Something crafty this way comes...

Reading everybody's blogs has left me feeling rather inadequate about my paltry efforts to the Creative and Crafty Chrismas God.

I've been thinking I was a bit of a crafty person. But it turns out that I'm just crafty in comparison to the people that I'm friends with. Once I turn to the blogs it turns out I'm lower down the ranks of craftiness. Actually I'm probably at the bottom.

But I must be patient and accept that these things take time. 2009 was the year of the cross stitch. Now I have that mastered that, 2010 will be the time to turn my hand to other crafts. Crochet, knitting, sewing - they're all on the list!

So my creative efforts this year are pretty much solely based around aida and thread. The Christmas cards have been cross-stitched and are ready to be sent out. There is a tier system operating with my Christmas cards this year - family and very close friends will receive the honour of a cross-stitched card through their letterboxes. The next tier will receive Christmas tree cards as blogged about in this post and the credit to which goes entirely to Petit Filoux. The final tier of people (mainly consisting of people I work with and those people who give me cards unexpectedly) will be receiving some shop bought ones.

The cross stitch has also extended to tags for people's presents. There was an alphabet included in the latest issue of Cross Stitch Card Shop and I have been furiously stitching away in an attempt to get them all finished in time for Christmas Day and the last posting date.

They're not too fiddly and only take a couple of hours to do so that's been about 1 a night which doesn't sound too bad until you realise how many Christmas presents you have. The decision was made very early on that no matter how many presents someone was getting, they would only be receiving one tag with their initial on it.

Last night Christmas came to the flat as I sat there and began the wrapping process. I love it. I absolutely bloody love wrapping presents. Normally there's lots of string and bows and fancy stuff which people do seem to like when they see the present but is closely followed by complaints that they can't actually get in to their presents. I figure if they have a special tag then I'm allowed to miss out the streamers.

Oh my goodness. It's actually nearly here...

PS Do you love the sprout wrapping paper? Like really love it? Well tough you can't have it. God alright alright you can, you just need to go to Urban Outfitters. It's £2.50 a sheet so I wouldn't make plans to wrap all your presents in it but it's great for little stocking filler type pressies.

PPS The rest of the wrapping paper is from Paperchase.