Warmth and Wonder

Wishing you the warmth and wonder of the season.

What a fabulous sentiment! It was a part of a (now retired) hostess set, or Christmas set a couple of years ago, but I still love it! I simply cannot remember which set it came from, but it was perfect for making these little 4×4″ square cards. I love the warmth it implies; cozy evenings round the fire, all snuggled up warm and happy as a family… I made these little cards one evening early in the year, while watching Paul, the alien film, on TV – Gary‘s choice, not mine!

To add to the warmth and texture of the card, I heat embossed the sentiment with Pewter embossing powder – another product which has now retired. They keep retiring all my favourites! Talking of retiring items, don’t forget about the Year End Sale, there are lots of retiring products from the Autumn/ Winter catalogue available at a discount, but only while stocks last! Make sure you don’t miss out on your favourites.

I stamped on the envelopes (which were actually saved from some old Christmas cards we had stashed away which I finally decluttered last year) with the same stamps, and another stamp from last year’s Autumn/Winter offering. The envelopes were stamped in Real Red to match with the Real Red card bases. They tie-in beautifully. The Whisper White punched panel and the silver (pewter) sentiment offset the red perfectly.

The punched panel was stamped with another retired set from the Hostess offerings, and I absolutely adore these little cups which exude such warmth and comfort. They could be used for anything, really, but I thought they were ideal for Christmas cards. The scale of them is just right for little compact cards to wish friends the “warmth and wonder of the season”. They could work on a “standard” card base but it would have to be based on a very clean and simple layout otherwise they could easily get lost. I think I stamped these in Basic Gray, but it could have been Smoky Slate – both colours work here! It maintains the more subtle feel to the card, as opposed to stamping the image in black which would have been a lot harsher and not quite so “cosy”. I am loving stamping in grey shades at the moment!

I made loads and loads of these ickle cards to wish people warmth and wonder, or to “be very merry” (not that I think a lot of my co-workers need any excuses to get merry!!), and they went down very well here at work. It just goes to show that taking the time to make plenty of Christmas cards while watching TV early in the year pays dividends when it comes to December. All in all, I think that I have written about 60-odd Christmas cards for various people in the office, and they were all hand-made by me! Not bad going, eh?!

Sorry I missed yesterday’s post, it just didn’t happen along with a ton of other things! One of my New Year resolutions is to be prepared with blog posts earlier, so they are ready to go at least the day before they are due! I can always change them up, but at least that way I will have something posted on the days when posts are due! (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday is what I aim for, in case you were wondering!)

Here’s the little card with the merry wish on it:

I kept the images simple with just the stamped line art, but if you wanted to use bright or even muted colours, they would take no time at all to colour in and that would be a lovely relaxing task. Though you’d have to do it when you didn’t have a mega Christmas to-do list!

I did very poorly on actually sending cards in the post to friends and family this year, so huge apologies for that. If you have not received a card, it definitely does not mean I don’t love you! I just didn’t send any! Oops :S

I hope that you are all much more ready for Christmas than I am, I could really do with a little elf to help me with all my jobs. We only have this evening to pretty much get everything done, and it is not looking hopeful right now! Hopefully Gary will be mega-helpful tonight, and we can be seriously effective on getting the bists ticked off, packed, wrapped and generally sorted. Fingers crossed!

Back tomorrow with one last post before Christmas…