IS THIS WAY TOO EARLY?!!

Hi all

Sorry I’ve not posted for a while, my BT broadband, which is totally rubbish, has been even slower than normal and I’ve been unable to do anything, let alone load up a post here! It’s is so frustrating spending hours on the phone in queues, talking to someone from every department they seem able to pass you around to but ending up back where you started… a crap service and nothing gets done about it… AAHHHHHHHHHH! We pay for ‘Up to 8mb’ but we only actually receive ½ a MB and as it has now virtually ground to halt most nights, it’s been pretty impossible to get anything done!

However, the upside of this has been that I’ve spent far less on eBay recently – I am a last minute bidder and by the time my bid actually goes through, the item had ended! Saved a small fortune so I suppose that’s something.

Anyhoo, that’s got that off my chest so enough whingeing for today, let’s get on with something far more interesting.

I’ve been trying to get myself ahead this year on my Christmas bits and bobs as I normally end up running out of time. So this year, I was determined to get ahead of the game. I’ve finished making all my cards to send (will post some pics of these later) and as I have three big craft fairs coming up, one in Oct, Nov and Dec as well as a smaller craft market every Friday now, I started to think about gifts to sell.

I found this fab template for a sleigh last year and made 30 of them for someone who wanted something different to put on the table for everyone on Christmas day than the run-of-the-mill cracker (they have a VERY large family and an even larger house to fit them all in!). I made the sleigh’s the size of the actual template and we filled them with a joke each, a little gift and a party hat along with a name place card. They looked fab and I only wish I had taken a picture of them!

For the ones I’ve just made up I wanted them bigger to hold the gifts I need to put in them so I enlarged the template by 50% on a copier as I want to sell them at my craft fair.

The sled base normally has a bit more to it to raise the sleigh off the ground a bit but because I want to put heavier things in these, I trimmed that part off and fixed it flush to the base for sturdiness.

I’ve made up 8 so far in four different colours and I am really, really pleased with them. I want to make up some adult ones which I’ll fill with some shredded tissue paper with small jars of preserves or shortbread or something along those lines on top, then wrap them in florist cellophane with a big colourful bow on top and a mini card and envelope to write on. Once I’ve actually bought all this stuff and made them up properly I will post a ‘completed’ pic for you!  Some will be filled with sweets or other little gifts for the kiddies, not quite decided what yet. I’ve ordered some little brass bells, which I will hang on to each sleigh but they haven’t arrived yet so these pics are a little unfinished but couldn’t wait to share.

Now for the bits I used…

For my base cardstock I used Dark Chocolate from PTI because it’s a good quality heavy cardstock, the glitter paper is fab and is from Craftime which I bought on QVC a few years ago (I don’t know if they still sell it but you may be able to find some on Craftime’s website – http://www.craftime.com/). Its on a really thick mulberry paper base and its really glittery (well you know what I mean!). The snowflakes where punched from glittered DCWV cardstock and the punch is from Martha Stewart. I just added a few coloured gems to the centre of each one for a bit more bling.  Finished it all off with a bit of ribbon tied around it.  Once my bells arrive, these will be tied to the centre of the ribbon.

I think the blue one is my favourite colour. I like these so much I’ll find it difficult to sell them, I want to keep them ALL!!! I guess I’ll just have to make some more!

If you want the template, it’s from Clear and Simple Stamps and the best bit is - IT’S FREE!!! It can be found here…

http://www.clearandsimplestampsonline.com/cssdownloads/TOTM/CSS-SleighTemplate.pdf

Hope you’ve had a fab day everyone.

Thanks, as always for popping along to see what I’ve been up to.

Take care

Zoë x