November, 2016 | Lou's Designs

Christmas Is Coming – Get All Your Festive Goodies Now!

Lous Designs Christmas Round Up Post Well it’s nearly December which means the holiday season is well on it’s way to us, so do you have all of your Christmas cards, decorations, gift wrap, fashion and (mustn’t forget) gifts all organized yet?

I thought I’d wrap up a few ideas for you to help with your Christmas list this year. First up both Redbubble and Zazzle are great places to look for unique gift ideas and Zazzle in particular has lots of items that can easily be personalized.

Let’s look at Christmas cards first, I know that over the last couple of years I’ve received more e-cards or just messages on social media, but there’s something special about sending and receiving actual Christmas cards that’s very special.

Great Christmas Card Ideas

People first started sending Christmas cards in the Victorian times which means that we’re now in the third millennium that have used Christmas cards – the 1800s, the 1900s and the 2000s – that’s some pretty cool history right there!

There has never been more selection for Christmas cards than now so here’s a few ideas for you –

Christmas Cards Collection via Lou165 on Zazzle — Christmas Cards Collection via Zazzle

A great collection of Christmas cards can be found as part of the above Christmas Cards Collection from one of my Zazzle Stores.

If you’re looking for themed Christmas cards then check out these other Christmas card collections…..

Snowman Christmas Cards Collection via Zazzle — Snowman Christmas Cards Collection via Christmas Holidays on Zazzle

Great selection of dog inspired Christmas cards — Dog Inspired Christmas Card Collection via Zazzle

Of course when it comes to Christmas cards (and even Christmas postage stamps) I’ve even got a couple of posts about them myself including –

Matching vintage Christmas card stationery — Vintage Christmas Cards with Matching Address Labels & Postage Stamps

Cute Pug Christmas Card — Pug Christmas Card by LousDesigns on Zazzle

There are lots of other Christmas cards available at The Cool Card Shop.

Christmas Ornaments

There are so many different Christmas ornaments to choose from that it’s hard to know what theme you want to use to decorate your tree or if, in fact you’d prefer a mishmash of themes.

Let’s have a look at a few ideas……

Winter Snowman Christmas Ornament Collection — Snowman Christmas Ornament Collection via Zazzle

Fun cartoon inspired animal Christmas ornaments — Fun Christmas Ornaments via Cartoon Animals on Zazzle

Fun collection of fox Christmas ornaments — Fox Christmas Tree Ornaments via Zazzle

There are lots more themed ornaments for you to choose from including some owl ones I featured on a previous post about Owl Christmas Goodies!

Personally I think the Christmas Tree Ideas website has the best selection of themed Christmas ornaments and for other Christmas tree ideas you could check out their facebook page.

While we’re talking about Christmas decor there’s always soft furnishings to make your home festive –

Christmas Throw Pillows

Once the house is sorted it’s time to check out everyone’s Santa list which leads me to ……

Christmas Gift Wrap

There are lots of ideas for Christmas gift wrap from the traditional wrapping paper to a myriad of different wrapping ideas for the holidays. I’ve come across a really good Pinterest board that has ideas for Christmas Gift Wrapping –

You can also get some great personalized festive wrapping paper from Zazzle which looks awesome. Of course we’ve also had a post on Dog Christmas Gift Wrap and in case you can’t tell I do have a soft spot for dogs!

Christmas Gift Ideas

As I said before Zazzle and Redbubble are great places to look for gift ideas and another place for a unique gift idea is Etsy, although I do have to warn you Etsy makes time disappear!

If you’re really stuck on ideas then I do have a couple of cool links for you to check out – great gift ideas for women & great gift ideas for men – you can thank me later for those!

Christmas Fashion

If you want to really get in the mood for Christmas then a Christmas outfit is a great idea. Now not everyone should dress up as Santa or an Elf, but there’s no reason why you can’t wear a Christmas T-Shirt or Hoodie.

Fun Christmas T-Shirts

Warm Christmas Hoodies and Ugly Christmas Sweaters

I hope you’ve enjoyed my Christmas roundup and that you are now organized for the holiday season – Merry Christmas from Lous Designs!

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article – more information can be found on our disclosure page.

Laughing Kookaburra Pictures

Kookaburra photo — The Kookaburra – an Australian Kingfisher

I get woken up (way too early I should add) by a variety of bird calls, but the laughing kookaburra certainly seems the loudest! Luckily I enjoy seeing a kookaburra in my garden so I don’t complain, well not too much anyway!

I have quite a few laughing kookaburra images to share and I’ve finally gotten around to creating my first kookaburra greeting card on Zazzle from one of my recent visits from a kookaburra.

As you know from earlier posts I do love birds and I have a variety of them residing in the trees around me from Turtle Spotted Doves to Rainbow Lorikeets, Australian Magpies to Kookaburras and many more. The Kookaburra is certainly loud enough to herald his presence, but I don’t catch a glimpse of him as often as the others.

Occasionally he’ll grace me with his presence, sometimes fleetingly and sometimes it’s as though he’s decided he wants to be a model as you can see here –

Kookaburra Images

He really did seem to want to make sure I got all of his sides, didn’t he? Definitely a model bird in the making!

After a while he seemed tired of my pool fence and flew up into one of the trees bordering my garden where he preened for the cameras for a little longer. One of those photographs is the one I’ve made this blank greeting card from –

Laughing Kookaburra Greeting Card

As you can see from his profile our Laughing Kookaburras belong to the kingfisher family.

Laughing Kookaburra pictures

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article – more information can be found on our disclosure page.

Cool Designer Mini Skirts

Are you bored of the constant plain black bodycon mini skirts that EVERYONE seems to have? Do something about it and check out some of the cool designer mini skirts available at Redbubble.

As a designer I’ve created a few mini skirts and here I’m featuring two of my designs that are influenced by nature.

Floral Print Mini Skirt

This fun design is based around an agapanthus, a beautiful purple floral graphic. This floral print designer mini skirt adds a pop of purple to your outfit which is one of those colors that is flattering to everyone.

If you’re having trouble pulling away from the generic black mini skirt, you should be happy to know this gorgeous design is also available on a couple of different tops.

The pattern on these designer mini skirts is repeated on the back as you can see (to a degree) on the side view of the skirts (above and below).

The material used is made up of 82% polyester and 18% elastane and as you can see from the images the waistband is one of the popular stretch waistbands.

Black & White Designer Mini Skirt

Besides flowers what else can be considered influenced by nature? Butterflies of course! I do love butterflies which is why this next skirt features a black and white butterfly!

This design is perfect because there’s no color to it (which seems to be very important with some sections of the population when it comes to fashion!) and yet it’s unique and will make you stand out in the crowd.

I hope you’ve enjoyed at least one of these two designer mini skirts that I’ve brought you today.

If a skirt isn’t quite your thing then there are some awesome black and white graphic t-shirt dresses or a selection of different t-shirts designed by yours truly which you are welcome to check out.

Selection of designer mini skirts

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article – more information can be found on our disclosure page.

Popular Pug Christmas Card Design

One of my more popular pug Christmas card designs came about by accident a few years ago as I was learning how to use Photoshop.

I love the look of pugs, they are just adorable and they are also very popular so a few years ago I decided I really had to make a pug Christmas card for one of my Zazzle stores.

The design started with this photograph of a black pug puppy –

pug puppy dog

I uploaded the photo into Photoshop and using the eraser tool deleted the background. I then found a creative commons vector image of a Santa hat and put that onto the pug’s head.

When I uploaded the photo to Zazzle to put on a card I realized that it accentuated all of the mistakes I had made with erasing the background as you can see –

Pug Christmas Card

The background appears very mottled instead of the pure white it was supposed to be. I had spent so much time that I could’ve cried, but then my daughter came in and saw the image and loved it, especially the mottled background! Instead of deleting it I published the card and waited to see what would happen.

I sold my first card within the first week which I thought was amazing, but I waited and waited to see if I would get a return – I got a re-order from the same person instead!

I’m so glad I didn’t delete it, my only wish now is that I could re-create the mottled looking background easily for some of my other designs! Over the past few years this card has continued to be a popular holiday card so the moral of the story is – even if your design isn’t as perfect as you wanted, it may be exactly what other people are looking for!

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article – more information can be found on our disclosure page.

Owl Christmas Decor | Owl Christmas Gift Wrap & Cards

I love owls and especially during the holidays when I enjoy Owl Christmas Decor like tree ornaments or throw pillows. I also love to use owl Christmas gift wrap and send cards with owls on them.

If you love owls as well then why not have a ‘hoot’ of a festive season with some of the holiday owl designs I’ve found for you here –

Have a Hoot of a Christmas – Owl Xmas Collection
by Louanne Cox

Let’s look at my favorite Christmas owl design –

Owl Christmas Card

The image above was taken from a creative commons image of three owls on a branch, I changed the colors of the owls a bit and for the Christmas design I gave them all Santa hats.

I’ve used this design on lots of different products including owl Christmas wrapping paper and an owl Christmas pillow in fact you can check out some of the designs in the set below –

Christmas Owl Set

Buy These Designs Now!

Merry Christmas Owl Card | Christmas Owl Gift Wrap | Owl Christmas Pillow | Have a Hoot Christmas Card

There are some fantastic owl Christmas tree decorations available as well, both from my own Owl Zazzle Store and from other peoples, we just love Owl Christmas ornaments!

Owl Christmas Ornaments

You can buy these ornaments here –

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at some of the Christmas owl designs available to spice up your holiday season.

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article – more information can be found on our disclosure page.