Here’s My Card! - Making your own Christmas cards for a truly personal touch

By Joyce Hickey

If It weren’t for the fact that I'm not a glittery sort of person, it would be right to call me a magpie. I collect everything: scraps of paper; ribbons; boxes; bits of twine; printed cellophane from bouquets; coloured tissue; calendars; anything that I can envisage using in something else. Shelves lean under boxes labelled with their contents: matt ribbons; gold flower bits; Christmas sparkles; beads; gold paper; silver raffia. An engineer's map cabinet stores large sheets of handmade paper, each drawer named according to its contents: Light Years holds tissue paper; Auntie Estie holds blue and green (she always said they couldn't be seen, except with something in between); Firestarter is the home of yellow and gold, orange and red.

I've always made collages and as a child was usually found at the kitchen table covered with bits and scraps and stuck together with Dad's glue (I was particularly partial to Copydex). Later, I started making Christmas cards for friends who were well used to my propensity for puns - one year it was a pair of sheep under a starlit sky (Merry Christmas two ewe), the next a snowman with a parcel (Snow time - like the present?).

Then the paper fetish really started to fester and sharing a house with like-minded "make-and-do" friends led to many productive evenings in two-channel land. (One of them got married in Tasmania and imagine our delight when, arriving at the house on the eve of the wedding, we were hauled out of the camper van and presented with a box of treasures with which to make the next day's place cards.)

In the days when I didn't realise how much time I had, I used to sell my cards to colleagues, friends, shops and galleries. Now, apart from special occasion and baby cards, most of my "making and doing" is made and done by my two small sons who love their scissors, paper, glue - but know better than to venture within a ruler's length of my shelves. And while they slept I made these cards.

The first, in traditional Christmassy colours, combines matt gold paper from I don't know where with thick green, bamboo-ridged paper hauled home from India dotted with tiny blobs of gold sealing wax. Curiosity almost singed the cat, which led to the scratchy bit towards the top of the tree but adds to the handmade feel (never homemade, please, that's for cakes and jam).
The more modern card uses purple Thai paper bought in Daintree on Camden Street for our wedding invitations in 1999, as well as silver spotty paper I got in Ikea for my friend's wedding invitations in 2002, and the concertina is the last scrap of a roll of Christmas wrapping paper from the Pier. I always use these Italian-made Mediovalis cards from Daintree; I love the deckle edge and the off-white colour.

Maybe, when I have more time, normal card-making activity will resume. But in the meantime I will increase, reuse, recycle every scrap. And make sparkly reindeer with two deliciously sticky little boys.

Click Here to Discover How to Become a Craft Store Owner

By Joyce Hickey for the Irish Times

Hearth and Soul - Decorating Your Home For Christmas

Well I have finally finished decorating the house for Christmas and can now relax with what I believe is a job well done. But it’s easy when you know how – and I can’t take all the credit – here are some top tips from interior decorator guru, Linda Fornam, for decorating your home for Christmas.

When decorating your home for Christmas, making your fireplace a focal point is the perfect way to add some traditional festive charm. "Remember, the mantelpiece is situated at eye level," says interior decorator, Linda Fornam. "It is the first place your eye will be drawn to when entering a room. It speaks volumes about you and the personality of your home, and needs to be dressed accordingly."

If you are using a real Christmas tree, Linda suggests introducing greenery to your mantelpiece to add a touch of nature to your theme. Traditional holly, real mistletoe and cuttings from any shrubs from your garden arranged into garlands across the mantelpiece always create a gorgeous Christmas look. Add a beautiful glow by intertwining the garlands with tiny white fairy lights, or by introducing some pillar candles (being careful of where you place them, of course) or lanterns.

Stockings hung on the mantelpiece, even if there are no children in the house, provide a classic yuletide look.

Click Here to Discover How to Become an Interior Decorator

Couple Lose Home Via Facebook

An attorney in Australia has used the popular networking website Facebook to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.

The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court last Friday approved lawyer Mark McCormack's application to use Facebook to serve the legally binding documents after several failed attempts to contact the couple at the house and by email.

Australian courts have given permission in the past for people to be served via email and text messages when it was not possible to serve them in person.

The lender's application to take back the house in the capital, Canberra, was approved on October 3 after the couple failed to appear in court. The lender was then required to serve the so-called default judgment on the couple before it could seize the property.

"It's somewhat novel, however we do see it as a valid method of bringing the matter to the attention of the defendant," said McCormack, who represents a mortgage lender.

Cornwell is on the case

Patricia Cornwell

In trying times, one doesn't instinctively turn to Patricia Cornwell. Optimism doesn't tend to hang out much among serial killers and murdered women.

But the multimillionaire creator of forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta is adamant her new novel, Scarpetta, is intended to cheer everybody up. 'It's a celebratory book and it couldn't come at a better time; people are pretty gloomy these days,' she says.

'It's been nearly 20 years since Postmortem [her debut novel, published in 1990] and I owed it to Scarpetta to honour her life.'

Like many authors, Cornwell sometimes talks about her literary creation as if she is real. There's no doubt Scarpetta's stomach-turning encounters with mutilated bodies have caught the imagination of millions – an avenging angel with a scalpel devoted to fighting evil who could have come straight from George W Bush's dreams if Cornwell hadn't recently switched allegiance to the Democrats.

Tracking people through cyberspace is a massive challenge. Everyone can be a victim. This time, though, fans will be relieved to know that Scarpetta is moving on from the shock attempted rape that ended last novel Book Of The Dead and is now married to psychologist Benton Wesley. 'People have said for years that they wish she could be happy,' she says.

'Thing is, people aren't happy in crime fiction. But I had her make this commitment because I wanted this book to be all about her.' There's certainly a warmer tone to the 16th Scarpetta novel – not least since the pathologist has abandoned the morgue for the better-heated environs of a psychiatry ward where a murder suspect called Oscar Bane insists on confiding only in her.

It also tackles one of Cornwall's favourite subjects – cyber crime – as Scarpetta, newly a TV personality, becomes the target of attacks on a gossip website.
'There's no way I can write about modern crime and not talk about the net,' says Cornwell, who prides herself on bringing a documentary precision to her heavily researched subjects. 'Tracking people through cyberspace is a massive challenge. Everyone can be a victim: I've been stalked on the net. You don't know what you're dealing with.'

This new criminal twilight also brought new challenges to Cornwell the novelist: previously, her books had inhabited a moral world where good and bad are as rigidly distinguishable as black and white. Now danger and fear can lurk anywhere, inside the home and out. 'Yes!' she agrees. 'There's an increasing emphasis on spying on people in the US, for example, with the Patriot Act. People aren't sure what's real.
The net breeds this ambiguity, and this is embodied in Oscar Bane – is he a crackpot, a killer or is someone really doing something awful to him?'

Cornwell's own life is often described as being as turbulent as her fiction. A lesbian affair with a married FBI agent became headline news in 1996 when the husband was charged with the attempted murder of his wife. She also spent a fortune defending her theory that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper – and took out newspaper ads denying she was obsessed.

Three years ago, however, she married her girlfriend. It can be no coincidence that Scarpetta is also married: does she consider the character her alter ego? 'Not really,' Cornwell responds. 'Actually, she's created me as much as I've created her. If you spend your time following criminal investigations, then you have to ponder weighty subjects and that changes you.'

So what next for Scarpetta? 'I'm going to take things in a whole new direction,' she says. 'It got pretty stark in my last few books; even I'm tired of it.'

Scarpetta (Kay Scarpetta) is out now.

The Secret Scripture By Sebastian Barry

Faber & Faber

Sebastian Barry made the Booker shortlist for this follow-up to World War 1 saga ‘A long, Long Way’. I loved this new work which is a deeply lyrical and engaging account of 100-year-old Roseanne Clear, a patient in a Roscommon mental hospital, who puts pen to paper and recounts her eventful life in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War. Recommended.

New Nokia Home Control Centre

How about this clever little item – a new phone has been developed that allows you to use your phone to interact with equipment at home, no matter where you are. The Nokia Home Control Centre is a wireless router that allows the user to text their house and ‘tell it what to do’, such as turning on or off the lights, or remotely controlling the alarm system. The centre also allows the user to preset conditions in a house, such as adjusting the temperature or activating the air conditioning. It can also recognise a cold snap and kick start the heating.

Perfect for all you moms out and about on these cold winter nights - you can turn the heat on before you get home!

For other great phones check out Best Smart Phones for Business Review.