Hi Everyone

Great weather in Marlborough here today after some awful rain and wind earlier in the week. Thinking of everyone in NZ and Australia who is suffering from the severe weather - hope you are all keeping safe.

Here is the second set of the Kaisercraft Chest of Drawers (available here) I completed for a Christmas gift .

This is my favourite BTP release from Kaisercraft this year and this time I have used the Cosmo Cricket "Material Girl" Collection.

Liz has some of this wonderful collection available in the store I think - so get shopping and you can complete this project in an evening!


All the drawers are fully lined with patterned paper, and the assembled shelves measure about 230mm x 160mm x 90mm (or if you are like me and think in inches - roughly 9 inches high, 6.5 inches wide and 4 inches deep!)


I started by painting the wood red, but it looked too harsh so I lightly brushed some cream over the top which softened the look a lot



Lowri :-)

The Christmas Countdown has officially come to an end. We have enjoyed the Design Team's contributions over the past 10 weeks and I want to thank them for their inspiration and the time they have spent sharing their ideas.

26 others of you also contributed through the weeks and we thank you for joining in!! We have put all 26 names in a hat and the winner of the the $50 Christmas Goodie Bag is... Margaret C! Well done (we'll send on to you on our return mid-Jan).

We have a winner for this week's "Comment" competition. Well done to Axel (Carol) who has won a $50 Christmas Goodie bag from Artfull Crafts. We'll send it out mid-Jan when I return from holiday!

Thanks for all the people who commented over the past few weeks. It's a great encouragement to read the comments!

We trust that you had an emjoyable Christmas Day and wish you well for 2011. We look forward to inspiring you throughout the year.

I'm sitting here at the campsite in Nelson. It's a bit chilly - but it's great to be on holiday! When I do some crafts I'll load it up online.

:-) Liz

Hi Everyone - hope you had a wonderful Christmas Day! Now that it's over, over the next few days, I get to share some of the Christmas Gifts I made without fear of anyone getting a sneak preview!

First off - this Kaisercraft Chest of Drawers (available here). This is my favourite BTP release from Kaisercraft this year and I have used the latest Cosmo Cricket Collection "Circa 1934" along with a couple of other "vintagey" bits and pieces to decorate it.


This collection from Cosmo Cricket was quite a small one but the Chipboard pieces are fantastic and so versatile.


All the drawers are fully lined with patterned paper, and the assembled shelves measure about 230mm x 160mm x 90mm (or if you are like me and think in inches - roughly 9 inches high, 6.5 inches wide and 4 inches deep!)

Here are some pictures of the drawers close up..








I have another one of these shelf sets to show you later in the week - so stay tuned for more!

Any questions - just leave a comment - and don't forget to check out my blog for additional ideas!
http://papervinenz.blogspot.com/

Lowri

Merry Christmas to you all!

I hope Santa has been good to everyone this morning and you didn't have to get out of bed to early. My boys were awake at 6.30am but didn't come to get me till 7am. It's my turn to do a post today with my tags. I love shabby chic so have made shabby chic tags for Christmas and also a shabby chic box.


My morning has been a nice morning with my boys. It's been stress free and have enjoyed every minute of it. The boys leave to go with their Dad's at 2pm and then I am heading out to see a very dear friend (like a mum) to have Chritmas dinner with her. Enjoy the rest of your Christmas Day and I hope you enjoy this last post of the Christmas countdown here at Artfull Crafts.

Merry Christmas!

Tanya Leigh

Liz here! It's time to wrap the pressies and make those last minute tags. Here are some great ideas from some of you. Don't forget that if you want to be in the draw to win $50 goodies bag, then send us a picture of your tags by Sunday...

Xanthe has made this great Jelly Bean gift tag:

Aimee has made the cool angel gift tag:

Helen (Stampin' Up Timaru) has created these tree tags:

Jo has two tags for us. One very quick and easy and the other a little more time consuming. She writes, "I am loving my punch craft at the moment. The holly ones were inspired by Joanne’s Kaisercraft holly tag, I just used oval shapes then took the curves off with a circle punch. The Santa ones took a bit longer. They are quite small, starting with the Creative Memories tag punch (2 inches by 3 inches) and then little punched shapes added after that."

Stacey has got a lot of gifts to give this Christmas! She's used a scallop punch and some lovely stamps. I'm pleased she dusted off her craft desk!!

Viv has been crafty and created these "sour cream containers" that Lowri inspired us to make. She's filled them with goodies for Christmas day.

I'd better go and make some tags myself. It's 9pm and we only started the Christmas shopping at 3pm today. We left the mall at 4:15pm and had them wrapped by 5pm. Now that's the way to do shopping....

Have a great day tomorrow. Tanya will be doing a blog and then I'll wrap it up on Boxing Day with a final post and I'll announce the winners! If you want to be in to win you just need to put a comment on any of this week's blog posts or you can send us a picture of your tags!
:-) Liz

2 SLEEPS TILL CHRISTMAS!!! Just a wee reminder in case you'd forgotten.

Here's my idea for tags. Really easy - I just used my Spellbinder shapes through the cuttlebug onto some gold cardstock and folded them in half. Then I added some ribbon and a die cut picture. You can just attach them with some double sided tape on the back.


My children also wanted to help me, so I gave them luggage tags and they covered them using torn scraps and some stickers. They had heaps of fun. I might get them to do all my tags next year!


I'd like to wish everyone a very special Christmas and safe holidays. Take care!
Clarissa

And Im not kidding! They are simple! At this time of the year everyone is so busy and getting a little stressed out, as I'm sure you know. In my opinion some people put far too much pressure on themselves at Christmas time so I decided to do something simple and no stress! :)


For this gift tag I have used one of the larger holly pieces from the Kaisercraft chipboard set, punched a hole in the top and tied some ribbon in it. The great thing about the chipboard that it is a plain kraft colour on the back so we can easily write on it!


Now this one is cut from an Echo Park Paper. Ive put a Kaisercraft rub on at the bottom and once again punched a hole and tied some ribbon in it. The size of this tag would also be great if you wanted to put pictures of the recipient on the tag (perfect for little children that cant read their name yet).


This one is also cut from the same Echo Park paper. The back is just a plain green so will also be easy to write on.


This one is a tag from the Kaisercraft Tag Book. Ive inked the edges heavily (which didnt show too great in the photo), put a small piece of holly from the same chipboard set as mentioned above and a small piece of bling onto the holly.


And this last one is also straight from the Kaisercraft Tag Book. All ive added is some bling to the top of the tree and the ribbon!

Ive just tied all of the ribbon in a bow as I havent yet decided how they will be attached to gifts. Some will be tied on and others will just have some adhesive on the back and stuck on. With the ones that are stuck on I will re-tie the bow nicely.

Thanks for looking! I hope ive inspired you to create some lovely tags with whatever is on your table at the time :) Merry Christmas everyone!

Hi there, I'd like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas!  Can't believe it's the last week of our Christmas Countdown already.  I've had lots of fun creating things to share, and this week I've mad a couple of tags.
The first is from Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas.  I used Kaisercraft chipboard letters under metallic tape, and coloured it with Copic markers, and alcohol inks.



I embossed the second tag, highlighted the raised areas with metallic rubs, and distressed the edges. 


I used Graphic 45 papers, Kaisercraft bling, & Stickles to embellish it.

I painted the Twiddleybitz snowflakes with Twinkling H2Os, and attached some Diamond Dust using Dimensional Magic.
The flower was coloured with Glimmer Mist, and I added a good dose of  Diamond Dust (can you tell I love that stuff?)




I punched a strip using a Martha Stewart punch, and attached some fringed ribbon.



Thanks for looking!  Have a fab week.
Hugs,
Tina

Well the weeks have flown by and the Design Team are all set for their final week of contributions. We've had thousands of hits (around 10,000) since we started the Christmas Countdown. We thank you all for your contributions and want to extend a final invitation to you all.

If you have been following the Christmas Countdown blog, then feel free to leave comments on the blog posts this week and you'll go in the draw to win a $50 Christmas Goodie Bag. We have another $50 Christmas Goodie Bag to give to anyone who has sent us their contributions. You also get your project displayed in the Competition Gallery. This is the last week - so come and join us for a bit of fun! Send them to artfullcrafts@gmail.com

That's right. We're giving away $100 worth of product next week. The winner will be announced on Sunday the 26th of December. (I'll be driving to Nelson blogging on my laptop!!).

This week's final theme is Christmas Tags. Send us an email of how you like to make your gifts look at bit special. Our Design Team will be inspiring you too of course!

Last week's theme was Table Decorations and finally I had some time to sit down these napkin holders. Well I did steal the idea from the the Kaisercraft website!! These napkin holders just take 6" x 6" of double-sided cardstock each. They sure are simple.



We have a small number of competition entries to show you this week. We appreciate that everyone is getting busier closer to Christmas and thankyou for emailing us your ideas.

The winner of this week's prize is... Sandy A. Thanks heaps for your contribution!! She'll be putting these angels on her table at Christmas.

We have some table settings from Margaret C. She's used the Kaisercraft Be Merry papers on the placemats.

Jo A has enjoyed creating this Pine Tree from Kaisercraft with the Tinsel and Twig papers she won last week!

In fact a couple of Jo's projects were emailed to us and weren't picked up. So we are pleased to showcase them now! Apologies Jo.

Jo created this Tree Decoration - her own original invention. She writes: I wanted to make a “pillow box” type thing to enclose a coffee sachet, and found that the width of the box perfectly fitted the Creative Memories tag maker, so I turned it into a Christmas tree ornament! Or they would also look awesome hanging across the wall like banners I guess…A wee gift for friends or mums at playgroup or customers… it’s sometimes nice to surprise people who you only know slightly with little presents that look fabulous.


Jo also writes about her Christmas Favour idea: I have lots of little $1 scratchies for Christmas day, and wanted to come up with a cool idea for the table. They make a fab crown, but that seemed just too quick and easy! So I have made some wee wallets to put them in. I was going to go with the Christmas theme – Santa, snowflakes, etc – but since the scratchies are bright summery ones I went with the bright summer theme instead. The jandal, sun and glasses are all from one wee Inkadinkado mini clear pack which I bought at Artfull Crafts 6 months ago.

Finally we finish with the Reason for the Season. We celebrate the birth of Christ, the God-man who was born to save us from our sins. The Scriptures say that if we repent and put our faith and trust in Him that he will be gracious to forgive us. May you know His blessing and love this Christmas.

Christ Born of Mary
Luke 2:1
¹ And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. ³ So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.
⁴ Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵ to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. ⁶ So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. ⁷ And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Glory in the Highest

⁸ Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. ¹⁰ Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. ¹¹ For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
¹⁴ “ Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

¹⁵ So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶ And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. ¹⁷ Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. ¹⁸ And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. ¹⁹ But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.