Christmas in July Blog Hop

Hi everyone and thanks for visiting!

Today the ESAD group are holding a Christmas in July blog hop.  It’s a great way to start gathering ideas for your Christmas projects.

So what exactly is ESAD?

ESAD stands for Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators and it is an online group just for Australian and New Zealand demonstrators for Stampin’ Up!

We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors but we share our love for what we do with each other as Demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know how and cyberstamps and we are always there to help and support each other when its needed.

So if you are a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.

You may have just arrived here on my blog from Carol Ann Torrie’s blog, or you may just be visiting me here!  Either way, be sure to follow the link at the bottom of my post to see the next stop on your Christmas in July blog hop.

I have decided to focus my project today on Christmas gifts, and particularly inexpensive gift ideas which you can get a head start on in the very near future.  I have filled a small terracotta pot with chives, decorated the pot and created an accompanying set of recipe cards.  This is a great project to get started on right NOW.  You can pick up this sized pot for around $1.25 at Bunnings, the matching saucer was also $1.25.  While you are there grab a pack of  seeds, go home and plant them.  One pack of seeds would easily fill at least 5 pots, a super easy way to create multiple gifts.  Anytime from late August, pop the seeds into the pot with some potting mix and let them grow.

In the meantime, you can create festive gift tags for the pot – I have used my Big Shot, together with the Level 1 Hostess Set – Best Yet.  The holly is from Christmas Classics. Don’t forget to plan out the type and amount of ribbon that you would also need!

This is also a great time to organise the matching recipe cards.  Remember this gift idea would work with a large range of seeds, just be sure that it’s something which will be happy in a pot!

I have created a set of 4 recipe cards, which all feature chives as an ingredient.  The grass from Inspired by Nature makes perfect ‘chives’ for the background of my recipe cards.  Another alternative would be to grow strawberries in a pot as a gift.  Below is an idea for a strawberry recipe card.

I hope these have given you an idea for your Christmas gift creations!  This idea is limited only by your imagination – you could add a decorative belly band to a punnet of fresh strawberries and attach the recipe cards to that.  It’s a gift idea that’s a little bit different to things like a box of choccies or a mug 🙂

The next stop on the ESAD Christmas in July Blog Hop is Genelle Little’s blog – thanks for visiting!