Christmas shortbread cookies

I made these Shortbread cookies today, they are my first attempt at making shortbread and my first attempt at using fondant to decorate cookies. After having a play today I have a list of things to buy so when I decorate some more for Christmas I can make them better. They sure taste yummy, I will take some to work tomorrow to test out on my co-workers.. they love my cookies..

2016 Victoria Plum calendar 2

Here are the next 4 pages of my calendar. On the first 2 I used glitter gel pens to colour in the background, On the second 2 pages I used Tim Holtz distress inks smooshed onto a sheet then used a paintbrush to paint them on the page.

Gift basket and paper.

I made this basket and matching paper for our Christmas gift exchange at our Christmas party for ACTSA ( ACT stamp artists). I made the basket out of light coloured card which I used Tim Holtz distress ink on and stamped a pattern in black ink. When I finished the basket I decided to make some matching paper to wrap my gift in.

Mango Chutney

I love Mangoes... Ya just know it is coming to Summer in Aus. when mangoes start appearing. I found this delicious recipe in the freebie magazine you get from Coles and I just had to make it.

to make it you just follow this simple recipe...

Mango Chutney

3 just-ripe mangoes, peeled, stoned and coarsely chopped
2 brown onions, coarsely chopped
1 cup (250ml) apple cider vinegar
2 cups (440g) white sugar
1tbs finely grated ginger
2tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp mixed spice
pinch of ground cloves

1. Place mango, onion, sugar, vinegar, sugar, ginger, cumin, coriander, mixed spice cloves in a large  heavy based saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium -low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour or until mixture thickens. Remove from heat.
2. Carefully divide hot chutney between warm sterilized jars and seal. Turn upside down for 2 mins. Turn upright and set aside to cool completely.

Makes 2 x 500ml jars
Prep time 15 mins
Cooking 1 Hour

2016 Victoria plum calendar.

I don't know who these characters are, so I am calling them flower sprites, if anyone does know who they are please let me know.I now Know the Character is Victoria Plum so have edited the post Anyway I needed to make 1 more calendar for this year and I went through my stash of collage pictures and found a number of pictures of these characters, which I got as freebies from CUP, so I decided to use them. The background is a colouring page from 1 of several books that were going to be trashed at work so I took them thinking I might find a use for them. I coloured the mushroom picture with my Prismacolor pencils, then cut it in half and added a half to each calendar page. I used spellbinder dies to cut out the flower sprite pictures.

CupCakes

I made these delicious Chocolate choc-chip cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting, embellished with chocolate hearts and red sugar crystals.

I think I have made my last Christmas card for the year

I just finished this Iris folding Christmas tree card. I used a pattern bought from CUP and designed by Sarah Edwards.

Strawberries calendar page

This is the final page for My 2016 Iris folding calendar. To make this page I used a pattern I purchased from CUP, designed by Anna Babajanyan.

Iris folding Purple Ornament card

I used a pattern purchased from CUP and designed by Silvia Griffin to make this card.

Iris folding ship calendar page

I made this page using a sheet I purchased from CUP designed by Silvia Griffin. I did the background of the pirate ship by smooshing some Tim Holtz distress inks onto a piece of plastic and adding water then painting it onto my card, I added some stamped seagulls as well. I used wrapping paper for the folding and a brown Tombow for drawing in the bottom of the masts. I also used some bronze line stickers around the Sails.

Chocolate Spider Cookies

I found the recipes for these cookies in the Better Homes and Garden magazines and thought they looked fun, so I just had to make them. The spiders body is made from a malteaser and the head is a chocolate sultana. The legs are made from chocolate writing icing and the eyes and red stripe from red icing gel.

Ornate Christmas tree Iris folding card

I made this card this morning using A pattern I bought from CUP designed by Silvia Griffin.

Tim Holtz Distress ink combos

After seeing the Distress ink combos on the Simon Says Blog , I decided I had print them out, after printing them I decided to use my blending tool and the inks on some scraps of card and cut out circles with the smallest spellbinders nestabilities die to put over the printed colours as I find printed colours don't look the same as the actual colour. Once I had done that I laminated each of the colour combos, punched a hole the top left corner of each and put them on a metal ring and put this in the box with my stamp pads.

Blue and Silver Christmas card

I finished this Iris folding card last night and forgot to post it, I purchased the pattern from CUP and it was designed by Silvia Griffin

Dylusions paint and Ink swatches.

I finished some more colour swatches.. this time Dylusions. There are only 12 paints so far, but I am hoping they will make paints in the other ink colours so I added then to my chart just in case :) .
for the paint I used a ranger mini blending tool to colour my swatches and for the ink I sprayed it onto my Ranger craft sheet and smooshed my card pieces in it.. my fingers are all pretty colours now, hopefully it is gone before I go to work tomorrow.. :) lol

 

 

O Christmas tree Iris folding cards

I made this 2 cards from a pattern purchased from CUP designed by Margaret Jones. For the tree part of the card on both cards I used the same wrapping paper, I changed the colours of the pot and got lucky and found a some paper that looked like a tree trunk.

Bell ornament Iris folding

I just finished this calendar page, I used a pattern purchased from CUP and designed by Silvia Griffin. For July I decided to do Christmas in July as my theme.