What a fantastic day. My house has been full of friends and creations. Just the way I like it!
  My children have had an Inset day (or insect day as we prefer to call them) so they have been around with their friends and I have had lots of friends calling in too. It's been lovely.

My partner in creative mischief has been here too and we planned to do some Christmas card printing.  However, we were side tracked and began by looking at the Clever baggers site http://thecleverbaggers.co.uk with the intention of getting some bags and Santa sacks to embellish.
we moved on to looking Irene's sketch book, which shows her work and thought processes.  have a look at http://www.sewstitchknit.com and you'll see what she is upto. I love her latest petal work.
Then we began experimenting with the soldering iron and Irene cut through a number of layers of organza to make some cute Christmas tree shapes.  She has kindly left it with me so that I can have a play with it at my leisure.  (I'll never get the ironing done at this rate!)

Meanwhile, I used some delightful silk paper that we bought when we went to the NEC festival of Quilts in August. I used a gorgeous wooden block stamp of a Christmas tree from Colouricious to print using a variety of inks and acrylic paint.  I have added embossing powder to some of the trees, but have yet to apply the heat to activate the powder. I need to borrow this from my friend.

Then I had a go with some fabric paints.  I have embellished some of the trees using free machine embroidery. Some of the trees are printed onto a cotton fabric whilst others are on organza and scrim.

This tree has been embellished wit a metallic thread. It's quite a subtle effect, but I think it will look lovely as a card.

 Finally I used a masked template to create the three trees image with white acrylic and silver embossing powder. Once again the true effect will only be revealed when I use the heating tool.
 I will have to turn this into a card and send it with love to someone special. 
I think it's been a successful day ... and as a few hours have elapsed since I began writing this post ..... the ironing is also done!  Phew.