Sunday 27 August 2017

Christmas Baubles and Wreaths

Firstly - apologies for anyone who tried to access the store in the last 24 hours.  The server which hosts our data crashed in the early hours of Saturday morning and sadly the tech team were unable to restart it so they had to undertake a complex process of moving the data to a new server and ensuring that we restored it in the exact state before it crashed (to ensure that no orders were lost and that inventory levels were accurate).  For some reason the reboot has triggered lots of confirmation emails from May - we are not sure why and can't stop them - if you get a confirmation email today - check that it is for an old order and just ignore it.   We will be updating the orders that shipped yesterday later today so you may get a "real one" too but the dates should be obvious enough to tell the difference.   The system is now up and running again.   We did however not have access ourselves all day yesterday so have lost a days worth of "inputting time"   We will get items loaded as soon as we can - watch our facebook page for notifications.

On the plus side - I did manage to have a quick play with the new Lawn Fawn goodies whilst I was stuck waiting for updates on the store - so I have 3 fun Christmas cards to share.

I started with the stitched ornaments dies as I'm a sucker for baubles (my husband has to steer me away from Christmas decorations departments - we have enough to fill about 10 trees already!)



I love the stitched and die cut details you can add to make lots of different styles of baubles so I went for a simple card design first - an easy one to mass produce which is always handy for Christmas cards.  Simply die cut from green and red card with gold toppers and black strings which I folded over the die cut layer to add to all the stitched details.


For the second one I wanted to feature my favourite image from the stamps in this release - I do love a penguin so this little group of 3 singing ones seemed like the perfect image to pop into a bauble so this time I used the outside stitched detail on the largest die to create a bauble aperture on my card front and stamped the penguins on the base card behind (coloured with pencils so they don't show on the inside).  I added the topper and string again and stamped a co-ordinating sentiment from the Here We Go A-Waddling set.


Finally I had an idea for making quick mini wreaths that had some added realism - use tissue paper!   I bought a pack of tissue which has 2 shades of green in it from a local store for a £1 which will make me about a 1000 wreaths!  You get 5 sheets in each colour so I cut a square through all 10 and die cut them all at once with the wreath die.  Once separated and layered up (using tiny dots of glue to secure the layers) you get a full and fluffy wreath.  I used just 5 layers here so you get two wreaths from one die cut pass.  I used the tiny bow and a few dots of liquid pearls (we'll have more tonic nuvo drops that do the same back in stock soon) to decorate it and added it to a small square card with an embossed square stitched border.  Another really simple and easy to mass produce card.  I'm going to try some more ideas with the same technique so watch this space for future posts.





NEWS FROM THE STORE

  • We will start to work on the Hero Arts release again now we have access to the store - it takes around 10 minutes per item to add stock to the store and there are over 100 to add.........   We also have "non store" tasks to be done this weekend so cannot unfortunately work on it solidly.  We will post on facebook as soon as it's finished and live.
  • We have the new Christmas release from Flora and Fauna in transit and hope to have by the end of the week.
  • We've ordered the latest release from Altenew (everything except the storage pockets as we will not be stocking those as they are no different from the Avery Elle version we already stock.) and expect to have that by early to mid-September as it takes a while from them to process and ship orders.
  • We have ordered the latest release from Sugar Pea Designs and expect that to ship this week.
  • There will be more new releases released to retailers this week and we will be placing orders for those including MFT, Stamping Bella, Lil' Inkers and Winnie and Walter.  Check the weekly newsletter and Facebook for future updates on when they will be in store.
Enjoy the rest of your bank holiday weekend.

See you next weekend!

Tara




2 comments:

  1. What a pretty trio of cards. I'm so glad that your server is all restored..what a nightmare for you x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love these cards. I'd never of thought of using tissue paper like that, who knew lol. Hope you get some downtime this bank holiday to just rest!

    ReplyDelete

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The Seven Hills Crafts Design Team