Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you!  I hope you have a wonderful time with family and loved ones. The presents are all wrapped, the food is just about squeezed into the fridge and I had  a happy time yesterday spent making fudge while listening to Christmas carols.  Today we have had a gentle family time at home which ended with the Christmas carol service and Alex dressed as a king. The service was great fun with all the kids joining in with a nativity that involved 10 Mary's, 3 Josephs, 2 donkeys, lots of Shepherds, angels and kings, 3 baby Jesus dolls, 3 wrapped presents and one snow globe...Alex decided that he wanted to give baby Jesus his snow globe!  It was a lovely family service followed by mince pies and mulled wine.  The perfect start to Christmas.

I even had time to do a little crafting which was nice. I had a 60th birthday card to make so that was the first thing I did.  I don't know the man very well so I kept the card fairly generic and it gave me an excuse to use this lovely old car stamp (Xela stamps).  I used distress inks, brads and layering to create the effect. I am entering this into Delicious Doodles 'Anything goes', stampin for the weekend 'Anything goes',  and SCSC 'Anything goes' challenges.

The next card was made to fit with Less is More 'one word only' theme; the word in my case being 'Thanks'.  I liked the design of my last LIM card so much that I decided to adapt it for a flower and add the word and three gems to it.  The stamps are Penny Black and Crafty Individuals. I am also entering this into TioT 'Anything goes', Crafty Creations 'Thank you card',  and Aud Sentiments 'Anything goes' challenges.

Finally I made a Tim Holtz inspired Tag for Christmas.  This is based on his tag number 10, but I didn't have any of the official things that he used.  My version was made by distress inking the tag in Tea dye, then stamping Stamps Away music in Vintage photo distress ink. I then used vintage photo all round the edge. I then stamped the pine branch from Just Rite stampers and heat embossed it in green.  I had been given some Tim Holtz fragments by Anne, so used those on some Crafty Individuals santa images, then added red embroidery thread to the back and joined them to the brads at the top.  The banner was made by cutting out a piece of paper by hand, gold embossing bits of it, then folding it. The letters were black peel offs which I then added gold ink to. Finally I finished it off with two pearl beads and some Christmassy looking ribbon. I was quite pleased with how this turned out considering I had very little of the official Tim Holtz things to work with.  I am entering this into Simon Says stamp & show 'A Tim Holtz inspired tag', Simon says stamp 'Bingo: Ribbon, No DP, Brads', Paperplay 'Christmas' and Speedy the cat's friends 'Anything goes'.  That is all from me for now. We are off to my in-laws for Christmas day tomorrow, so stay safe everyone, Have a wonderful time.
With love & God Bless,
Caro
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