Ten Little Christmas Cards

I'm still keeping my promise to myself - making two Christmas cards every week all through the year to avoid that last minute rush. But that's only going to make  enough cards to cover what we send ourselves - if I am to have enough to donate to people to sell in aid of charity, as I do with the other surplus cards I make throughout the year, I will need a lot more than that. But I don't enjoy "batch baking", I need some variety to keep me interested. So while flicking through an old Australian magazine, a 2009 issue of "Cardmaking, Stamping and Papercraft" I saw a collection of similar-but-different cards, all using the same basic idea of paper triangles used as trees, but with different layouts, that struck me as a great way to approach the batch bake issue.

I rummaged through the snippets box and came up with scraps of four different patterned papers (only two of them specifically Christmas ones) and all sorts of oddments of red, green, cream and white card. A selection of A6 card blanks in white and cream, a handful of sentiment stamps, my button tin, a few stars and my ribbon scraps bag and I was good to go...... get your scrolling finger ready......

Phew! Still with me?

Naturally I am sharing these with Pixies Snippets Playground - can you picture what a HUGE difference they have made to my overflowing snippets box? And I was one of last week's picks, so I have a lot to live up to!

I am also sharing with
Allsorts Challenge - Fancy Bows and Ribbons
Winter Wonderland - Add a ribbon and a bow

RECIPE - Fried Halloumi with Chickpea and Lime Couscous

Last year I was sent a halloumi cheese making kit to review. The kit actually makes 12 large batches of delicious halloumi, so a few days ago I made another batch and used it for several meals - this is one of the dishes I created with it, but shop-bought halloumi would work equally well.

Fried Halloumi with chickpea and lime couscous

serves 2

4 slices halloumi cheese

oil for frying

100g couscous

150ml boiling water
¼ tsp salt

1 lime, juice and finely grated rind

3 tbs olive oil - I used one infused with Mediterranean herbs
1 (400g approx) can chickpeas,  rinsed and drained
50g raisins

to serve:

extra olive oil
3 spring onions, finely sliced

Place the couscous in a small lidded saucepan. Add the salt and water, cover and allow to stand for 15 minutes. Stir in the olive oil, lime rind and juice and raisins, cover again and leave until a few minutes before serving – if you have time to leave it for half an hour, the raisins will absorb some of the dressing and plump up. Mix in the chickpeas just before heating. If it is a hot day, you may prefer to serve this cold as a salad, in which case it’s ready to go.

 

 

A few minutes before serving, quickly fry the halloumi in moderately hot oil on both sides, while gently heating the couscous mixture, stirring occasionally to prevent it from sticking.

Serve up the couscous with two slices of halloumi on each plate, sprinkle with spring onions and drizzle a little more oil over and around the dish.

 

I am sharing this with Simple and in Season at Feeding Boys and a Firefighter.

 

 

and Meat Free Monday at Tinned Tomatoes

 

Time for tea (or is it coffee?)

The current challenge at Shopping Our Stash is to use a coffee or tea theme. Coffee or tea sounds perfect for this topper from a very old Hunkydory kit - the shape of the pot is one I always associate with coffee rather than tea, but since coffee is seldom made in a pot these days, I'm seeing them used increasingly as teapots.

The border, background card, flowers, rectangular doiley and sentiment are all from old Hunkydory kits - not necessarily the same one, as I have the last few pieces from each of  3 or 4 kits all combined in one folder.

Bring me sunshine

Do you remember the closing song from The Morecambe and Wise show? I always find myself humming that whenever I make a sunshine themed card.

This week at CASology the cue card is SUNSHINE so that's exactly what I'm humming now.

I've made a one layer card, masking off the bottom third and the edges then sponging in red, orange and yellow inks to make a background and a sunshine (I sponged through die cut waste for the sun) and stamped an Indigo Blu wildflower border. Then removed the masking and stamped the sentiment, which I recently won in the Playground.

Oh you mucky pup!

Sometimes as I'm crafting I make up a story to fit my  card, and that's what happened with this one:

It seems to me that somebody was studying a valuable ancient text when the dog bounded in from the garden, wet and muddy, shook himself all over the place and then ran across the text, leaving footprints and mud splashes everywhere.

The image is a Little Claire's stamp, stamped with memento ink and then coloured in using a waterbrush, picking up colour from a Walnut Stain DI pad. For the background, I have stamped an ancient manuscript background all over using the DI, then spritzed it with water and allowed to dry. Then I overstamped that with footprints and splodges and used a scoring tool to roughen up the edges a bit.

I am sharing this with

OLLCB - one for the boys
Fantasy Stampers - Man's Best Friend
Inkspirational - Text

Grumpy Gus

I love the Gus digis from Bugaboo stamps, but I've never actually USED one until now! But I think this boozy Santa version of Gus is perfect for a witty Christmas card. It comes with its own sentiment, but I've used a stamped one from Dylusions instead.

Thanks to a tip I read about leaving printed images overnight before colouring them, I don't seem to get problems colouring digis with Promarkers any more.

I am sharing this with

Naughty or Nice challenges - Man Up! (see, I promised to be naughty this time didn't I?)
Crimbo Crackers - Anything Goes  (my first entry to this new-to-me challenge)

Floral dragonfly

I adore this floral dragonfly stamp, which I bought after seeing somebody else use it on their blog, yet I've only used it a couple of times. It's time I put that right!

Today I've made a watercolour background using Distress and Kaleidacolor inks with a waterbrush, just scribbled onto watercolour paper. The dragonfly is stamped and embossed over the background and some areas of it picked out with markers.

I am sharing this with

AAA Cards - Watercolours 



Rubber Dance - Purple, turquoise and magenta (optional flowers)  - I've been a lurker over at Rubber Dance for a few months now, but I have never felt confident enough with the arty style usually used in their challenges to dip my toe in and play along. However I have just read that they are sponsoring the current challenge at CASology, so I'm hoping they will find my rather more CAS style of card suitable for their challenge this month (and I'll be back later in the week with my CASology entry)