used then my "jumper style" stamps to create the  cosy "knitted" backgrounds and I thought they would look good on the vintage type of Christmas cards. 

Scandinavian Nisse (the Norwegian word for gnomes) are the focal point in those cards. Do I have to add that I thoroughly enjoyed myself composing those cards? I have a feeling I'll come back to this style next year with some more vintage images. Those I used come from Pinterest and ultimately they are the images printed on the vintage Scandinavian postcards.

My God Jul stamp from Panduro seemed the be just perfect for this occasion.

A bit unusual Christmassy tones over here - mostly gold and brown and cream - suited to the colours in the picture. As I was making this card, I thought about one of my colleagues who doesn't like traditional Christmas decorations because they bring her bad memories about lost dad and brother. She never sets up any Christmas tree in her house. She was very pleased when she received this card.

Thank you for your comments x

Coziness

Lazy Sunday over here today. On a cold frosty day like this I like to snuggle into a throw on the sofa and do this: reading, knitting and cross stitching :) 

I fancy some stitching so I've got back to my Nordic Holiday project  to work on this lovely folksy horse. I finished it yesterday and now I'm going to cross stitch other motifs around it. 

This festive season put your feet up and have some glögg and mince pies :) Perfect chill out.

Hope you have had a good weekend x X x

Joining the Papercraft Party no.18 at Hand-made Harbour tonight.

Christmas Cards 2013 (13): Red and white once more

Although Christmas is technically over, I still got some more of my Christmas cards to reveal on the blog. I've been very card-productive this year so I've given some sets of my cards as gifts to those friends of mine who don't make their own but are appreciative of hand-made creations. 

This batch of cards is, again, revolving around the Scandi theme. I used my favourite stamps and scrapbooking papers of all various brands on them (Panduro, Papermania, Martha Stewart). 

The focus here is on the scalloped edges. I love scallops. So do the baker's twine and all folksy stripes :)

The card below is an attempt at making a hand-stitched patchwork card (a perfect way to use up the scraps of pretty scrapbooking papers you don't want to chuck away) and also the christmas tree with a 3D effect made by piping a white glass painting relief paste. Sort of a "gingerbread" effect.

The papers I used for these cards is Papermania "Home for Christmas" series from last year. They are one of my favourite themed papers available on the market. Their designs are so ultimately Scandinavian and they add a lot of charm to the cards. Think, after the New Year I'm going to look for some more of these papers and have an extra supply before they disappear from sale ;)

One more card with hand stitching - I really enjoy adding this feature. It adds that extra "hand-made, rustic" decorative touch.

So what do you think, huh? :) Enjoy the rest of the weekend. x x x

Glögging and blogging

Hi. How's everyone? Hope you're all blissful and enjoying your festivities. With everything being tidied up, cooked and prepared it's time for Christmas coziness. I've been celebrating today with cozy throws, hot cups of tea, candles, coffee, cakes and books/telly and now...time for glögging and blogging. 

I adore spiced aromatic mulled wine and you? I made sure this year we have enough bottles of mulled wine to keep us going through the Christmas days. A packet of spices, cloves and oranges have been bought too. In the past, back in my country, me and my friend used to go out to pubs in the cold wintry evenings and treat ourselves to a glass of hot glögg. Heavily spiced, heated up, giving away a strong aroma, it rushed up quickly to our heads and circulated in our bloodstream making us feel snug and snoozy. Aaah, the old good days!

Today I still continue with the mulled wine tradition on my own :) For this reason I treated myself to a genuinely Scandinavian mulled wine pot with a tealight warmer, ladle and a set of mulled wine glasses from Sagaform. I'm truly relishing these accessories now. 

A couple of more photos of the Christmas decor. I'm into red berries this year a lot. Anything red and frosty. Candles and potpourri reign at my house this Christmas too. 

This year we've had such abundance of Christmas decorations that we let the Scandi spirit spill a bit to other parts of the house and we decorated the rooms downstairs for bf's grandfather too. He doesn't bother much with any Christmas decor at all so our little Christmas tree has been moved downstairs for him to enjoy. I also put up a lovely Nordic Merry Christmas bunting for him and some candles and lights. Something different for a change this year :) His wife is at the hospital right now so he must feel a bit lonely and down without her being around. 

Berry nice! ;) Happy Christmas everyone! x X x

Christmas Eve. Gingerbreads.

What a busy day for me Christmas Eve always is. We always finish this day with a special evening supper with everybody in the family gathered at the table. This year it has been different to me - I've stayed in the UK to celebrate Christmas with my bf. It will be a fusion of cultures at our place - Christmas Eve in the Polish style, Christmas day with the British roast dinner and the whole house has been decorated in.... (surprise! surprise!) Scandi theme (I'm soooo lovin' it!) It will be a quiet Christmas for us and hopefully nice and relaxing. The New Years eve should, hopefully, be the same. I'm definitely more chilled about not having to worry about my flights and the worsening weather conditions as currently there have been some issues with the British airports, flight cancellations, power cuts and all.

Today I've done a lot of baking. Done my "signature" cream-filled cake with the meringue top plus baked the spiced biscuits. I so much love the aroma of the freshly baked cakes and biscuits. It's nice, it's warm, it's cosy and festive then.There's been some gingerbread decorating too which I always find great fun to do. I ended up with the 4 full platters of the gingerbread people! That's almost like a gingerbread village!

I like the white icing on the gingerbreads best - such a charming classic decoration but I, of course, couldn't resist throwing in some coloured icing too. I'm pretty confident with my piping skills - my acquired glass painting skills of piping the relief paste onto glass turned out to be very useful at the biscuits decorating. So I was pleased with myself.

And here's the big festive tin with my little fellas inside:

(By the way, anybody recognizing a festive motif from an old Christmas song? Not telling you the answer tho! ;P )

Oh, do you know that story of a Gingerbread man? Surely you do.

"Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

We've done the gingerbread topic with kids at school so many times that I feel so well familiar with it. We also baked gingerbread people at school and decorated them this term. Guess who was the guiding gingerbread guru then? ;)

Loving and leaving you with the freshly baked gingerbreads. But before I go I'd like to wish you all

a very Merry Christmas with all the blessings coming from the little Baby Jesus born in Betlehem and lots of joy and delight in celebrating this wonderful time of year .

Christmas Cards 2013 (12) : Red, white and brown.

Hi everybody. Sooooo busy and rushing with everything now as most of us are with only a few days to go before Christmas. Just popping here for a moment to blog about these cards:

It was great fun with Marianne Designs dies, Papermania papers and Martha Stewart stamps. Loved making these. 

And all three together:

Hope everybody is ok and enjoying preparing for the festivities :)

Christmas Cards 2013 (11): Red and White again

Hi all. How is everyone? Hope all of you are getting into the festive mood and enjoying waiting for those joyful winter days. I'm slowly starting to plan what I want to bake for Christmas and how to set up the whole decoration. Again, like last year, I'm dreaming of a real Christmas tree for my knitted julekuler from last year. How far have you been in your festive preps?

In the meantime I'm sharing with you a couple of my Christmas cards. Both reindeer stamped and embossed in red come from noolibird.com

For this card, I decided to make some hand cross stitches and add natural paper panels. I really like how it combines well with white and red cardstock.

On the card below, I used my favourite stamp with the reindeer in heart. It was heat-embossed and laid on a layer of white straw :)

Thank you for your comments and visits x