Christmas gifts for Neighbours and Work collegues

Well i have had a busy weekend with my girls childminders christmas party on Saturday, and i borrowed my dear friend Paula's Ultimate pro! I spent my Sunday making cards for my neighbours and for the girls that I work with in the office.  I decided to take inspiration from the docrafts web site tip for quick cards although they were not very quick in my opinion!

I worked out that I needed to make 5 cards for work and 4 for my neighbours (or was it 5?).   I decided to make these from some of the really thick card stock in a deep red (perfect for Christmas cards etc) that I seemed to have an abundance of left over from Christmas crafting.  I then needed to do some envelopes but as the card stock that I had used for the cards was so thick, I decided to make the envelopes with approx 5mm depth.  You can just see the envoloboxes in the background. 

To go with the cards that I made, for my work mates I made some not so seasonal tiffin (crushed rich teas mixed with melted butter, sugar, cocoa powder and golden syrup, topped with a layer of chocolate) the reason this was not so seasonal is that I forgot to add a handful of cranberries! For my neighbours I always feel like making the effort at Christmas time,  so for the last 2 years I have trussed my kids in their winter woolies and taken them with me to knock on the neighbours doors to give them a seasonal treat.  This year I made some shortbread biscuits and mixed some cranberries in for the seasonal effect (I didn’t forget this time!), and used a star shaped cutter.  As I am more experienced in my crafting this year I strayed from the polythene bag and made cartons. 

At this point I did not realize quite how long this was going to take me!  I have to say by the end of the day my 7 year old daughter was a dab hand at making boxes, and even used a bit of my thick red card to make herself a box for herself! (for her jewelry apparently but it is still on my dining table covered in all of the other cartons she made from my scrap card!).

I made these boxes from pearlised card, once all the cards and envelopes had been done, I cut the Tiffin, bagged it up with the biscuits and put them into boxes finished off with a co-ordinated silver ribbon.

I am going to look for some challenges that I can enter my card into, and go delivering the neighbours parcels tonight. And then i will be tackling the huge pile of ironing that built up while i was completing my gifts!

The days end result:

I am entering my card into the following challenges:

http://promarkerchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/12/week-129mega-christmas-challenge.html