Christmas Cards 2013 Leftovers: 3 tall ones

3 tall Christmas cards on a brown kraft paper base :) - one of my favourite card blank formats

I've also discovered that cream coloured laces look good on the natural brown paper :) I'm never bored with the Christmas theme. I could keep on making festive cards all year round!

Christmas Cards 2013 (16) - Leftovers: Knitted and cosy

Just to say a quick "hello" as I'm catching up with the blog posts. Here are some more Vintage Scandinavian cards I made for Christmas 2013. My aim was to make them as cosy and country-side like as possible hence ginghams, tartans and knitted patterns. 

 I loved working on all those little cards details :)

This knitted heart stamp belongs to my favourites now :)

...and there's something about the red tartan I can take my eyes off :)

And a couple of vintage cards with lots of Christmas green colour. Just a nice break-off from Scandinavian reds and whites

I'm currently working on some crochet projects and will be updating you very soon! Anybody thinking of spring crafting already? :)

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

Shopping for goodies :)))))

When I check my blog statistics I very often see that my blog comes up in search results when some key words like Nordic, Scandinavian, Nordic cross stitch, julekuler, etc are typed in the search machines. So I'm writing this thinking of some of my blog visitors coming here looking for various Scandinavian stuff available online. I know they are out there and perhaps they would like to know what craft resources with the Nordic theme have been recently on the market. 

Thursday was an extra special day for us. We went out to visit some local shops which are our favourite shopping places. Coffee at Costa (It's always a nice treat. I just love it there!) WHSmith's for craft magazines, HomeSense for some American Crafts products (Goodness me! The bargains they've got there!) and finally one of my favourite craft shops - The Purple Butterfly in Daleside Garden Centre. Just imagine the bags I brought home. Definitely the best moment was an unexpected discovery at that shop - some newly launched Scandinavian craft products on the market from DoCrafts Papermania. The collection is called Christmas in the country and features cross stitched and knitted themes - something I can never get enough of. I was overjoyed! 

The Christmas in the country line includes among others:
cross stitch kits - I got myself two Scandinavian hearts to cross stitch, stuff and hang. Naturally, I can't wait to start on these.

Next, my new stamps with a trendy knitted jumper pattern (<3 I love them! Love'em! Love'em!) I'm particularly happy about the borders - they will be great for building backgrounds. I also love the big knitted heart stamp and stocking.

No Nordic product line will be complete without a reindeer!

Ribbons and bows to complete your craft work. Notice how everything is nicely colour and style coordinated :) This line of products actually combines a few motifs: knitted pattern, cross stitch, Nordic theme and tartans/ginghams. 

 Paper pad:

Add ons: Tags and stickers:
Front:

Back:

I got myself some extra bits like self-adhesive fabric papers from Papermania, a gorgeous product line from last year: Home for Christmas

These are really interesting. They have sorta fabric texture and I'm dying to try them on my cards :)

and my last thing: another two washi tapes in my collection plus some gorge ribbons <3

And the cherry on the Nordic cake for me has been this:

when one of my Polish friends has presented me with the pattern for this ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS cross stitch ornaments. I'm sooo in love with these little Nordic characters. The cross stitch is from Prairie Schooler and is called "Nordic Holiday". You can find it at 1-2-3 Stitch shop. (by the way, they have an amazing choice of samplers and quakers there). It's a MUST-DO project for me and I shall be ordering the threads tomorrow. 

Well what can I say? I'm so pleased that these days the craft manufacturers have a good sense of what's trendy and they are really meeting our, crafters', needs and I'm also excited and dire to sit down and craft, craft, craft...

New Baby Cross Stitched Card. A very "stitchy" weekend.

This weekend has been all about cross stitching. Woohoo! Finally, I have finished my cross stitched teddy  and mounted it on a card. I was backstitching it all afternoon yesterday and today I've washed it, ironed it and mounted on the card and embellished the whole thing :) Quite elaborate piece of work considering how many hours have gone into stitching the teddy itself plus how much time I spent today pondering on the card layout and choosing the right stamps! :) Pink gingham paper was a must! - I just love gingham patterns. Cross stitched cards are the most time-consuming types of cards but they are so unique and special in this way. Not bad ;) Pleased with the results.

The card will go to my colleague, who recently has had a baby - gorgeous ginger-haired Millie May. Hope she likes it. 

The cross stitch design comes from Cute Cross Stitch magazine, a newbie on the press market, issue no.1, Spring 2013. The stamps I used to make a tag: Nordic Baby from The Waltzing Mouse Stamps and the punched lacy heart border was made using Martha Stewart punch Heart Border. 

Still on the cross stitch frontline, yesterday a new issue of subscribed Cross Stitcher arrived through the post and since I just loved their added freebie, I started stitching it immediately :) These 3 supa cute retro / folksy flowers are sooooo my style! They will make a set of 3 cross stitched notelets. 

I'm really enjoying stitching them right now!

Speaking of the cute flowers, I have been sooo over the moon when I managed to get hold of these 2 gorgeous sets of stamps:

In a way they are very special for me. These are the stamps by Basic Grey from 2009 - series: Ambrosia Bitsy Bohemia stamps. Very difficult to buy now as they are the retired products. I spotted them being reserved and then bought by someone else in a 2nd hand craft market group on facebook (doh!) and since I'm always on the lookout for the craft products with a unique folky feel, I knew I had to find a set like this for myself too. I scoured the whole internet looking for them and finally some persistent search on ebay made my dream come true :)))) there was one seller in Germany who was still selling them and now I can enjoy card making with these beautiful designs. How lucky I was! My favourites among these sets are naturally the  gorgeous folky butterfly, 2 birds on the branches and a folky medallion with a butterfly inside (two separate stamps).

To finish off with this stampaholic confession, I'm linking up tonight at Hand-made Harbour to do some blog hopping. Hope all you have had a good weekend and enjoyed the last two sunny days. x x

Floral Cards (4)

Hi all.
Just a quick blog update. Here are some more of my recent hand-made floral cards for various occasions

Lovely sunny weekend over here in the UK - soooo pleased this winter is gone!
Hope you're having a good relaxing time.