Christmas Round Up and a First CHA Sneak peek!

Happy new Year!
Okay, that's a teensy bit late, but sometimes it takes a while to get back into the blogging routine, doesn't it?
("What blogging routine?" I hear you say....)
So before I get on to the exciting Sneak Peek things for CHA here's a quick Round up of some Christmas photos as I've very much neglected my poor old blog over the last few weeks - and not in a small way due to the said CHA things!
Please click on the photos  for larger images

 

We went for a Purple red and Gold theme for our tree and parcel wrapping and I loved the way it worked:

This is the card I made for Hubby - all the while I was making other things I was wanting an excuse  to make these paper baubles!

And just one last photo of Christmas makes - because I forgot to take photos of all the other boxes and gift card wallets etc that I made. oops!
Here are some shallow gift boxes made using the WRMK Envelope Punch Board.  They were a bit of a pain until I found a tutorial even this dumb blonde could make sense of!  Definitely need more practise with this little gadget though.

Okay, so on to the exciting stuff!  Over in the USA it's the time of the year when all the crafting folks get very worked up and excited because its CHA show-time.  This is the exhibition where all the Craft companies show off all their new goodies and announce to the world what they think the trends will be for the coming year.  Eventually it all filters through and we get to buy all those new tools, paper and pretties for ourselves - usually this filtering process takes quite a while - especially for the stuff to arrive in the UK shops....but this time I've been a little bit luckier and thanks to Crafter's Companion I've already had the chance to use some of the Teresa Collins Embossing folders that will be released in the next few days.  We've just been "given the nod" that we can blog some Sneak Peeks" of the things we made with the brand new A4 folders, so here are my first two sneak peeks

First up - and my favourite of the  things I made, this one uses the About Time embossing folder.  I embossed patterned paper, then swept black ink over the embossing to highlight the clocks design. I embossed some cream card and chose one of the larger clock faces to shade with lots of Distress Inks and some Versamagic Gold ink, then again used black to highlight the embossing before cutting it out.. 

 The second sneakie for today is a wall hanging using the gorgeous Twill Herringbone embossing folder.  I created the rainbow stripes using paint Shop Pro and printed it onto Centura Pearl "Hint of Silver" - I used the same card for the embossing and I love how crisply the embossing design works on this gorgeous card.

Sentiments on both of these are from the Crafter's Companion "Memories are made" stamp set.
Now then, that's about it for this time - but you may be interested to know that you can join Crafter's Companion's very own Leann Chivers live from CHA on Create and Craft TV at 4pm (GMT) on Saturday 11th January to see some fab new products, including the Teresa Collins Designs Collection of eBosser A4 folders I've shown a couple of here.  

That's it - well done if you got right to the end ;)  
Back soon with more Sneak peeks
Thanks for looking