Christmas in July

As a crafter, the word "Christmas" often pops into my head as early as June and I start to think ahead to my favourite holiday season of the year. New craft products for the festive season always get released each year in July and August and I start looking early to try and get some inspiration for crafty makes I want to do leading up to Christmas. You may be thinking that surely there will be plenty of time to craft for Christmas later in the year. However I have always found that once September rolls around the next few months whizz by in a flash and before you know it, it's December and you are still finishing off the last of your Christmas cards and handmade gifts!

Over the past month we have started to have a play with some Christmas crafting and I wanted to share a little sneak peek of some makes we have been working on and perhaps whet your appetite for some Christmas crafting!

First up is a sneak peek of my Christmas card designs this year. I started researching some ideas on Pinterest and also had a look at some craft websites to look at the previous years Christmas designs and see if I could get inspired. I visited one of my favourite brand websites which is Hero Arts - who do some of the best Christmas stamp sets! After looking through quite a few different designs I found this one - Winter Woods Heroscapes (CM491) and once I saw some of the samples I knew this was what I wanted to  use to create my cards this year. Luckily I managed to find this stamp set on a UK craft website called Bumbleberry PaperCrafts - who I highly recommend if you are trying to find some American brand stamp sets in the UK. 

Once I received my stamp set (extremely quickly BTW) I started experimenting with some colours. In the example above I used a selection of Tim Holtz Distress ink pads but I am also considering purchasing some Hero Arts ink pad sets that have a gradient effect which will create the perfect colouring for these cards.

The next sneak peek is a a piece of home decor which mum created. We think this may potentially be a workshop project in the near future so watch this space for more details. This project was inspired by Tattered Nest Designs and you can visit the blog post here that we were inspired by. We think this is going to be a fantastic workshop project, which incorporates lots of arty techniques and is a fun decoration to hang up in your house at Christmas. 

Our last sneak peek is of another potential workshop project which is a small home decor Christmas decoration. These decorations are from a kit that was designed by Papertrey Ink a few years ago called the Make It Market: Wonderland Kit. I can't believe we haven't even played around with the items in this kit as they can make the prettiest of decorations and stationery for Christmas. I have been gaining some inspiration from Pinterest over the past few weeks and have finally started to have a play. There are many different combinations of designs you can create using this kit and I can't wait to share more of them with you once I have had a creative session.

So that concludes our sneak peek of Christmas makes and an insight into how early we start crafting for Christmas! Make sure you check out some of your favourite craft websites for New Christmas products for this year. If you are a fan of Hobbycraft, they have started to list some of their Christmas products online and will be launching Christmas officially in August! It's never too early to get in the festive spirit!