This year I've made it my mission to make my own Christmas cards, as I won't be giving too many handmade presents this year. I decided to replicate one of the cards I worked on for Hobbycraft's Christmas shoot. . . 


 Here's how to make your very own sparkly Christmas tree card . . .

To make these cards you'll need -
* Card blanks
* Christmas scrapbooking papers
* Double sided tape
* Tacky glue
* Green + brown felt
* Gold self adhesive star
* Invisible thread + needle
* Christmas sentiment
* Scissors

Step one - start by covering your card blank with your chosen paper. I always use double sided tape as there's no drying time, and keeps everything nice and secure.
Step two - cut tree shapes out of the green felt and small rectangles from the brown felt (this will be the trees trunk).
Step three - thread your needle with a length of the invisible thread and make a knot on the end. Stitch one sequin on at a time over the green felt tree.


Step four - Once you've added all of your sequins, apply a thin line of tacky glue on one of the short sides of the brown pieces of felt and secure to the back of the green felt tree at the base, centrally. Leave to dry (around 10 minutes should do the trick).
Step five - Cover the back of the tree and trunk with the tacky glue and place centrally on the card. Leave until completely dry.
Step six - secure the glitter star to the top of the tree, and place your Christmas sentiment centrally at the base of the tree. Voila! you have yourself a Christmas card!


For lots more Christmas card designs, make sure to check out my post on the Hobbycraft blog, here.

I'm pleased to say that Goldie and Copper have settled in well over the past five months that we've had them. We've discovered that they're quite characterful buns! For some reason they're obsessed with trying to get into the house, although they've recently been banned after Copper decided to chew through Jason's surround sound speaker cable which didn't go down too well!

 As the nights are drawing in they've both got there extra fluffy coats coming through, and love snuggling up next to one and other in their hutch. We were cleaning them out the other night, and the light was perfect for taking a few snaps, so decided to grab the camera . . .

My craft room has been a work in progress since we moved into our house almost a year ago. I wanted to have an inspiration wall in the room, with all of the things that I like and inspire me, it's been slowly growing, and I think it's pretty much there, although there is space for a few more additions . . . 
 

Make sure to stay tuned for my crafty finds . . .

Some of my favourite snaps from our holibobs in Cornwall. . . 

I was asked to make two birthday cakes (one chocolate and one vanilla) and two batches of cupcakes for two family birthday celebrations for a friend this week. I haven't baked any cakes for a few weeks, it was nice to get the baking bits out again, although it was a bit of a mad dash towards the end!

As the cakes where for a 16th and 50th birthday I made some toppers from scrapbooking papers . . .

3 tier chocolate sponge cake covered with chocolate ganache and decorated with white chocolate stars.

Vanilla pastel cupcakes.

Chocolate Cupcakes

It was Jason's birthday on Thursday. We had a lovely morning of relaxing and chilling out watching the Lego movie, not my first choice of film to watch on my day off, but it was better than expected. We then had a great two hour sugar craft session at Sweet Serenity in Westbourne teaching us the basics, this was followed by How to Train Your Dragon 2 at the cinema then off to Koh! for a scrummy dinner, and back home for birthday cake.

I have been planning the birthday cake for quite some time, ever since I got the giant silcone cupcake mould in fact. 

I have been in admiration of Louise Walker's faux taxidermy knits for some time now, and I finally plucked (no pun intended!) up the courage to get myself one of her Forest Friend Fox kits. Great value for money at only £30 and you get everything you need, including knitting needles!

I finished making Mr Fox in just two days I was so excited to get him made and hung up in my craft room, although I had a few obstacles to overcome on the way. I had never done a slip stitch before (not quite sure how!) so a quick YouTube video tutorial later and I was on my way. The next challenge was getting my head around the intarsia technique, basically put it's when you knit with more than one colour yarn attached to your knitting needles. I had a grand total of four different bundles of yarn attached to my knitting needles to do each of the fronts of ears, it took a little time but I got there in the end. I'm so pleased with the end result, I'm itching to try my hand at more adventurous knits now . . .

The beautiful hessian packaging that the bits and pieces come in.

Mr Fox finished, even though he's got a bit of a wonky nose and eyes!

For the past 10 weeks I have been attending a Photography short course at the Arts University in Bournemouth, it's been strange going back a few years after completing my degree, its almost like I've never been away, even though there have been a few changes.

As part of the course we had to produce a set of photos with the central theme of either abstract or after dark. I chose to focus on the abstract theme, I had two sets of images that I couldn't quite decide on so ended up taking them both with me to get some feedback on.

 

Flower Power

For these images I focused on close up macro shots (or as close as I could get with the lens I had!) of flowers, I love the hot pinks against the lush green foliage in these photos.

Taken in Bournemouth gardens

Taken in Bournemouth gardens

Taken at Compton Acres

Taken at Compton Acres

Beside the Seaside

In these images I focused on the light within the images and how it highlights certain parts of the object, again I deicded to go quite close in with these shots . . .

Taken on Bournemouth Pier

Taken at Poole Quay

Taken at Poole Quay

Taken on Bournemouth Pier