Christmas

Posts tagged with "Christmas"

Christmas stocking party invites

Posted by Andrea in Blog on November 24, 2012
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Handcrafting invitations, as I mentioned in a post last month, is not a service I openly advertise. Over the years some of my regular customers have gotten wind of it and occasionally I get requests.

Rosemarie, a regular client of mine from Henley in Arden, is one such client. I have created a variety of projects for her over the years, including invitations; she trusts me to meet her needs without having to be particularly specific about she what she wants – a designer’s dream!

A call came in from her last week to create invitations for a Christmas supper she was hosting at her home. No design specifics, just a rough guide to the wording – perfect!

I rattled around a few ideas and finally decided on a handcrafted christmas stocking with a pull out tag.

I already had a .svg file for the stocking and used Sure Cuts a Lot and my cricut machine to die cut the stocking shape from one of my favorite  paper packs - Tilda ‘Wintergarden’ (now available to buy in my online store). I used trim I had in the shop (please contact me if you are interested in purchasing the trims used) to trim the edge of the stocking and glittered the scallop edge in a variety of colours to compliment the papers used.

To create the tag inside the stocking I used Photoshop Elements and printed double-sided, allowing for a pretty Christmas design on the front AND the back. I finally finished them off with a complimentary looped ribbon.

I was really chuffed with how they turned out – delicate and so pretty!

I wait to hear what Rosemarie thinks as they are now in the post to her … will keep you posted!

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Pretty Princess Wordart

Posted by Andrea in Blog on January 9, 2012
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Following on from yesterday’s post about Christmas gifts this year, here’s another typographical Wordart print I designed for one very special princess!

Pretty tones of pink and green form the basis of this very pretty Princess Wordart design – it fits a standard Ribba Ikea frame, which is a bonus – spend the money on the design work not the frame; it is now available in our Shop in white and with a rose-pink background (but we can do pretty much any colour background you want tho’!)

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Portrait typography

Posted by Andrea in Blog on January 8, 2012
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Christmas is always a great time of year for me to experiment with new ideas. Stuff that has been rolling around in my heads for weeks, even months, gets a trial run – some ideas never make it off the sketch book but others just seem to take off.

Take this one, for example …

A rather neat piece of portrait typography. I knew that the recipient was a huge fan of Murdoc (The Gorillaz) so took the opportunity to base his Christmas present on an image of Murdoc and a few words supplied by his Mum.

By all accounts it went down a storm (and I got to experiment for a new product range.)

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Creative WordArt

Posted by Andrea in Blog on January 21, 2011
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Every year in September, after the kids have gone back to school, I start to give some serious thought to what kind of hand-made Christmas gifts I will be offering to friends and family – I’ve done the greeting cards packs, knitted scarves, little hand-made bags and iPod pouches, and the ubiquitous scrapbook pages and albums. Last year I wanted to create something far more personal – a unique personalised gift so to speak.

I had seen this wonderful piece of WordArt on Etsy (would credit it but have since been unable to relocate it!) some months beforehand on one of my routine hops around art and crafts websites and blogs; it really sparked my imagination and was very much in keeping with the ethos I apply to my scrapbooks – very personal and very unique.

It really got my creative juices flowing, especially as it involved one of my oldest passions – typography! It would make such a fabulous gift but would involve much participation from other relations of my friends (and my family!)

I sent out emails to them requesting a whole host of information on the intended ‘victims’. Some didn’t reply – a big ask, I know, especially coming up to Christmas, and anyways, asking people to think deeply about the personalities of their loved ones is surprisingly difficult; BUT a couple did reply, much to my excitement. A few hours of sifting through the information sent and a few more hours playing around in Photoshop, and VOILA! Wonderful little pieces of WordArt.

This one was for a friend of mine – her daughters provided me with all the information, for which I was extremely grateful! I did a double act here and asked Sharon for info on her 2 daughters, they too received pieces like this!

and these were for my nephews – my sister very kindly racked her brains and came up with all the words and the phrases – I especially love the ‘but…but…but…but…but’ reference as this captures a time in his life when he was very argumentative!

These are items that I am giving serious thought to adding to my stock designs. I enjoyed doing them and they make wonderful gifts!

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Being had!

Posted by Andrea in Blog on February 9, 2010
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I have to say that having someone or some company ‘do’ me out of money, sell me something duff or simply dash with my cash has my blood boiling and comes second on my hate list only to rude and ignorant people.

This little gem of a company Crazy Cameras (yes, here’s a link – order off them, go on, I dare you!) offered to sell me a wonderful little camera I wanted to get my husband for Christmas.

I was delighted with the price (I should have heard the warning bells then…) ordered it and waited … and waited … and waited … and NOTHING. No confirmation email, no reply to the multitude of emails I sent them asking for confirmation. Nada, zip, nothing!

I was gutted. It was then I started to search for reviews on the site and to my horror found hundreds and I mean HUNDREDS! Read them for yourself! Almost all of them negative. I felt sick. I spent the next few days with that awful churning sick feeling at the pit of my stomach and then my blood started to boil. I could think of nothing else. I drafted an email stating that I had heard nothing, I was cancelling my order as the camera would not arrive in time now for Christmas… and then I waited some more. Determined I would become the bane of their lives if I didn’t get my money back… I, unbelievably and to my complete amazement, was refunded.

Lucky? Oh yes! Stupid? Oh yes! Buy again without checking the review forums? OH no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Lesson learnt!

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