The Laboratory

Happy Christmas everyone! Our family Christmas card this year is all about the hexagons Adam was so pleased to be able to do his Year 5 Hexagon masterclass to children in London in November, after 2 years of cancellations Here's a hexagon puzzle for you all: Can you put the numbers 1 to 19 in the coloured hexagons so every row and diagonal adds up to 38? Hint: 5 goes in the centre! From Adam & Sarah:

And so we say farewell to the Advent Calendar for another year. Don't forget to enter the competition! We leave you with this year's Christmas Card design, now completed in twine. This is based on a design by our friend Clarissa, whose website www.artfulmaths.com "explains it all" (geddit?). We wish you the best of the season, and pray you'll have a blessed time with friends and family.

It wasn't until Sarah's brother David got married that we realised you could get terrifyingly specific Christmas cards. We started to receive (and send) "Happy Christmas to my sister and brother-in-law" type cards, then when our nephew was born they got even more specific! So here's a card from Card Factory, which takes personalisation a few parsecs into the future! To a brilliant brother and "Your Wife" or husband or non-gender specific partner, or partner-to-be ... and I'm sure additional ones inside for pet, inanimate totem or DVD collection.

If you are looking for a nice Christmas card activity, you could look at this great article by Oxford's Vicky Neale (who also features in a new video of a 1st Year lecture  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP7Ujbyu-NE ) How To Make Mathematical Christmas Cards Bonus beats! Here's a list of Maths Advent Calendars, thanks to all of you for putting them together: Women in Stem:  https://findingada.com/blog/category/advent-2018/ Transum Maths:  https://www.transum.org/ChristMaths/Advent.asp Nrich Primary:  https://nrich.maths.org/adventprimary Nrich Secondary:  https://nrich.maths.org/adventsecondary Plus Maths:  https://plus.maths.org/content/plus-advent-calendar-2018 Aperiodical:  https://aperiodical.com/2018/12/aperiodvent-2018-a-month-of-mathematical-things/ M Scroggs:  https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/

All over the country, teachers' car boots have been filled with piles of books and paperwork that will stay there until January 4th! At last we have had a proper sleep, a decent breakfast, and finished writing our Christmas cards. So here's our Creeno Christmas card for 2015, riffing on the theme of how colouring in for adults has created a new wave of mindfulness and Zen amongst gullible book and magazine purchasers. Do send us a photo of your completed card!

Well, here we are at the end of another Advent Calendar. We hope you've enjoyed the pictures, and music, and anniversary memorabilia along the way. How better to finish than with a memento of Christmas Eve 1864, in a printed copy of "A Visit From St Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore. This was produced by Louis Prang, based in Massachusetts, and known as the Father of the American Christmas Card. You can see the full-size one at SuperItch . Wishing you, your family and friends, a very happy and peaceful Christmas, AND a visit from St Nicholas! Adam and Sarah  xx

Our thoughts are with everyone travelling today, including us! Here are all of the rest of this year's pictures, in one big Advent Calendar Bundle Bonus!! Mary and Joseph played by Deanna Troi and Will Riker from ST:TNG White Stuff have a whole sprout thing going on with their catalogue & shop displays This GIANT sprout is in America. Well, everything's bigger over there! A lovely Christmas card I found at evamae.com And two viral pics that you've probably seen but deserve to see again!

Wow, we can't believe it's already the 20th! Hasn't this month fFlown by? It's been so busy, we're at least a week behind on catching up our favourite TV (The Mentalist, Person of Interest and Homeland, since you ask). No spoilers, please! For those of you who haven't had the chance to visit a school Christmas assembly or carol service, here are two little video clips of choirs from Adam's school rehearsing for their Festival of Carols: Clip 1 Clip 2 Today's pictures are all of Christmas cards by artists we like. Michael Craig-Martin started his career by presenting "An Oak Tree" , a sculpture of an oak tree that looked exactly like a glass of water on a shelf. His main work now is outlines of objects coloured in, and he did one of the 12 Olympic posters in 2012. This is his card: Grayson Perry has been in the news this year, presenting on TV and delivering the BBC Reith lectures, contoversially in a chatty style rather than in ...

We've had 7 Christmas cards so far, including handmade ones (thanks Heidi, Tom, Alice and Michelle!) and one from Germany (Frohe Weihnachten, Jenny!). Don't forget your last posting dates - USA on Friday, Monday for Europe, and next Wednesday for parcels - better hurry! The first Christmas card we designed and sent to friends was this classic from 2001 1998: which some people were quite offended by and thought we really had boughht them cheap cards! Now we send out 24 limited edition cards each year, you can see them all in the design archive . And what's this year's? You'll have to wait and see! One card we'd love to receive is the annual Pentagram Christmas Card. The design company sends out a little book to its clients and friends each year which is always beautifully inventive and interesting. One example is a letter-by-letter review of the alphabet from 2006. You can see more of these at the Wallpaper website . What's the best card you...