Let It Snow......

......let it snow, let it snow! And yes, it just keeps on coming.

I looked outside as soon as the alarm went off this morning and guess what? Yep, it was blowing a blizzard. We had completely cleared the car of snow the night before and there was another three to four inches of fresh snow piled on top and all the footprints were again, covered over and an unblemished carpet of white lay waiting for us.

When I pulled the car off the drive and headed off in the direction of work I was only the second vehicle out of the close and the roads were treacherous, even the main roads were in a bad condition so I thought I'd give the back lane a miss and head straight for the A66 which is the main dual carriageway  for travelling east to west. That was little better than one large ice rink with snow laying on both carriageways!

To cut a very long story short, I'd got half way to work before I spoke to Glenda and she told me that they were staying closed for the day and to turn around and go home. It was so difficult finding somewhere to pull over to answer my phone which had rang several times, that I eventually pulled off the road and into a pub car park in the village of High Coniscliffe. Big mistake..... huge! I got stuck, couldn't go forward, couldn't go back!

All in all it was one hell of a morning. I'd got stuck in a car park until a farmer came to my rescue, caught up in a free for all of spinning cars and a van on the A66 (I can't believe that not one of them hit me but they did hit each other, three in front of me and two directly behind) I managed to stop when the van in front hit two cars sending them off the road while he ended up side on across both lanes. In my rear view mirror I watched the two cars behind me, they couldn't stop. I braced waiting for the impact as they slid into each other and I was right in the middle of it all with an Angel on my shoulder! Not a scratch on me or my car. How lucky was that? Fortunately, no one was injured, just bits of car bumpers and trims strewn around the road. Finally, on the homeward stretch I ended up in a snow drift at the side of the road stuck again. You really couldn't see where the road side ended and the verge began. Two gentlemen came to my rescue and pushed my car sideways into the middle of the road so that I could pull away and I eventually made it home without any further mis-haps.

Things are progressing slowly at home, I've got some more paintwork glossed tonight and have had to position all manner of objects around and in front of the wet paint to stop Diesel from ending up with Zebra stripes and my paintwork from growing a thick black coat... so far, so good.

It has snowed on and off for most of the day. I've just had a look outside and yay!..... it's not snowing at the moment. So fingers are crossed for a successful journey in the morning.

My artwork for today features Christmas Cards......

Both of these cards have been made with stamped acetate panels which have had Abalone gold leaf and Copper leaf applied to the back of the acetate before layering it onto Mirri card.

I love working with Tim Holtz's Christmas stamps, they have a lovely vintage feel to them. Have you seen what he's doing with his 12 Days of Christmas Tags this year? Don't miss out on all the tips and techniques he's sharing!

All the other stamps shown here are from Elusive Images and you can find the full range of EI stamps at Graphicus.

I'm going to really have to get my finger out if I'm to have enough hand made cards ready in time to send this year. I hate to say it but I do have some bought cards on standby should all else fail!

To all of you who are knee deep in making your Christmas Cards and hand made gifts...... have fun and Happy Crafting!

'Tis the Season

Can you believe that it's December already and the countdown to Christmas is well and truly underway in our house.

We are currently having the annual fight with the pre-lit Christmas tree.... well, it wouldn't be the same without the week long battle to get all 1200 bulbs working would it?

The lounge was all freshly decorated and cleaned last week and was looking pretty tidy until the trees (yes, there's three of them for the downstairs) and all the boxes of decorations were hauled down from the loft....




......and we ended up with this mess! On the table, under the table, in carrier bags, boxes and plastic sacks piled up all over the floor of the dining room. Well, there's one good thing achieved by all this - the loft is pretty empty. LOL

We started to assemble the main tree for the lounge last weekend and found that half the lights on the second layer up were out. I removed every bulb that was off and tested it.... five times (and that's a lot of bulbs) only to find it was a wiring problem. To cut a long story short, we've found a way around it and the tree is now assembled and ready to start the dressing stage.

The weather here in the North East is causing havoc. I can remember winters when I was little where the snow was so deep that it came over the top of my wellies and I always ended up with painful, itchy Chilblains. But over the years, the winter weather has changed some and we don't seem to get the depth of snow we used too... until now. I went out to clean the snow off the bird table today to put out some food for our feathered visitors and this is what I found......


It was cleaned off on Monday to put their food out and this is what's fallen since then. I just had to get a ruler and stick it in the snow to see how deep it was. I say was because that was earlier today and we've had even more since then with it forecast to continue overnight and throughout tomorrow.

OK that's enough for now about decorating and the snow, I will be updating my progress with the Christmas preparations as the days go on and taking daily photographs of whatever I'm up to for my '31 Days of Christmas' journal that I'm doing again this year. More about that in another post.

I'm really sad that the weather has caused the Graphicus Open Days planned for Friday and Saturday this week to be cancelled. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to seeing everyone and to the fun and festivities we had planned, not to mention playing with some of the fantastic new products that have arrived from the USA this week. However, we are not going to be completely defeated by this white fluffy stuff that makes staying vertical almost impossible and driving, well.... the less said about that, the better. We still intend to have some fun on Friday and there will be some very special offers, great products and some interactive fun to be had if you keep an eye on the Graphicus blog and on Twitter on the day. My lips are sealed but I can tell you this, you won't want to miss out!

I'm going to leave you with some of my Christmas tags and artwork and will be back soon with the next installment of Lynn's December Life.







This selection of tags were made during my Vintage Christmas Tag workshop a couple of weeks ago. We had a really good time getting inky and glittery and we could have carried on playing long past the scheduled finishing time. In fact, the ladies who came to play were encouraging me to leave them overnight in the studio at Graphicus so that they could continue to play and make more tags. I actually believe that they may have been serious!


If you have any questions about the techniques or products used in the tag artwork, leave a comment here on the blog and I'll do my best to answer your queries.

Happy Christmas Crafting!