Happy New Year ( and a Merry Christmas)

Hello and a Happy New Year!!!

A fresh start, a whole year filled with opportunities.

A time to reflect on the past year and set goals for the new one
(or in my case a repeat of some from last year as they were not accomplished, but that is the beauty of a new year isn't it, you get a second change)

It also seems that I was not that vigorous at blogging as
a) I didn't manage to post my 100 backgrounds (yet) and
b) I forgot to post my Christmas card designs

The latter I will rectify immediately as these are the 5 designs I've created and sent of to the printers.

Needless to say that I was very stoked with the end result and proud of course.

I had my very own stall on an artist Christmas market nearby in a town called Wakkerzeel, this was my very first time and was sadly very disappointing because I didn't sell a card whilst I stood for hours in the freezing cold.
I did however manage to sell 100 cards to colleagues, good for 160 euro which were donated to a foundation that provides massages to cancer patients.
With the sales from my other cards I managed to raise another 125 euros which I donated to UNICEF.

I must say that I am pleased with this result and hope to match it this year or do even better.
(one of my goals J)

let's CREATE a wonderful 2018!!!

WOYWW340

Curious how my desk looks today

Tada

On the right you see a painting my son made last night, before he went off to bed he wanted to create something (and who am I to deny such a request J)

While he was doing that I was sketching and planning the arrangement for our new craft room, which is coming together nicely as you can see here

Tomorrow the rest of the flooring will be laid and on Monday the painters are going to finish their work. And then I can finally move everything from the basement to the attic. Looking forward to that, not to the actual move off course but I am looking forward to creating in my new space.

On the back of the table you can see the Christmas cards I made thus far, a couple of new ones were made this weekend

Next follows a description of the process I followed for making them, if you were only interested in seeing my desk you can go now, but you are most welcome to read further.

I started by making a masterboard by brayering some metallic colors on a large piece of paper and some hot pink accents.

Then I took some stamps and ink pads in the same colors

And stamped away

Cut them in pieces of 9x14cm

and glued them to my cardbase

I cut 2 silhouettes with the cameo and glued that on the cards, the third one was a stamp of a reindeer.

I especially like the silhouette ones, they stand out more, I might color the reindeer to make it more of a feature.

But I do not have to rush or panic anymore for making Christmas cards in time, as my son came home on Monday from school with a whole bunch of cards he made and sells to support his school.

I will of course be buying and sending them because I find them fab (but I am bias off course J)

WOYWW 339

Goodmorning deskhoppers,

Not a deskhopper and no clue what I’m talking about, go check out our wonderful host's blogspot here who can explain far more better than me.

So here is what my workdesk looks like today, not too bad right?

After seeing a zillion workdesks piled under Christmas stuff the last couple of weeks it dawned upon me I should really get started on mine.

These ones were made yesterday.

I handcarved these elfs legs,
aren't they fun?

using the last piece of masterboard from
the snowflake project, just need to finish the 3D image.

I made a word stencil with my Cameo.

So this is my collection thus far, plenty more to go

And as you might have noticed the owl canvas is no longer on my desk, it is finished and all will be revealed this weekend.

Christmas card #2

This week’s challenge over at The Craft Barn is paperfolding.

And as I really should get a crack on my Christmas cards I made this card using some rolled tubes of wrapping paper.

2 down, plenty to go J

Christmas card #1

I made this card in under 10 minutes.

How, you ask?
Well, I had left over from the 12x12 masterboard I made yesterday,
cut it to size,
added this cute little girl (which I already had stamped and colored probably a couple of years back) 
and stamped the border and sentiment.
Christmas card 1 (finally) done.

christmas cards

Last year was the first time I made Christmas cards which I sold for charity.

This year I want to repeat that and do even better, I want to sell (and make) double the amount of cards and by doing so raising more money for Unicef.

Unlike last year when I only came up with this idea end of November and I had to make a whole lot of cards in a short amount of time, I wanted to be well prepared this year.

So I started already in August, I must say it was a little bit strange making Christmas cards when it was 25°C outside.

First I spent a weekend on designing 5 cards which were simple to make and wouldn’t be time-consuming (because if you are planning on making 300 cards that’s something you really can miss)

These are the designs I came up with:

I set up my very own production line, I cleared a table and put 5 shoeboxes on it, 1 for every design.

They contain the materials needed to make the card: stamps, embossingfolder, die-cuts…

So I can easily grab a box and make some cards.

And I set myself the goal of making a minimum of 20 cards/week, so by now I have 300 cards and I can start selling.