Christmas Cards - Is There Such a Thing As Starting To Early?

Not when you are handmaking all the X-mas cards you send out to friends and family - Some of them have to be sent late November if they are to reach the destination in time for X-mas.

2011 Christmas Card Challenge Week #17 - the challenge this week is to make a X-mas card without using a stamp. Great, have lots of sentiments in the stock, so that would be possible. I want to use a sketch with a banner (never made cards with banners before), as it seems perfect for this X-mas card, and the Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge #40 offers just the right one:

The background paper is actually gift wrapping paper that I stumpled accros in a local China store 6 or 7 years ago - just love the design and instantly knew that this was never to be used as the wrapping paper but instead on cards. The stribed design papers is Candy Cane from BASICGREY's Blitzen Collection - sentiment + snowflake brads are from CreativeCompany. Scalloped scissor used for the edge of the banner.

I'm Blue

Well not me - my card! :o) I am humming Eiffel 65's song "Blue" from the 90's, which inspired me to this blog post's title, and it actually came into mind after I made the card, not before.

I decided to give the Bugaboos Monochromatic Challenge a try, and besides being monochromatic, 3 buttons was also required. Then the Inkspiration Sketch Challenge #63 started to lurk in the back of my head:



I wanted to do an Agatha Christie card for someone, who loves her books just like I do. Blue, because I saw the Hercule Poirot - Murder on the Blue Train yesterday, and the tea cup.... well Miss Maple does like her afternoon tea. So here it is:

Recycling - What To Do With a Empty Soda Can?

After writing yesterday's blogpost, a friend of mine posted me a link to a creative idea.. the link offered a second link, that lead to another one, and then.....

I found a project I could do with a empty Coca Cola can.. well there goes my 20c deposit :o)

So what did I do?

This candle holder, that fits a tea light. Not hard to do. Found the idea in a folder for children on how to recycle trash, published by the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, which was why I figured that I could do it too. When folding origami I often end up with paper cuts, but amazingly enough working with thes sharp edges of the cut of can did not cause any cuts on my hands :o)

When throwing a party (epecially in the evenings during summer), you might end up with not enough candle holders, and buying new ones could be expensive, unless you find a good bargain in a dollar store. Doing something like this, could even help you with a color scheme or even match the favorite beverage of the one, you are honoring with the party.

Reusing Material to Something Usefull or Perhaps Art

It always amazes me to see, when people are reusing some kind of material into something completely different.

One often used thing, is Coca Cola cans - the iconic logo makes it very easy to recognize to most poeple in the world, as you can buy it almost everywhere. I saw this elephant last year in British Museum's giftstore:

You might have encountered the bags from Ecoist, made by candy/gum paper etc. - Maybe even seen Dawn Griffith's how-to regarding making pop can pins out of .... yes cans using a die cut - or even been lucky enough to see an exhibition by Individuals.

 

Toy car like this (I bought it a while ago) is made in places, where both resources and money are scarce, so the people simply use the material at hand, that they can get for free: cans, wrapping paper etc and using their imagination to create items like this. I talked to a lot of eldery family members this week, and they all remember having toys (somewhere in the 1930s to 1950s) like this, as they were affordable, and it made them smile when they saw my little decorative toy... Guess they were going down memory lane.

Earth Hour 2011

Tomorrow - Saturday 26 March 2011, a lot of places in the world celebrate/honour Eart Hour 2011 - and in every timezone it is going to be between 8:30PM and 9:30 PM.

Everybody can participate by turning the lights out in that period, and enjoy candle lights etc instead. A lot of monuments (Eiffel Tower, Paris - Empire State Building, NY, USA - Pyramids, Egypt etc.) will also have the lights turned off during this period - all making a statement, that we need to take more care of our environment, climate and ressources.

One year I wandered around in a big city, where I was having my vacation - along with thousands of people eager to see their city without all the lights, suddenly seights seem a bit surreal as you are soo used to all the lights. Another year I lighted up my appartment with candle lights, and actually forgot to turn on the lights after 9:30 PM as it was soo cosy.

The initiative behind Earth Hour was started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia and is supported by WWF - World Wildlife Foundation.

Come join us whereever you are :o)

Photo:

WWF supporters and the Panda mascot in front of Parliaments buildings, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - Earth Hour 2010

Credit: WWF - Canada / Patrick Doyle

Words of Inspiration

If you go trough life convinced that your way is always best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you by.

Akio Morita

Co-founder of Sony

Springtime in Paris

I bet you know the feeling; you hear or see something that reminds you of a line in a song, and that song just keeps playing and playing and playing in your head?

Order of the Opus Gluei's latest challenge #95 is called "Springtime in Paris", and it instantly fuelled my brain to hear the wonderful voice of Ella Fitzgerald in my mind over and over again. The lyrics was accompanied by travel memories of walks along the Seine, where you felt like you could bump into Audrey Hepburn (in her role as Sabrina in the moving bearing that name) when you turned a corner of a street.... or maybe Coco Chanel accompanied by a model in one of her classic creations... even being served the waitress Amelié in the picturesque little café in Montmartre (yes it actually exist, the tabacco corner is however not existing in the real one).

Yes, watching movies is also a hobby of mine - and when travelling deja vu moments often occurs, only to realise it is because you have seen that place in a movie...... Oh wait I am rambling off, you just want to see the card that I was inspired to make :o)...  Here goes:

Decorated letter sent at Easter Containing a Riddle

That is actually an official translation of the Danish word: gækkebrev.

Sometimes people have to remind you about a tradition, that you actually learned at a very early age. A gækkebrev is a letter, where you cut pattens into a folded paper with a scissor - then you add a riddle to it, and you only reveal your name with dots: Janet would be .... The receiver is to guess who sent the letter, a false guess will generate a chocolate Easter egg for the sender, a correct guess will be prized with a chocolate Easter egg for the receiver. Nowadays it is only children who eagerly remember the tradition - they want their chocolate eggs :o)

On my humble attempt I would have written the ridded in the outer ring of my letter and then enclosed a fresh snow drop (the latter is optional as not every Dane has access to one).

The gækkebrev originates in the old "bindebrev" - if you received such a letter on your nameday, it contained either a riddle or a string with nots, that needed to be untied. If you could not solve it, you were to throw a party.

These days you are able to find cutting instructions for a gækkebrev in most Danish women's magaizine when snowdrops start to appear sometime before Easter. This pattern is from "Hendes Verden " No 7 2005, and you are quickly reminded that only thin paper works when cutting a gækkebrev.

The Moon IS Bigger Tonight....

Why did that title just remind me of the scene, where Jim Carrey pulls the moon closer to Earth to impress Jennifer Aniston in the movie "Bruce Almighty"?

Read the news yesterday, that this weekend's full moon is supposed to be the biggest in the past 20 years. I decided to check out when the moon was going to appear locally so I could see this phenomenon with my own eyes .... and suddenly I am singing like Sandra Bullet in her guest appearance in the Muppet Show" while writing this, and for once I can litterally blame the full moon for my sudden urge to sing.

Ok.... sidetrack... Back to the full moon. I brought my camera with me and decided to try to capture the event. It did appear bigger than usual :o)

When looking at the moon, my mind always start to wander as it fuels my imagination.... thinking back to childhoold tales about the moon....and I am just happy that I brought my camera.

Have You Ever....

..woken up insanely early with something just flipping around in your head??

Well I did this morning - and what was on my mind was a card idea. Ohhhh I just hope my body will not payback later and make me very tired while at work. On the other hand, if I had not made the card this morning, I would not have been able to concentrate on my job

The Bugaboo Stamp's Challenge Blog, Catch the Bug dared us to use something with scallops in our cards. I decided to use their freebie stamp from last Friday on the card, which is not a folding card. A friend of mine had "commisioned" me to make a card for her with one request, that she could write on the back as it was not going to be a folding card (wonder if she is going to use it like a postcard?).

So here it is:

Going Green

Today everything and everybody are going green.

This blog is going green.

The beer is going green,

The frogs are going green - wait they are already in the right colour :o)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is going green

5th Avenue in NewYork is going really green with the parade. But did you know, that the first Sct. Patrick's Day Parade was not held in Ireland but actually in NYC? It was Irish soldiers serving under the British, that did the first parade back in 1762 (source Tourism Ireland)

Happy Sct. Patrick's Day

The pictures are mostly shot during Sct Patrick's Day 2009 - Kermit the Frog is actually on display at the Smithsonian in Washington DC (picture taken in 2007)

What Is Your Harbinger of Spring?

I think most of us living in the northern hemisphere begin craving for mid or end January. Especially when experiencing cold, snowy and icy winters the craving seems to grow stronger and stronger for every day that passes.

The days are getting longer, but when is spring going to arrive?

This morning on the way out of my front door, I saw “my” harbinger of spring: snowdrops. The sun is only shining on them about 5-10 minutes before the sun disappears again behind a roof top – so I ran into my apartment to get my camera.

Bringing sping into the office where I work? This picture is now my background picture on my computer screens.

Well I have To Start Somewhere....

...if I want to find my dinnertable.

Came home late from work today (overtime) and suddenly my tired mind could not stand my messy dinnertable. Yes I own a dinnertable, that is the thingy that is sometimes stand-in as the thing that holds all my crafty things away from the floor.

Came across some unfinished projects and suddenly remembered The Order of Opus Gluei's latest challenge: Challenge #94: Reach Out and Get a Handful. Aimed to makes us find some unfinish projects and then make something out of it.

I had mounted this scrap piece of designpaper to a scalloped white card stock scrap a long time ago, and then just forgotten all about it. The designpaper is unfortunately sold out, and could thereforenot easity part with this one... Then I came a across a sentiment, that I made but never used....hmmm...needed a little adjustment and then perfect for this card..... Something was missing, then saw the yarn, that I have chickened out to use (yes I was actually going to make a chiken of this yarn....plenty left so could still do it... just need some additinal things to make that happen).

Voila my card - and I like it so much that it is going to one of those cards I will have difficulties to part with :o) The quarter next to it, is just to illustrate the small size of this card. And this this is a bloghop - not too sure what that is....

Mighty Max's Wish

The other day, there was a request from BreeAnn on PaperCraftPlanet:

Max Low is a 12 year old from Neola, Iowa. He has been battling cancer for half of his life. His doctors recently told his parents to enjoy the time they have left with him. His wish is to get 1 million cards. He has currently gotten about 23,000.

If you would like to help Max get his wish, please send a get well card to the following address: Mighty Max Low, C/O Greg and Bambi Low, PO Box 111, Neola, IA 51559, USA

Well I could not resist making a card for him and send it his way - hope if some of you have a card and a stamp in your drawer (or somewhere else), that you will send one is way to to give that boy just a little hope.

Inspiration From New Toy

This week I bought a die cutter :o) Now I am like a 4 year old absolutely absorbed by new toy. Oh well.... Some of us never grow up.

I saw the montly sketch challenge at i{heart}2stamp earlier this week and figured that this sketch was perfect for RicketyHouse die from Tim Holtz.

Yes yes - I know: stamp sketch challenge, so next try with the sketch, using my NeroArt Stamp set:

Well, that is more like it ;o) It was while playing with the die cutter that I realised, that I had a halloween stampset, with a rickety house. Crazy how one can forget about the stamps one actualy own, but the idea to use it, has not occurred until now. At least I am now somewhat prepared regarding finished Halloween cards.

If I Was To Use One Word....

....about the exhibition I went to today, it would be "dissapointed".

Since I was in Copenhagen today, a friend of mine emailed a scanned page from a popular women's magazine having high praise for the temporary exhibit Heart-Heart at Danish Museum of Art and Design, and we arranged to see this exhibit together.

The artists name is Anne Marie Egemose, and I actually think that the pieces displayed were really inspiring. Problem is, that there are only a few (as in very few) on display in a tiny-tiny room, that acts as the passage way from the main entrance to the café.

The rest of the museum is interesting, but the eye-catcher was the temporary exhibit, that was viewed in less 10 minutes. Could not really enjoy the rest of the museum as I had set my mind up to see this apprently great exhibition that turned out to be so little.... Was that really it?

Clocky?? I Want One!!!

The moment I saw the CLOCKY, I wanted it :o)

It should be in this color - Maybe it does not fit into the decor where I sleep, but it has its purpose: to wake me up on those days, where I might be very tempted to snooze just a few minutes longer. The company behind Clocky, Nanda Home,  have made other varioations of a noisy/persistant alarm clock - but this one is my favourite..........