Holiday Gift Guide Supporting Etsy Artists 2017

I'm a huge fan of artists and makers, well of course I am and I know that you are too! And there are so many talented people on Etsy that I admire and love. So I thought I would put together this Holiday Season Christmas Gift Guide (wishlist!) of potential gift ideas to inspire you to take a look and perhaps support some of your favourite artists and makers on Etsy when you do your gift shopping this year.

So in no particular order lets get started! Click on the thumbnail to see the art itself on Etsy and to learn more about the artists.

[There are some affiliate links in this blog post, so if you buy through them I do get a small amount of money at no extra cost to yourself, but it really does help. Thanks for your support!]

1. MirDinara - Castle

2. Viktoria Astrom - Warrior Hedgehog

3. Shop Miss Ella - Cat doll

4. Jane Ormes - Rabbit Freaking out

5. Emma Block - Alice Through the Looking Glass

6. Cathy Connolley - Hilltop Village

7. Viktoria Astrom - Stormy Seas 2

8. Emma Block- Lisbon Pink House

9. Lisa Congdon - Landscape Study

10. Shop Miss Ella - Cat Cushion

They are some of my current favourite artists and makers on Etsy, but I would love to hear who yours are as I love discovering new, talented artists and makers. So leave me a comment below with a link to who is on your Holiday Gift Guide wishlist this year.

Don't be afraid to list your own Etsy shop too if you have one!

Kim


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Wishing You All A Wonderful Day

Hi Guys, I just want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah or Happy Holidays. Hope that you and your loved ones have a lovely day.

Kim




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Christmas Wrapping With M&S

I may be a papercrafter but I am embarrassed to say that when it comes to gift wrapping, I'm more 'Is is the gift covered?' than professional papercrafter style. And let's not even talk about wrapping the odd-shaped presents! But recently I had the good fortune to be invited along to a Christmas wrapping event with Marks & Spencer to wrap 150 presents for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

It was a great opportunity to do something nice for the patients, their relatives and the staff at an amazing hospital, whilst hanging out with other bloggers plus being able to pick up a few wrapping tips all at the same time.

The halls were decked and we all felt very festive as we wrapped our way through an assortment of M&S gifts, from toys for the children to gift items for the adults. Some were super easy to wrap – give me a box shape to wrap any day. Some were a bit more challenging but for these we had M&S nibbles and drinks to help us through!

There were three main techniques shared for making stylish gift wrap presents: the pleated wrap, the pocket wrap and the DIY gift bag technique; you can see a video for each of them plus a video for a lovely bow over in the Marks & Spencer's New Way With Wrapping Guide.

The enormous green Christmas Cracker-shaped present with the little sausage dogs wearing Santa's hats on the paper, under the tree on the left, is one of mine!

My personal favourite from the tips that were shared was the DIY gift bag technique and I thought I would give that a go when M&S challenged me to wrap a difficult-shaped item from their range. Perfect for these Pull On Fairisle Slipper Boots, I mean what could be more difficult to wrap? Well apart from something round perhaps! So armed with a pack of Christmas wrap, tags, twine, ribbon and adhesive tape, I made a DIY gift bag.

I changed my wrapping up a little bit and added some tissue paper in the top before closing the bag then tied some ribbon around the excess wrap to give it a Christmas cracker-like end. Not that Christmas cracker-style wrapped presents is an obsession with me or anything (Whispers: *it so is).

And because I am a papercrafter and can't leave anything papery alone, I also cut out some holly leaf shapes from green cardstock, lightly folded them down the middle and added them in a cluster on the back of the tag. Just to give it another personal touch.

A massive thank you to M&S for the evening of wrapping, the gift and the wrapping paper but also for all those great gifts going to Great Ormond Street Hospital, what a wonderful idea.

I hope you find their Christmas wrapping guide useful, I certainly did and will be using this gift bag technique again. I might even try some of the pleated wraps too.

[This post is a sponsored collaboration with Marks & Spencer. All the photographs, words and views are my own]

Christmas Day

Peace and happiness to you all!

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Tag Or Tree Decorations, That Is The Question

A Christmas make? Do I have any more Christmas makes? Oddly enough I do! How about some elf tags? Or they could double as Christmas tree decorations too. What do you think? Tags or tree decorations?

These two little elves are digital stamps from Alberto LoShakerato and his Etsy Shop ShakyAPlanet*.

You have Sitting Margot with skirt* and Sitting Margot with pants*.

How cute are they? I've coloured them with Prismacolor pencils in case you wanted to know.

So if you are at a loose end, not sure what to do next (as if! Like you have any spare time right?) then you might want to checkout my other seasonal makes for some inspiration?



Click on the pictures to go to the original blog post.

Have a super fun Friday.

Kim

[*The Esty links are all affiliated links, which means I get a small commission for referring you to Etsy, but it does not cost you or Alberto anything extra but it does help me to run my blog.]

Time For An Update

November is here and the leaves are falling and believe it or not my thoughts are just now turning to Christmas. I say believe it or not because I've actually been making Christmas items since the Summer for magazines etc but I've only just realised that we have a house to decorate rather than a one bedroom flat and the mini-decorations we have been using for the last decade or so aren't going to do the job!

Yep, I had a full-on light bulb moment and a suddenly fizz of excitement when it dawned on me that I should be making some new decorations. *Squeal*.

I might have added a few items to my stash from my local Haberdashery (oh Heaven!) and some strings and glitz bargains from Tiger and I'm making some room in my schedule to get some decorations done.

I'm thinking that I might go, red, silver, greys and gold for my colour combo with a bit of a country cottage theme. Are you making, or have you made, any of your own decorations this year? What colours and themes are you going with this year?

I'm not entirely sure how much I will get done as I've been kind of busy. You might have seen my work in Simply Cards and Papercraft issues 129 and 130, Papercraft Essentials, Creative Cardmaking issue 73 and Creative Stamping issue 20 if you get these magazines, and I'm sorry I've not been doing my usual shout outs here on my blog, starting to think I need to clone myself!

I do have some news for you though, if you haven't seen it already via my social media shouts I've been lucky enough to get through to the Blitsy Creative Team.

Super excited to be working with Blitsy and the rest of the Creative Team.

If you don't already know Blitsy do go check them out, they sell craft products at up to 70% off retail price and you can find some fabulous bargains even with postage and packaging. They have a new sale everyday around 4 pm GMT.

TIP: Blitsy is a US-based company that ship worldwide so don't forget that you have to pay import taxes and duties if you go over certain price limits. Check what is relevant for your country and work out the prices accordingly. For example for the UK the limit is £15, under £15 product value you don't pay any tax on the items when they enter the country.

Blitsy run a Referral scheme so if you use my referral link to join up and make your first purchase I get $10 added to my account. But you can earn money to spend on stash in the shop too when you are a member from your own referral code. Cool, yes?


Ok so I better go work on an article and I'll catch you all later. Meanwhile, leave me a message if you are making your own Christmas decorations, I would love to hear all about them.

Kim