Christmas wishes

I love it when the postman starts to bring Christmas wishes from dear friends far and near. I spotted the first lovely stamp on an envelope last weekend and enjoyed catching up on our friend Sandra’s news from there Down Under in Tasmania.

Of course, it was a gentle nudge for me to get on with our cards, for though I’d begun the process of making them a few days earlier, I really did need to crack on!

I was looking for some white card when I came across a box of leftovers…cards made in previous years but not needed. I always make one or two spares, “just in case” we mess one up in the writing and this box was a bit of a tour through the last few years.

I have always made our Christmas cards, enjoying the process of making and appreciating the opportunity to think about the people and places they’re headed for. Looking through the “archive” was fun though it seemed as though all of them were surely “just last year”? (Of course not!)

Here’s a quick zip through the last twelve years!

For 2025, I decided to use a mistletoe motif. Mistletoe is a plant which grows wild in the trees around here and we usually have a bunch hanging somewhere in the house. What’s not to love about the tradition of a kiss under the mistletoe?

I’d been having a conversation with some of my like-minded friends about the various tools and machines which are popular with craftspeople these days. At what point does the “hand made” get lost in the process? It was with those thoughts in mind that I began the process of colouring some paper by spraying some old book pages with Brusho (a familiar product since schooldays!)

The sink in the laundry was a bit of a mess! Thankfully, good old Brusho is easy to clean…

Once dry, I cut the tissue-thin paper using some mistletoe dies, agreeing with my Hero that the print needed to be right way up on the leaves, but trying to get as many leaves from each sheet as I could. I didn’t like the idea of cleaning up another green sink.

I might have questioned whose bright idea it was to cut a shape with such fragile stems (mine) since getting the leaves out of the die took every scrap of patience I could muster.

And then there was the glue. Another topic we’d discussed. I looked out my old needle tipped syringes and decided to replace them with softer plastic bottles with needle-tips, allowing the tiniest spot of matt acrylic medium to be applied here and there. In no time at all, I got into my groove and the team process was established when my Hero swung into action with the envelopes and labels.

Our 2025 Christmas wishes come with much love as always as we hand them over to the Royal Mail and trust they’ll deliver. Clearly their US counterparts have been in action as two round poinsettia stamps dropped into our postbox this morning.

The skies are filled with so many warm wishes!