Now we've finished compiling the
H&H festive gift guide
(out this Saturday), it's time to turn our attention to other seasonal duties, like decorating the house and writing Christmas cards.
The limited amount of seasonal items like
cards and decorations
on sale here means your choices can be restricted, and when you do manage to find something you like it can be expensive.
This is one of the reasons why we're making our own cards and decorations this year - a task made a great deal easier with the discovery of
Prima
decorative paper.
Available in Dubai at
(
Town Centre, Jumeira) and
Craft Corner
(Airport Road, next to the Marks & Spencer building), a book of 48 sheets of their beautiful North Country screen-printed seasonal designs cost Dh55. Here's a sample:
We also bought a rubber Christmas stamp set by
(Dh55, Craft Corner) to customise the cards a little more.
From
one sheet of the paper
with the reindeer design, we could make make o
ne greetings card and a gift tag
... for less than one dirham.
There was still some paper left over, so we cut a small square from it, stamped it with the image of a dove and used it as a motif on a another card (made with plain paper).
Then, using the red and blue snowflake paper (plus a small square of plain paper stamped with the dove again), we made another two cards. One of which you can see here...
In total, these three cards plus the gift tag cost less than Dh1.50 to make, and so far we've yet to find anything anywhere near as cheap that we'd be happy to send.
We also used this paper to make some
tealight lanterns
, which you can see in our Christmas decoration issue of H&H on December 17th, along with some instructions on how to make some yourself.
