Christmas cards and mince pies

 We escaped Kent briefly for the day yesterday to travel up to Bedfordshire and drop off Christmas presents to my sister in law and her children.  The weather was atrocious all the way there but as we arrived in Bedford the rain actually stopped for long enough for us to eat the most delicious, socially distanced chilli and baked potatoes outside.  We had hot water bottles shoved down our coats and I had nana’s knitted woollen socks on which kept my feet toasty.

After lunch we went for a very soggy walk round Bedford Park where it had rained so much that the football pitch had turned into a quagmire. It's a lovely, late Victorian park but I'm not sure I've ever walked around it without being completely nithered.  The 6 year olds, oblivious to the cold, enjoyed jumping into muddy puddles for the first half of the walk and then were extremely soggy for the second half. They’d been to see socially distanced Father Christmas the day before and given presents of cuddly lemurs via long sticks by the elves.  One of these lemurs accidentally went for a muddy puddle swim so I can imagine the washing machine would have been on continuously after our excursion. 

My sister in law is a kindred spirit in terms of mince pie perfection. Neither she or I have ever been that keen on them but these ones were the BEST I've ever tasted.  She used the recipe here and didn't put very much mincemeat in and they were delicious.  She gave me three to take home which I intend to savour with a cup of tea in front of the fire - not all at once of course...

I don’t have many traditions for Christmas, but making cards is becoming one of them.  Last year I made some little thumbprint robins (as I’d bought some card blanks earlier in the year) and wanted to do something personal and fun, but fairly quick.

Like many folk, I find writing Christmas cards to be a bit of a chore but making my own feels more like giving a gift instead and therefore it becomes a process I enjoy.  Many years ago I used to make Christmas cards to sell at a craft fair at Merton Abbey Mills in South London and also to give a few to family and friends. Once I was working full time and then becoming a mum, that very busy run up to Christmas when the children were small meant that handmade cards didn't get made.
This year the plan was to stitch a winter themed embroidery and have it scanned in at my local printing shop - with an idea to see how a giclee print would look too. However when it became clear that lockdown would impact this when it needed to be organised, I decided to go old school and paint them and stitch them instead.

I found a stitched card I’d done a few years before and still liked it so I made a few more similar to that.  I'm very keen on Scandinavian decorations, using predominantly red and white - and using felt and gingham fabric that I had in my stash was a deciding factor too. Any project that uses up some of my enormous stash of things is always good!

For the painted cards I played around with a few ideas and settled on a snowy landscape with Christmas trees. I felt like something was missing so I painted a small fox wearing a Santa hat and that seemed to finish it off. 

Growing up, I absolutely loved stories that involved anthropomorphic animals living in cosy dwellings like the Brambly Hedge mice or the characters from The Wind in the Willows and I suppose my love for that type of illustration has never left me.  I don't pretend to be an illustrator or to be a good painter but I enjoyed painting these little gouache scenes immensely.  Painting these transported me into “the zone” where time becomes irrelevant and there is complete absorption in the process.  Although painting lots of these was time consuming and sending one to a printer’s to be scanned would have made more sense, I really like how each fox is distinct and each landscape and snow fall is slightly different.

Once painted I varnished them with non water soluble gloss varnish, as I like the way the varnish deepens the colours and it also protects the paintings.

A quick cut out and stick onto the card blanks and they are done. 

I’m planning on a few more if I can get time - possibly of a partridge in a pear tree and then that's it for this year.  I'll post about my winter embroidery soon as I still intend to get that scanned in ready for use next winter.