Wow, something not for Christmas!

We went to the craft fair at Wimpole Hall, near Cambridge on Saturday morning. It was freezing cold, but at least we managed to pick up a few things for Christmas and the December birthdays we also have - I think they do it just to make life difficult for us - thinking of Christmas presents is bad enough but it's downright inconsiderate to have a birthday in December, don't you think? lol
Having those men in to link us up to cable tv/BB/phone meant we had to unpack and move some of the cupboards and shelves so we did a bit of clearing out while tidying up again. Which I suppose is a good thing!
We've now got Virgin media and the tv box thing that goes with it - but tbh we're not impressed with the box - it's slow and it's ugly and it's nowhere near as good in any way as our Humax PVR, which is really disappointing. If you're reading this and know anything about such things - is it possible to get anything better than the regular Virgin box?

I managed a bit of crafting over the weekend. I've had this card on order for ages, but as the anniversary is at the start of December I thought I'd better actually make it soon!
I've used a sketch I made a while back for this card - I've now added the sketch to the Sketch File, and would love it if you used it to make some cards - I hope you find it useful.

For my card I've used papers from Scenic Route's Newport collection - I bought them a week or two back and this was the first outing for them.
The two twill ribbons I've used are from Ribbon Oasis.
I made the monogram using Paint Shop Pro and cutting it with the Craft Robo. The brads and the little chipboard photo corner are from my stash.
Copper is listed as a tradional gift for a 9th anniversary, which this card is for, so I used copper brads and coloured the photocorner and edged some of the paper an card using a copper Krylon pen.

I decided it was time to make some word cards for Christmas, so again used the PSP/Craft Robo combo to do some nice big letters and mats for these cards:

The papers are BG Wassail.
Once you've made and cut the letters these are really simple to put together. Robo doesn't cut thick card, so I tend to use a couple of layers of thinner stuff, then cut and add a layer of the patterned paper letters. It doesn't really take long to stick them all together then just inking the edges covers any white that shows.
Tracking down thin gold/silver card to use for the mats is proving tricky, so I experimented a bit here and once the mats were cut I coloured them with a Ranger Paint Dabber in gold. I think it worked quite well, the gold is quite a nice soft shade. I painted the letters individually, because I had the idea after I'd popped the letters from the card - but another time I'll leave everything attatched to the carrier sheet and paint them first.

I was going to make some JOY cards too, but I spent way too long deciding on a font - and in the end, when you look at a word for long enough they start looking really weird! So I gave up - I'll have another go another day!

Thanks for looking, don't forget to check out the Sketch File too