It's taken some time..

but here it is...the long awaited Christmas card post!

Apologies for the delay, but it's been a bit hectic in my world for the last few weeks. I finally found a time to take photos of the Christmas cards I made for Ham'n'Mule this year.

Today's main photo is one of my favourites, using a Martha Stewart Present punch (which was not cheap - eek!) and contrasting background and greeting, I think it's a nice way to make Christmas monochrome. Below is the white on black version. They were really easy to make.

Next is a variety of cards, using Pink Petticoat digital stamps. I used 4 different sets - Fairy Lights, Tiny Christmas Treasures, Have an Ice Christmas and Mini Rudi's. They are really easy to work with and I invested in a super dupa Woodware circle punch, to make them all super easy to put together. The Mini Rudi's, Ice Christmas and the Tiny Christmas Treasures get a bit of glitter added to the image, to make them sparkle a bit.

The next card is based on an idea I saw on Pinterest that I really loved. I have modified it slightly, to make it easier as they do have to be reproduced several times. It was great to get to use several different embossing folders, normally I only get to work with one at a time. I really like the little green bow, it adds a touch of colour.

Here are teeny tiny snowflake's and rudi's...these are so small and cute. I love them!

I hope this means that JT won't be harming me now :)

Cx

Change is coming..

 Happy Friday everyone!

This is a pretty short post, just to show off the new Ham'n'Mule logo, because I love it so much! It's still lo-res, so might not show up as wonderfully as I want it too. I think Maggie, the designer has totally captured the essence of what we do, I love the button and the birdie.

The new and greatly improved website should be up and ready to use by 5th November. Most exciting! I will be taking more pics and adding to it this weekend.

To tie in with that, I have updated the look and feel of the blog....bye bye birdies. It made me sad to lose the birdies, but sometimes to achieve something wonderful you have to embrace change. It's not complete yet, but I'm taking baby steps to get it right!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Cx

p.s With this post, I will have passed the total number of posts for 2011 - which was a big goal for me, so I am most pleased and we still have 2 months of the year to go!

Win some, you lose some..

So Saturday was the day of the Craft Fair. After getting up at 5.30am...yes 5.30am we were hoping that we would have a successful day and today's main photo is of JT and our lovely stall.

Unfortunately it wasn't quite what it should have been.

Our pitch was a bit poor, we were in the foyer, which in it's self would have been ok, but not with 5 stalls. It was very crowded, we couldn't stand behind our table and so we kept blocking off each other's stalls in the area.

Our takings were slim and quite frankly at the end of the day the lady that was organising it wasn't very interested in taking our feedback (which all things considered was rather measured).

We did make a few sales and I was really pleased that we sold one of JT's beautiful wreaths - photo below.

On the plus side, we learnt how to run a stall together and I'd say that was a big plus. We got lots of compliments about our items, which was really nice after all our hard work. We also had fun, made some new friends and had a couple of white wine spritzers!

We are now looking for alternative fairs, but we anticipate the website being live next week and that should help us shift our lovely Christmas items. The photo below is of our Christmas card display.

All in all many lessons learnt and after all it is a hobby right?

Cx

Finally Saying Thank You

As you know, I love making 'Thank You' sets.

This year I decided that for my Birthday Thank You's, I'd go with the Owl punch, as I guess I should be wise at my age....?

I used really nice silver sparkly cards from Michaels and black paper scrap strips. I am pleased with them, simple and fun.

I've already sent most of them out. I got a bit delayed with holidays and craft fair stuff.

I also want to say a massive 'Thank You' to Pam at VikingTapes- I purchase the tape for my 3M ATG from them they are reasonable and deliver quickly. Last week after I placed my order Pam told me that they were out of stock and I might have to wait a week...disaster, as I needed the tape to finish the Christmas cards. I appealed to Pam and following a hilarious email exchange my tape arrived the next day. Pam, I salute you for restoring my faith in mankind and customer service in general...

All Christmas cards for the fair are complete now, I've making some other things to vary the stall a bit, brooches, scarves, non-Christmas cards....most of this I am doing this week, but plan to be done by Thurs evening so I can pack my bag on Friday night and go to bed early, as we are getting up at 5.45am!!

So, JT has assured me that my last post doesn't guarantee me escape from bodily harm....as it's not a Christmas Card post...it's genuinely not my fault, I have to wait until the weekend to take the pics. I guess I'll have to try another method tonight so I can actually attend the fair on Saturday.....

Cx

Good Weather = Naughty Me!

Hey!

I had a fab birthday...far too much drink was consumed in a 4 day period, Joe's wedding was wonderful and my holiday in Tenerife was a hoot. None of which relates to the title of this post...so let's start at the beginning shall we?

I decided to use my birthday vouchers to my a new (long awaited) fisheye lens for my camera. I bought one by Lensbaby, which means I can interchange other lenses and accessories from their range - it makes buying new camera equipment fun and relatively inexpensive. It arrived on Thursday.
I have a million and one craft fair related things to do and JT said she'd do me bodily harm if I didn't get a post out about the Christmas cards...

Enter me being naughty the weather was too good this weekend to pass up and opportunity to play with the new lens. So I decided to do the bare minimum craft fair stuffs and rushed outside to play.

The main pic was taken today whilst I was being naughty! I am LOVING the new Lens, so easy to use and with a bit of work in PSE the photos are great. I had this random thought that I should take a photo of someone on the crossroad and then realised it might work if I used myself! Here are a few more.

Litter Bin at the local sports ground. Added Lomo effect using PSE

Gladiator Street is in my neighbourhood, such a cool name I want to live here. No work done to this pic

Cool effect - Pencil Sketch in PSE. Creates a pencil sketch (obv.) of your photo.  Cool.

This is a pic of our re-vamped bedroom, converted to b&w. I love this pic, feels very Living magazine!

Final photo is of my local park. Took some good advice and got a great result.

So in an attempt to avoid bodily harm, here is the one photo I managed to take of my Christmas card contribution to the fair...I have made approx 50 cards this weekend and started the non-Christmas items, so not totally naughty.

Christmas Trees

This card is a Pink Petticoat digi stamp, that you are supposed to paper piece, using the papers in the digi kit. But I thought that I would use my random paper scraps instead. I used a die to cut out the trees and sentiment and used Kars Xmas Collection 2011 papers for the blue shiny backing card. All in all I think they are cute, but a bit modern and work really well.

I really will try to get more Christmas photos up this week - honest.

Cx