Well, 2011 is almost over so I best post something about Christmas before it’s too late. I don’t really do Christmas soI can’t promise it will be exciting. Above are most of my gifts including lots of Paperchase and Lego stuff from my sister!

My Christmas Eve tradition is digging out my Gamecube and Animal Crossing, pulling up a year’s worth of weeds, stomping on all the cockroaches in my neglected house and then hunting up Jingle the reindeer for some gifts. It’s really pretty with the snow and the tree lights and has so many more fun things than the DS version, like balloons and Halloween and getting a gold statue of yourself when you pay off your mortgage.

On the right, a Lego minifig ice cube! They are really ace, except having Lego men floating face down in your drink feels a bit wrong.

Christmas noms – fancy dinner at Malmaison with my workmates at 5pm. Tablet ice cream on Boxing Day. Would eat again.

And finally, my bestest present – the bunny lamp I have been coveting from John Lewis. It was a bit out of  my budget but everyone else loves it too so I got it with my Christmas money. Plus, since I saw it, my main bedroom light fitting fell apart and had to be replaced and then the bulb blew on my beside lamp. You can’t argue against that. Hope you all had a good Christmas too.

Well, it’s almost the end of 2011, which means another 12 months of what I wore drawings. I’ve decided to stop drawing them so regularly next year so it seemed like a good time to collect all the ones I’ve done so far into a zine. I’m rather pleased with the cover, which took me all of fifteen minutes and yet looks like a real book you might see in a shop.

The zine is FREE to download so go get yourself a copy from Pushpin Zines. You should check out the rest of the zines on offer too – there’s some great new stuff available.

PS. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway!

I’ve packed and shipped all my orders, wrapped and posted all my gifts and have one more day of work to do – then I have two whole weeks off! I’ve closed my Folksy and DaWanda shops, but my own shop and Etsy will stay open, though orders may not be posted until January 5th.

While I am looking forward to having a bit of a rest, I’ve got plenty of projects planned. I’ve already started on a couple of zines I hope to finish soon. I’ve also got a little giveaway planned to thank you all for your support so look out for that!

These are a few photos from my weekend wander around Glasgow Green. Quite a contrast between the icy river and the warm winter garden.

I saw this tiny (real!) Christmas tree in M&S and had to buy it since a) I am tiny and b) I only like Christmas a tiny amount. It was pretty cute already but I thought I should add a few tiny decorations.

I thought I would probably have enough phone charms to use, but most of them were too big or had long loops. I had to keep the little orange guy though as it’s too cute. I clipped a bunny brooch on the top of the tree, that I made previously from felt easter decorations.

The rest are made from stickers! The square ones are by Moo (from my gift wrap sets) and the others are from my collection. I just found two the same and stuck them together with a loop of thread in between. The paper doves look particularly nice.

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. If I can keep it alive I can change the decorations after Christmas – I’m thinking some pompom ribbon would be cute.

So, my very short holiday craft market season is over, and the Holiday Hullabaloo was a fantastic day. Definitely my most profitable market to date and everyone was so nice too. I gave out hundreds of free cookie ornament postcards, introduced a lot of people to the world of zines and barely got a chance to sit down all day. Good times. I was too busy to take any photos but the one above of my stall is by Made in the Shade. Here’s a few more pics of my own from the past few weeks.

1. Lucky bags! I have a few left, which I’ll be popping in orders this week.
2. Filling a crate with stuff to take to market. Those cookies were popular!

3. Adorable little poker chip necklace sent to me by Hannah Zakari.
4. Jam-less Jammie Dodger notebooks in progress.

5. The winter madness in George Square. It looks like summer – it was actually freezing.
6. The joys of winter – almost full moon at twilight.

If you’ve got an iPhone/iPod Touch you can follow my photos on Instagram (marcelinesmith) or if not, there’s Instagrid, and I post the best ones on Flickr too.

PS. Don’t forget my Christmas Countdown – 8 new products up today with 25% off!

My day was going to be fairly similar to the last one (Monday and Thursday are my shipping days) so I did it in photos. They are not particularly brilliant photos but hey, it’s just like when I forget to clean my glasses.

1. Asian Pear (and tea) for breakfast. I slightly regret letting Claire take me to Asda last week where I found these as they are awesome and now I can’t find any and will have to make a special trip to The Forge. They are like appley pears.

2. The postman banged on the door just as I had cut a long piece of sticky tape. It looks pretty exciting but I had already deduced that 2 contained printer ink and 1 was my A5 cellophane bags. At least the other had a zine.

3. Pile of 5 Year Diary pre-orders ready to parcel up.
4. Stack of orders waiting for their postage labels.

5. It was cold enough to wear my pompom hat, hurray.

6. I was trying to photograph my Cakeify shoes and the nice leaf pattern but it wasn’t working and there were too many people at the bus stop and it was raining. SORRY.

7. Despite all this, I still had to wait ages for a bus, in the rain. Bridgeton’s Christmas decorations are up. They are very dull. The old ones were awesomely rubbish.

8. Bus reading. The DIY Times. I recommend it.

9. All I did in town was post my orders, buy some food and 35 padded envelopes and then come home. Not even 3000 steps. Usually my Gastly has a big heart next to him but not today :(

10. Cutting, folding, packing gift wrap for variety packs. I made twenty, which was possibly excessive.

11. Green tea and pistachios from my fortnightly Graze box, while watching Pan Am. It was pretty good in a fluffy way. Is it true that Americans don’t know what a fortnight is? I suppose it isn’t very obvious. Bi-weekly is even worse though.

12. Reading in bed. This is a really good book about all the people who live in the Arctic Circle. Today’s chapter was about Lapland.

And there you have it. I did also eat lunch and supper but I was too hungry to get my phone.

Claire is collating the posts this time, as Laura only went and had her baby! Congratulations Laura!