Christmas – Hopefully Creative

Cards for 2026

Embroidered cards for the new year.

This year, I really aimed to finish my best wishes cards before Christmas. The plan had four main parts:
1. Decide on a design
2. Finish the embroidery
3. Make the cards
4. Write and deliver the cards

Step 1 went well. I had found this super cute cross stitch kit from Bothy Threads called Christmas Quackers that I thought would be perfect. Living in the Netherlands, I’m not sure how many people know the English tradition of Christmas crackers, but the duck was too cute to pass up. So once I finished another embroidery, I set out to stitch this one.

Cross stitch of duckling with a red Christmas cracker in a hoop

Cross stitch of duckling with a red Christmas cracker

Step 2 went decently. I messed up a few times (counting is hard!), but managed to fix the mistakes and ended up with the perfect duck. I really love the fly away feathers on the side. I prefer my cards to be not purely Christmas coded, so I replaced the Christmas Quackers text with Quacking 2026. It was stitched with a gold thread that was absolutely awful to work with, not worth it either since it barely shows up when I photographed it.

Card of a cross stitch of duckling with a red Christmas cracker

Step 3 only had minor mishaps. I made three kinds of cards this year. A small version for roller derby (6 per page), a medium version for work (4 per page) and a large version for sending (2 per page). The S was just printed and had a star cut out. The M was printed with two punched stars and a bit of ho ho ho fabric threaded through. The L was printed with two bits of ho ho ho fabric stuck on using a wax seal (in different colours) with stars. The printer was the main mishap machine, with random white lines appearing in the middle of the image sometimes. Luckily I had enough of the linnen paper to print some more.

Step 4 was done in installments but I managed it all before Christmas. I know some have already been delivered but some may still be on the way. So the only bit that was laid by the wayside was writing the blog post. So I hope all the best for you and your loved ones, and a Quacking 2026!

Happy 2025!

Happy new year!

As usual, the end of November meant some paper crafting time. This year for the cards, I settled on wanting to use (a) button(s) and have a terrible animal pun. The original plan centered on (s)nail it, but I couldn’t really get it to work. So I trawled pinterest and google for cards and found the use of ‘whaley’ as ‘really’ and thought that was a pretty decent idea. It’s also possible to make a little round whale that I could stick a button on.

Blue card with 'Have a whaley great 2025!' printed, a small whale with a button attached with a yarn bow.

Red card with 'Have a whaley great 2025!' printed, a small whale with a button attached with a yarn bow.

For the actual design, I picked a new font: Edo SZ and wrote the text in a word file. Since I didn’t necessarily want to have a copyright problem, I built the whale fin shape and its firework fountain from word icons. Is that the designer way? It very much is not! But I did really enjoy playing with the stock images and manipulating them until it did what I wanted. The origin is fireworks, leaves, a moon shape and a circle.

Three blue cards with 'Have a whaley great 2025!' printed, a small whale with a button attached with a yarn bow.

Three red cards with 'Have a whaley great 2025!' printed, a small whale with a button attached with a yarn bow.

To put them together, the files were printed on some paper I found in my stash. The buttons were attached using a short length of self-dyed thread. All the buttons also came from the stash. I didn’t have to buy anything new for this card. In the end, I also made a separate version for my roller derby team and wished everyone: ‘let’s have a whale of a time together in 2025!’. These were on some linen stock that was also from my stash.

So for now, happy holidays and may you all have a whale of a time in 2025!

Letter Sweater

Blank canvas allows for letter options on this sweater.

A few years ago, we got a Christmas card at my work that was a white background, with black letters: kerstkaart. (translates as: Christmas card.)

The most minimalistic Christmas card I’ve ever seen. I love it so much. That caused this idea to float in my head about getting a sweater with ‘trui.’ (sweater.) on it, and adding interchangeable letters to the front. That would allow for the outfit to match my mood/the circumstances.

White sweater with the letters kerst trui.

White sweater with the letters ..... trui.

I finally decided to take some action. I didn’t feel like making a super simple blank canvas sweater, so I bought one. Then I found a font I liked on the internet and settled on ‘Simply Mono‘. It looked nice, and the < part of the k was attached firmly and not just stuck on. I liked the shape of the i too. So I decided on the font size (130), printed it out and cut the letters out of a felt placemat.

White sweater with the 5 snaps and the letters trui.

White sweater with the letters .meh. trui.

I attached the pointy parts of snaps to the front of the sweater and the flatter bits to the back of the letters. Since the letters didn’t all have the same amount of ‘letter’ in the same space, some letters are spaced closer together when they are snapped to the sweater. But I’m embracing that imperfection and actually think it looks more fun.

White sweater with the letters x-mas trui.

White sweater with the letters chaos trui.

The trui. letters were sewn down, so they are not interchangeable. For now, I’ve made the letters that you see above and the 5 dots. I might decide to make more if I feel like it or find another brilliant idea that has 5 or fewer letters. Leave your suggestions!

Happy New Year

Wishing you all a Faunatastic 2024!

This year, there were two versions of the New Year’s Card; both variations on the same pun. The simple one had three animals cut out and a print of the new year’s wish in an animal paw font. Then I added a random assortment of stars from my stash (several old Christmas card ‘chads’). The first image was taken on a red background to show the stamped out fauna. The card itself is white linnen paper.

The second one used a cutting and embossing machine that I got myself in the lead up to Christmas. I’m not entirely sure how much I will be using it, but I have now purchased enough cutters to last a while (one would hope). This one is a round ‘tree scape’ cut from marble paper, and two or so different animals cut from either discarded marble paper or black paper. This is all glued onto some white linnen cardstock and cut into the shape of a drop. The hole is made with a snowflake punch, and the slogan was printed on some Christmas card stock and then had a raindrop punched in. They are attached using the strings of an old graduation tassel. I like these and the machine a lot, but after 25, I was sort of done. And I needed some more for work; hence the simple version above.

In any case, I wish you all a faunatastic 2024!

May you experience joy, stay (or become) healthy and continue to be hopefully creative!

Cards for 2023

Healthy & Happy 2023!

As with every year, I wanted to send some cards to celebrate the new year. It’s been a bit of a draining time with lots of stuff to do around work and personal life so inspiration was slow to flow. At some point I resorted to Pinteresting just to see if there could be some idea available. I found something that I liked in this pin. It’s the year turned sideways to create a Christmas tree and some well wishes below. I figured I could use my extensive word-art skills to achieve something like that.

I decided that I wanted to make the trunk of the tree out of other well wishes and that it of course needed an exclamation mark in the year. So I put those in and then tried just about every font in the Word catalogue, before settling on Rage Italic – not sure the name is very Christmassy, but ey. I chose healthy and happy because they fit in well with the angle of the first 2. And of course because everyone deserves health and happiness. The trunk needed to be brown and the year green, for optimal tree effect. A light coloured circle was put around it so I could cut them to shape on the off-white linnen paper. Once that was done, I punched a star hole at the top of the tree. Et voilà: card.

So to everyone, a healthy a happy 2023!

Happy Holidays!

Making others do the dirty work of designing the holiday card!

When the year has been somewhat challenging and normal procedures don’t always apply, I do still try to keep some traditions alive. While I didn’t start my card production until it was already December *shock* *horror*, I did manage to finish them. Since my personal creativity was a little stumped, I relied heavily on my printer and everyone else inspiration.

I had found some holographic paper, where there was a holographic design beneath a layer of black. You would use a pen to scratch out your own design. I decided it was perfect and set out to create an ornament type shape. Printed it on the white back and cut them out with scissors. I used my trusty star punch to make a hole for hanging and added a wooden stick with a star glued to the top as the scratch pen. I wrote personal messages with a red pen (to distinguish from the instructions) and put them in the mailboxes, pigeonholes or on desks.

Since they have been distributed, I’ve received some very cute pictures of people taking the pen to hand and making their own designs. I recommend this as a strategy to make others do the creative work. So hereby to you all:

I wish you a creative 2022!

T-rex Hat

A little knitted Christmas hat!

Just to give you some joy this Christmas, I recently made a hat for my Tyrannosaurus Rex. Here he is, just ambling along with his slight preference for going left. He’s got a turning circle of about 2 meters. There’s no pattern to the hat, just increased from six red stitches until it was wide enough and then added in a few rows of white fluffy stuff. I also made a tiny pompom for the top. I get a lot of joy from this little thing.

*If you click the dinosaur, he’ll open up a YouTube window and walk around with his little hat!*

Enjoy your Christmas if you celebrate!

Christmas Card 2020

Happy holidays and a top (hat) 2020!

This year was not the easiest. Working from home since March, while living alone and with some struggles in the family, did not make this the nicest year ever. I still wanted to make cards to celebrate the new year. However, the sadness of 2020 also meant that I didn’t get any inspiration until it was already November. Then I rediscovered an image on Pinterest of someone who made a snowman out of buttons. That sparked the inspiration. Then I needed a wish – because happy holidays is just not me. Because Christmas might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I focused on 2021. Based on the looks of the snowman, I came up with a fairly terrible pun and got to work.

I bought a themed 30x15cm paper block and picked those sheets that were more winter-y. I designed the slogan for the cards in word and chose a font from the internet: Anke Font. Then I made the mistake of cutting the paper to size (7.5x15cm) and attempting to get it through my printer. Lets just say that my printer and I were not friends, much yelling ensued. For a second batch, I just copied the slogan 4 times onto a larger word file and it printed it in one go and did the cutting afterwards. So much smoother, learn from my mistakes! I grabbed all the white buttons I bought on a Sunday when trying to get the buttons for the combinations and set to sorting. Each card would have a two-hole button for head, and a larger 4 hole button for a tummy. Stuck those to the bottom right corner (generally), and used a thin permanent marker to give my snow people a top hat (hence the pun) and two little stick arms. Folded the top corner with the slogan over and punched a star or a snowflake in it.

May you enjoy your holidays if you have/celebrate them and that the coming year brings much joy, happiness and good health.

I wish you all a top (hat) 2021!

All The Ornaments

What do a Sprout, Cat, Dog, Snow Baby, Chicken and Bunny have in common? No clues…? They are all ornaments I crafted for my family when we celebrated Christmas this year. I’ll explain the idea behind them below but first.. They’ve all been put into my tiny tree, so I present the evolution of Christmas Tree!

It all started with an evening browsing Ravelry, as I’m wont to do. There, I found a very cute little sprout. As you may or may not know, sprouts seem to feature heavily in English Christmas dinners. My dad likes them quite a bit. I hate them a lot. Hence, I decided that I would make him a sprout, so that the real deal wouldn’t have to enter my home. So I set out knitting and made the sprout. I added a hanging loop and popped him in the Christmas tree. (Pattern Brussels Sprouts by Amanda Berry).

If you make one gift, you have to make one for everyone, so second came the girlfriend of my youngest brother. She has rabbits; easy choice, therefore, was to make a tiny bunny. So I set out to complete a purple rabbit. Also added a hanging loop and put it in the tree. (Pattern Catnip Bunny by Selina Kyle).

For my mother, I chose to do a snowbaby. It’s got a red hat and purple scarf to symbolize the red hat society and not giving an iota about clashing clothes. The snowbaby also has a hanging loop and no snowball and its hat is a little shorter. (Pattern Snow Baby Ornaments by Mary Beth Koskie)

My eldest brother has a whole range of pets, but I wasn’t going to knit an ant so I decided on a tiny chicken. I did add a tail and a hanging loop. (Pattern Tiny Chickens by Anna Hrachovec)

The partner of my eldest brother has a snowy white cat named after a certain snowy Disney Princess. Therefore I set out to create that little creature. The cat is not allowed to go out, so the chickens don’t get threatened, but in a tree they can be together at last! (Pattern Tiny Parlor Cat by Sara Elizabeth Kellner)

My youngest brother and his girlfriend recently got a dog, and since I could do the rabbit for her, he got the puppy. While their dog is not a Scottie, that was the pattern that I chose since it seemed the right sort of size. I attempted to emulate the colouring of their dog, it failed but I tried? (Pattern Tiny Scottie Dog by Sue Stratford)

I also gave the puppy a ball and the cat a little knit whale to play with. So everyone got a thing! I’m contributing to trees all over the country..

Christmas 2019

As always, I have sent out Christmas cards. The process this year started very late. I’d been thinking about it a little, but couldn’t really figure it out. I knew it needed to involve the following:

Have a RAWR-ing 2020!
A dinosaur, to make the above make a little more sense
And something Christmas

The first idea involved a dinosaur with a Christmas hat, the second was to create a snowglobe type affair with a dinosaur in it. In the end, I settled on something much simpler. Just a dinosaur, with the text above it, in a circle with a cut out star; to represent Christmas ornaments. The ball would then be attached to a very Christmassy piece of card for me to write a message on the back.

I set out by looking for inspiration for my dinosaur. Parameters included: cute, mouth open (for RAWR!), possible to be re-drawn by my with my very limited skills. I tried a few dinosaurs from pinterest, see efforts above (the fox was just because it was adorable). In the end, I settled on a very lovely dinosaur in the public domain here. I drew my dinosaur facing right, since that made more sense to me. He’s also got spikier spikes, different hands, his tail flows from his body and his eyes are the same size. As such, there is still resemblance to the original but it is clearly not a complete copy.

Once the dinosaur was drawn, I needed to get him onto paper. So I traced the drawing with a black pen, took a picture of that and vectorised it. Then he was put into word with a circle around him and the text above. He was first printed in a 10 cm circle (since he still needs to fit in an envelope), but by then I had figured out that white paper was a bit.. sad looking. Then I printed him on some A5 pearl linen card stock. When I touched the ink, it smeared horribly, so that wasn’t really an option either. So I looked around and found some paper with somewhat sweet prints and used that. Since I wanted to get more dinosaurs out of my paper, I reduced them to around 7 cm, so four could fit on one 15×15 page. I printed those out and then used a super handy circle cutter to cut out the circles. Lastly, my trusty star hole punch was employed to make a hole in the top.

After that, I grabbed the very Christmassy 30×15 cm card stock that I’d bought earlier. Those sheets were cut into threes to become a nice 10x15cm card. Punched another star in the top and then had to attach the dinocircles to the card. I wanted something red, and I was lazy, so I repurposed a graduation tassle. Cut those little threads in half and attached the two bits of card together. The circles can now also swing, which I think is cute.

I combined different prints of circle and paper, so the above are not the only options. However, I do think they are very cute, and I’m real happy with my Christmas dinosaur!

In any case, I wish you all a RAWR-ing 2020! May the crafting work out and joy spark in your life.

Tag: Christmas