christmas

Christmas card designs

/ The Magpie at Midnight / 3 Comments

redbubble christmas card

It’s been a strange old year this year, and in the UK we’ve just moved into another lockdown of sorts. At times it feels like this situation will never end, and that we’ll never quite get back to normal. I’m finding it a bit difficult to think about what Christmas will look like this year and haven’t got much planned at all.

I’m not normally very good at sending cards at Christmas, as I prefer to try to see people, but I don’t think that will be happening this year. One of the things that I am going to try to do this year is actually send those Christmas cards to people I may not be able to meet in person.

A few years ago I made a couple of funny Christmas card designs and uploaded them to my shop on Redbubble. They are available on cards and other products and I’m still quite pleased with them and feel like they hold up ok.

If you are that way inclined, I would be thrilled if you would take a quick look at the Christmas designs I have here, at Redbubble.

Thank you for reading. I also make art and films. You can see my films at my YouTube channel here. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon Page here.

Another Christmas Doodle

/ The Magpie at Midnight / Leave a comment

redbubble christmas card 2

My boyfriend and I are quite into tickling, which is where the idea for this little doodle originally came from. I have been feeling really tired and flat for the last few months, for reasons that I may blog about in the near future. It has been really nice over that last few weekends to create some cheerful little Christmas themed bits and pieces, to cheer me up as much as anyone else. If you were that way inclined you could buy this design on a Christmas Card here. The addition of this work means that I now have a little collection of Christmas themed designs – if you fancy taking a look they are available on things here.

I would love to know what you think about these, any feedback would be welcome.

Funny design for Christmas

/ The Magpie at Midnight / 1 Comment

I’ve always really loved Christmas. This year feels like it has raced past and I’ll be heading home for the holidays in just three weeks. In my family we have always taken a pretty relaxed approach to the day, spending most of it sipping fizz and hanging out in front of the telly in our pyjamas. I think we are pretty lucky in that everyone seems to get along ok at Christmas, which can be a fraught time. It’s not always perfect, but I don’t ever remember a big Christmas falling out. Last year I put up a quirky little doodle on my facebook and instagram pages to say Happy Christmas to everyone. I had a little look at it this morning, and decided to give it a few photoshop tweaks. I think ‘be nice to each other’ is a good rule of thumb over this hectic and sometimes tense few days. If I had a proper business head on me I would probably have put this out quite a bit sooner, but never mind. It’s now available on things at Redbubble here (As type this Redbubble are offering a site wide 20% off apparel – you’ll need this code at the check out GIFTON20, expires midnight today (26.11.2017))

redbubble christmas card

I think the trick for us is the ‘being together’. We are pretty good at concentrating on spending that time together, and we aren’t too focussed on the consumerist elements of it. We like to sit together and have a laugh about silly things, and play with the tiny dogs that my family have become a bit obsessed with over the last few years. It’s nor very exciting or glamorous, but it works for us, anyway.

What do you guys get up to over the holiday season?

Christmas creativity: Something pretty to do with those empty booze bottles

/ The Magpie at Midnight / Leave a comment

I hope everyone is enjoying some down time over the festive season. We’ve had some family staying. They left today and we have a night off this eve before another round of family arrives tomorrow. I’ve not had much time for creative things but was able, in an idle moment, to put these beauties together. This is super easy so I wanted to share this with any one who had been working up a recycling mountain, which you can now confidently rename as a ‘stockpile of craft materials’.

So you will need:

Empty glass bottles or jars – you want to wash these out and let them dry thoroughly before you do this. Keep the corks, screw lids or wire cages. You’all need those later.

A small/ light weight string of fairy lights. I have been using theses Starry String Lights from YIHONG. I really like these and had them in the house because I bought a load in for a completely different project. They are a 2m strand of tiny LED lights sealed in blobs of glue on delicate copper wire, attached to a battery pack fitted with an on-off switch. The sales info suggests the batteries should last for 72 hours. I’ve not had these going for that long to test that out yet but we’ve had them on for most of Christmas and they are still very bright. The batteries are replaceable. These lights are designed to be worn in clothing so don’t use a high enough voltage to cause a shock. I would avoid using fairy lights that draw power for the mains – I’m not at all sure how you would use these safely with bottles that have metal caps or lids.

What you do:

You want to uncoil the length of the fairy lights and then feed them slowly into your glass bottle. I’ve deliberately let mine coil up in a very uneven pattern as I think this looks quite magical but I’m sure that the more ingenious among you could find a way to get them to sit evenly in the glass. I’ve been really lazy about capping these off, and have just pushed the tops back in or on over the wire – mine stick out a bit. For a better result you probably want to slice a channel down one side of the cork for the wire to sit in before you push the cork back in. You can also screw screw caps over the fine copper wire if you run it down the outside of the neck of the bottle. And that’s it. Done. 

Happy Christmas.