Tis the Season for Calgary Christmas Craft Fairs

Whew, it's after Halloween! I can officially share my craft sale schedule this year ;-D The TGCA Annual Craft Fair 5600 Centre Street North, Calgary, Alberta November 15 5-9pm November 16 10-3pm Calgary Expo Holiday Market BMO Centre, Stampede Park, Calgary, Alberta November 30 10-6pm Harvest Hills Alliance Church Christmas Craft Sale and Tea 10099 Harvest Hills Blvd NW, Calgary, Alberta December 6 4-8pm December 7 9-3pm Highwood Christmas Craft Fair 16 Harlow Ave. NW, Calgary, Alberta December 13 5-8:30pm December 14 9:30-3:30pm

After my last Christmas craft sale, it was nice to do some crafting for myself and even then it wasn't for me - I made a record number of handmade cards. Somehow I was just super organized instead of being super behind. "Late for this year, early for next" was my motto! I even made 45 flat cards for my co-workers and that's the subject of today's blog.

So, so many bells!

Cardmaking is often not a spontaneous thing. Most of the time people see the end product, not the sketches, colour sampling or model. To figure out how I was going to pull off the flat cards, I had to quickly check and see how many bell shapes would fit on a 12x12" sheet of cardstock so my Pazzles could be a pretty good holiday helper! Then I had to find a rubber stamp sentiment that would fit the space as well as make sure that the bell shape would fit the diagonal line background stamp I had in mind. Oh, and I also had to make sure that I had coordinating ink as well!

I really wanted to impress my co-workers with crisp machine drawn text but ran into a snag halfway through. The old style pen tool for my Pazzles only holds certain size pens and out of the millions of pens and markers hanging around the house, none were really in colours that matched! Half of them were machine drawn anyway, so that was a huge time saver.

Bells were made in every colour. I cut and stamped one sheet a night and soon the pile of bells grew! The night before I gave them out, I fired up Netflix and threaded gold metallic floss through each one. Originally I wanted to string Hershey's kisses on each bell, but that quickly turned into a tangled mess!

If you want to deliver holiday cheer to your co-workers next year, here are the supplies I used for 45ish cards:

• bell SVG /Pazzles cutting file
• sentiment stamp from Stampin' Up Christmas Pines set
• diagonal stripe background stamp from Stampin' Up
• 8 sheets of 12x12" cardstock in green, red, coral, orange, light blue, grey and pink
• 4 sheets of letter sized white or vanilla paper (12 sentiments to a page)
• ink pads in green, red, coral, orange, light blue, grey and pink (I use Stampin' Up because it matches with the paper)

Have fun!

Last year's holiday horse

I love how I'm so behind that I couldn't post this last year :-D If you're wondering if there was a 2014 holiday horse...nope...that one is half done. Late for this year, early for next seems to be my motto. This horse is made from layers of paper and PanPastel.
2015 Holiday Horse by calzephyr on DeviantArt

The Other Best Christmas Gift!

What do you give someone that has everything? What do you give someone that has asked for no gift? The simple answer is the gift of love :-)

My parents came over on Boxing Day and Mom had a large frame with her. What could it be? I found out in an instant and I LOVE IT! Years ago the only craft I practiced was cross-stitch and I only completed three large scale pieces (others remain unfinished as of this writing!). Maybe this piece, Country Alphabet, had a better chance of being finished because it simply was an alphabet.

The frame is 18x24" and I was pleased to see that Mom had made a buffer so that stitches would not get crushed. I can't tell you how long it took me to finish this. I probably started it in 1995. I had to improvise on the U because it featured a portrait of Uncle Sam, and being Canadian, well...

I moved a few times since finishing it and and I always wondered where my alphabet went. When I was cleaning out the basement this past summer, I was sure I would find it. Turns out I had the wrong basement!

I still love cross-stitch, but it's so hard for me to complete for some reason. I have a horse pattern on my website that you might enjoy! I got halfway through stitching the model and then I gave up. Sigh! It's a wonder anything gets done with me!

Peace, the best gift of all

There is so much I love about Christmas, from getting together with family and friends, to the sights and the sounds and homemade delights. But my favourite part of Christmas is the gift of peace. Christmas seems to be the only time of year when life truly slows down. I have had to slow down because of a cold that has dogged me most of December. I complained about how it wouldn't turn into a real cold, and then naturally this week it did!

I have watched the sun rise while lying on the couch for two mornings in a row now. There's nothing more beautiful than a crisp Alberta morning, where everything is weirdly blue for several hours. First a pretty cobalt blue, then a lighter blue as the sun wakes. We live on a busy road that is a shortcut between two communities and also a bus route. No kids, no commuters, no joggers...just many hours of treasured peacefulness while my pet birds preen and grind their beaks with contentment. Even they could feel this peacefulness. So from my family to yours, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

2010 Christmas Birdhouse

It's always nice to be ahead of the holidays! With the way it's snowing outside, it might as well be Christmas again here in Calgary :-) This picture was languishing on my desk for a while - it was just one of those pictures that needed a half hour's worth of work to complete. It took a lot of effort to do this, since it's always more exciting to start something new :-) Click for larger.




PanPastel and Colored Pencil ::: 7x9" ::: April 28, 2010


Christine Bennett
Purple Pony Art
http://www.purple-pony.com

Christmas 2009

For the past few years I looked forward to buying birdhouse ornaments from one of my favourite crafters. This picture and 2010's are inspired by two of them. As much as I enjoyed doing the Christmas horses, I ran out of ideas for them. My mistake though with the two pictures was not focusing closer in on the birdhouses - they are 7x9" and there's a few inches of pine tree around them. That will be cropped out for both. 2010's is half done - it's going to be a little more on the brown side.




PanPastel and Colored Pencil ::: 7x9" ::: January 3, 2010

Merry Christmas to All!

Last night when we returned from my husband's family's Christmas party (or gift war, more appropriately!) there were about half a dozen snow white rabbits all bounding around our front and backyard. They were really quite a site to behold, especially when one thankfully scooted out of the way of our car! I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas today. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get my annual Christmas picture done in time, but you can sneak a peek at it :-)

Merry Christmas Wild Bun Buns!

My goodness, it's a jungle out there and I wish people would chill. If presents mean more than your presence at Christmas, you may want to rethink the holidays!

I went out to the big box plaza near our house to buy a big bag of cheap bird food for the wild birds, and ended up spending $11 on a fancy pants bag of rabbit food as well. According to the package, it has all sorts of tastes and textures that rabbits crave and will satisfy their urge to forage. It's that fancy. The clerk at Petland was so kind when I mentioned that it was for the wild rabbits that she gave me the Club Pet discount. Now that's the spirit! "They're still an animal and they need to eat," she said.

I honestly don't know what the poor critters do in winter. Last night I came home to find them in the corner flowerbed making off with sprigs of millet for the birds! One was brave enough to stay behind and it looked like he had a little cigar in his mouth :-)

I also made it out to the PO Box and found it full of lovely cards. Thank you all so much! I hope mine arrived in time :-)

Christmas Card Call!

Like everything else this year, I'm a little behind...but better late than never!

Would anyone like to exchange Christmas cards? A lot of people don't think that one should have to ask for a card, but I don't know where a lot of people live...and sometimes people move as well! If you would like a card, just leave a comment on LiveJournal. They are all screened, so only I can see them :-) You can also email me too at calzephyr@gmail.com

If you would like to send a card, you can mail it to my postal box at:

Christine Bennett,
PO Box 97014,
Calgary, Alberta, T3K 0P2
Canada

My last sale is this weekend - I think having a sit down and writing cards will be a good way to unwind afterwards!