January to July 2022... where has the time gone!

 So much has been going on in the last 6-7 months that I haven't found time to create any posts about the cards I've made that I'm actually pretty proud of. Trying to recap on everything is going to be fun!! Luckily enough I can mostly recall what happened as I still posted the pictures on my Instagram. We'll skip Christmas and pop that into a separate post... 

January/February

Stocktake started early, literally the first week of the month and lasted for almost the entire months of January and February - with a two week break in the middle. On top of that, my manager left at the end of January. Typical me fashion I had to raid the craft room to see what kind of card I could make to be given from my office. I came up with a kite card using a Crafters Companion kite die and a stamp - due to the time constraints to get the card made I decided to keep it simple. I was bit cheeky with how I did this. We had a Girlguiding Leaders activity day that we named "Beat The Blues" and each Division provided an activity for leaders to do and mine was making this card... so yeah bit sneaky and cheeky how I made this for an activity day and ended up giving it to my manager for his leaving!

As part of his leaving gift, we got him a decent bottle of whisky (I think it was!) and gift card. Now, I had recently bought a die to make a gift card holder so I got to experiment with that too.

And with that made, January ended and I got a new manager in February and work carried on.

March

The start of the month was pretty quiet, didn't do much in the way of crafting, work kept me busy and I had no real motivation to create any new cards. But at some point during the month I saw a Facebook post asking for crafters/hobbyists to take part in local craft fairs. I reached out to the organiser and she was happy to include me in the fairs she was organising. Now I have so many cards that were already made but were not necessarily at a really high standard shall we say. I did make an effort to make some new cards which I will post photos of in a separate post. As it was near Easter, one lot of cards I did make was some Easter Bunny cards using the technique I used to make my Girlguiding cards - homemade stencil. I enjoyed making the stencils, admittedly it did take a lot of focus to be as accurate as possible. These were better stencils than the ones I previously made as this time I used acetate which can be re-used many times as long as they are cleaned off in between any usage. So I made 5 different bunny templates and then proceeded to stamp out some Easter cards:

 

April

I did two craft fairs this month, one at the beginning and one at the end. Along with the cards I had, I decided to try out making some origami flowers which I had seen Sara Davies giving the instructions for on her Instagram. 

These actually sold best at this first fair so I knew I needed to make some more for the next one!

May

Most important thing that happens in May is my eldest nephews birthday. My boy turned 5! Now I was feeling pretty burnt out so I was planning to just buy his birthday card, poor bairn. I didn't think I could top the epic dinosaur card I made for this 4th birthday. I did not time things right and failed to purchase a card, so what do you know I'm up till 11pm the night before we were going down to my brothers for the birthday party. This one is pretty good, it came out well and reminded me I can do cards suitable for children from the stamp/die sets that I own. While the colours may not be entirely right but that doesn't bother me.

I had a weeks holiday which the birthday party was at the beginning, and during my week off I put my painting skills to the test and decorated my living room. I did another craft fair at the end of May. I had a slightly different set up for this one, I had to take my own tables so I was able to separate out the cards from the other pieces I had for sale. Again the fairs will go into another post.

June

The second round of family birthdays. My parents birthdays are 3 days apart and it was my grandmas birthday on the 2nd. It was a little rough as it was my mams second birthday without having my grandma there and it was emotional for my grandad too. We filled the week with family outings ending on a meal out with the whole family to celebrate that it was actually my mams 60th. But dad was first. I once again was sneaky and used a card I had more or less pre-made in prep for the previous craft fair as a Fathers Day card. I did also make a special gift tag which could double as a bookmark.

Now for my mam. It was her 60th birthday, so any card I made needed to be special. I had also said to my dad that I would make a card for him to give her if he couldn't find one he liked. So, first the card from my dad. This one had to be made first as I needed to get it to him undetected by mam. I used multiple different dies to create a special, different card than anything she had received before.

Panel dies used on the front, with paper piecing to make the rose stand out on the card, and pop up numbers used on the inside, just to remind her of her age!! Now the card from me mam had already made known to me needed to be special and more impressive than any other card I had made for adult family members. 

Needless to say, mam was delighted and only commented that the 60 wasn't glittery. We ended the birthday week with the family meal and mam had asked me to create some gift boxes to go on the tables in lieu of party bags. Said gift boxes only held sweets and I was very please with how these went down with the family. Each box was individual, on one side there was a panel die, and on another was a birthday balloon. No two panel/balloons were the same - a bit of an achievement in itself!

I made 18 boxes in total, using 7 different panels, 1 of which came with the box kit, and the balloon stamp from  Crafters Companion Balloon Sentiment stamp and die kit. Everyone enjoyed the day and loved the boxes. Lucky me managed to pinch a few boxes back to have as examples/reminders of what I made or can make to order if I was to make items to order.

The rest of June ran smoothly, at least for me it did. My parents and auntie all caught covid somewhere and I was avoiding them for almost 3 weeks! Now we're into July and it is my other aunties birthday on Sunday so I need to get cracking and make her birthday card!

This was a lot to get through and plenty of photos to put up but we're at the end of this post now. Next up will be about Christmas followed by the craft fairs. 

If you have read all the way down here, then thanks for sticking this long one out 😊

Christmas craziness

Christmas crafting is in full force right now! If you have arrived here from my Instagram then you will most likely have seen the photos I have been adding for all the Christmas card I am currently making.

This started back in September. I had 2 weeks off work as I was having a new kitchen fitted - couldn't sit upstairs in the craft room while they were working so I took the craft room down into the living room to both keep myself busy and available to answer any questions on the kitchen! I got a number of cards started over these 2 weeks  but not necessarily completed 😬

In October I had another week off work so I started digging into the craft room again to continue making Christmas cards and get some ideas for other cards. I have a bad habit of getting everything out and overwhelming myself with stuff and getting nowhere near the amount of cards that I plan!

I've just had my November weeks holiday and this time, I was actually away on holiday! Of course, I took some of my craft gear with me to give myself something to do on an evening if for example the England match was on TV - I didn't want to watch it (much prefer either the highlights or just hearing the score!) so I sat in the kitchen and put the finishing touches to 20 cards that I had started over the past couple of weeks.

Now you may think I'm going overboard. You're probably right, but there is a reason behind this madness. A few weeks ago my cousin sent me a message asking if I would like to have a stall at a Christmas fair to sell my cards. Silly me said yes I would love too, without even checking what I had made. Now I have a little notebook with the first few pages filled with a brief description of cards, how many I already have made (or almost complete in some cases), and how many I would like to have by the end of my craftathon. The list is slowly going down, I have 17 days left to get everything finished so no pressure!

I will be continuing to post photos of my makes on Instagram and once I have finished all the cards then I will post them in a blog post here 😊

Age 70

Time for another age card, this time for my auntie who has just turned 70. Once again I wanted to try something different so I got out my new Crafters Companion Pop Up Card kit with the corresponding Happy Birthday elements. This was actually quite fun to make as I've wanted to do a pop up card for a while but didn't have the right kit to do it properly.

Following the instructions, I used 2 pieces of card to construct the box shape and cut out tiles of patterned paper to attach to the flaps of the box. I also cut out a couple of shapes to go on the front flap and two sides. 

From the elements kit, I cut and stamped out 4 of each of the balloons, cake and presents. I also cut out three sets of 70s,and stamped them in three colours - black, purple and red. Not sure why I did red but in my head that was okay to do... 

I got out the coloured pens and had a nice relaxing few minutes doing the colouring in before setting them to one side. 

On the example images for the pop up cards, a lot of them have bows on the front. I really liked this idea and one of the earlier dies I had bought was actually the bow. The bow kit has the option to have a lace overlay effect so I picked two shades of purple paper to make it pop.

I really like this die as its fun and you can layer it up or have it as either just lace or solid colours. Now that I had all the pieces cut and coloured I could begin sticking it together. I didn't use everything I cut and coloured just so I didn't overwhelm the card and make it look too busy. I also cut out a little happy birthday label to stick on the top, and used another lace die from another card/box kit.

Once again this is a first attempt at a card style but I'm happy and just have to create a panel on the back for the birthday message and to sign my name. I also have to make an envelope but I have better tools to do it now. Hopefully she likes it 😁

Age 4

It's been a busy few months and I actually started drafting this post at the beginning of May! Got myself so turned around that I just hadn't had time to finish it of and posting it until now and I've had to go through and tweak it a bit for the time lapse 😂

So in the middle of May my oldest nephew turned 4. I can't get over how quick the time has flown and how big he is now. We went to visit the weekend after his birthday for a family (socially distant) birthday party. He absolutely melted my heart when we were playing by saying "I love you". How adorable! 😍😭

Anyway the purpose of this post was to talk about his birthday card so on to the photo and what I did:

From conversations with L (nephew), and my sis-in-law, L is both Dino and superhero mad. Of course he had to have his own handmade dinosaur card. When L had told me names of dinosaurs, he said his favourite was a brachiosaurus. Talk about a big word, pronounced correctly from a 3-soon-to-be-4 year old 😲. Time for a bit of Google research to get the right dinosaur and make sure I didn't start with a stegosaurus as they are very similar until you get to the details of front leg height and shape of the head...

I downloaded an outline and traced it several times onto a piece of card. Knowing my luck the first would go wrong so I would need a spare! I used my Spectrum Noir Harmony water reactive  dyes in Friar Brown and Smoked Pearl, just dabbing the ink on with a sponge then using a paintbrush and a dab of water to blend the inks together giving it more of a realistic look rather than just splodges of colour layered on top of each other. This is the first time I've attempted colour blending so it did go a little patchy in places but this would be masked a little on the actual card.

With the dinosaur out of the way, I could start thinking about the rest of the card. As it is a child age card I wanted to incorporate the number 4 into it, and lots of leaves to simulate a tree top on the upper parts of the number. Luckily I have a variety of green coloured paper and card, and also a leaf shape die. Time for a lot of cutting to get the total number of leaves needed before laying it all out to see how it would fit together.

Nearly done now, just gluing it all down and adding in the "Happy Birthday" banner actoss the centre of the 4 the it is complete. I realised when I started gluing the leaves down that I didn't have enough so back to the cutter to make more and give a better tree effect at the top. The final details to add were the pencil markings o. The dino itself to show its legs, lower body shape and the eye. I had been considering a googly eye but on laying it out it just looked rediculous so I scrapped that idea. I did have to make a boxy envelope to fit it in which was probably more challenging than the card itself. 

I was really pleased with the results of this card. As far as I know L loved it and had a fantastic birthday which is all that really matters. ❤️

Craft Room Revamp

What do you do when you have a week off work and can't go anywhere? Decorate a room!

Now the smallest bedroom aka the craft room has not been touched and I felt it was about time I put my own stamp on it. Just to give a bit of an idea as to what it was like - the walls were all a shade of blue, not quite light blue but very in your face, and on the floor there was carpet. We all know that carpet is not the best to have down in any area you want to do crafts as hoovering doesn't always pick up those little bits, plus I couldn't move my computer chair because of how thick the carpet was.

Day 1:

I emptied the room and hoovered the carpet. No-one likes a messy floor even if it going to be pulled up.

Day 2:

Dad came up to fill the holes from a shelf and we actually pulled the carpet and underlay up too. Totally unplanned but worth it. We got a good look at the floorboards and found some of them were loose or had nails/staples sticking out of them so we had something else to look over.

Day 3:

Dad was back in the morning with some sandpaper, drill, screws and a few other tools that I didn't have myself. While dad set to work looking at the floorboards I pulled out the beige-y colour paint and started to give the room its first coat. After a few hours I gave the room a second coat. Luckily the two coats was enough - I didn't have enough paint to do another coat! The paint I used was actually left over from when we decorated the spare bedroom last summer, we had a full tub (split between 2 as silly us opened both tubs instead of working from 1) and there was a lot of blue...

Day 4:

Paint all dry and looking good, floorboards were hoovered and any last nails/staples were removed. I had some time as dad wasn't free this morning so I took matters into my own hands and put the new underlay down over the floorboards. Later in the afternoon dad arrived and together (mostly him) we put the new laminate flooring down. It didn't take too long to lay but there were a couple of fiddly bits to cut around the door frame and the radiator. Later on in the evening after giving it a few hours to settle I began to move everything back in.

Day 5:

Everything is back in the room and aside from a couple of little finishing touches that dad needs to do around the edge of the floor in a couple of places I do believe the room is done!

Sure there are a few things I could have done better or slighty different but I am happy with the outcome. To be honest I used this task as a distraction. In my last post I wrote about my grandma taking bad and that she might not make it. Sadly after 5 days of being stubborn and clinging on, she passed away on Friday 19th March. This was my last day in work before my holidays so despite the mental numbness that was starting to spread, I did go to work for a couple of hours to tie off loose ends. The funeral was held on Friday 26th March, it was a beautiful but sad service. We're thankful for every moment we had with my grandma and miss her every day. 

Mothering Sunday

Today is actually the first time since my last blog post that I've made any cards.

It's Mother's Day on Sunday 14th March and I hadn't bought any cards. 'I'll just make them!' I told myself. I was planning to do this last weekend but got distracted by my mam suggesting I make a bunch of flowers to give to my grandma rather than real ones. It took me 2 days to get them done, in a vase and looking relatively pretty and to a standard I'm happy with to hand them over. I've made them before and blogged about them so I won't go back over all of the how I did it (note to self, look back and put here which post it was).

Here is the finished  bouquet:

So that was last weekend. Fast forward to today, I ended up going out with my mam for a couple of hours this morning, came home with more craft stuff ironically enough. Eventually sat down to start making cards for my mam, auntie and grandma. I've been looking forward to using a new die set that I got a couple of weeks ago. After a few practice cuts I was ready to start. So the dies I have used are Patchwork flowers - pansy and periwinkle.

After looking at the pictures on the packaging I settled for running 3 colours in 2 shades through my machine so I could mix and match between the shades. Pink, purple and blue.

The next part was simple - glue them down onto card. I forgot how messy it can be when you use runny glue  not a glue stick!

 I decided to add a 3rd shade to one set of cards by mounting th pieces onto coloured card rather than them all being on white. I have to say my favourites are the blue on blue card and purple on purple card, possibly because I like the flowers better but that's neither here nor there. Last thing to do to these is stamp them to give them am identity. As I'm planning to give them for Mothers Day, I have managed to find a stamp that says so, and on the card for my mam I have added a Mam stamp. I have not completed a 3rd card in this way as things are a little uncertain right now but once Ive had a call one way or another I'll know what I'm doing.

Anyways, here are the two more-or-less finished cards. I'm disappointed my quality of stamping, I tried out a new stamp mount and unfortunately I caught the edges in the ink and stamped before I noticed. I know my family won't mind but it pains me a bit to hand over marked cards.

Christmas is Coming!!!!!!!!

 Hello!!

 

Okay, Christmas is coming. It's going to be strange, it's going to be different. Christmas is still happening - it has not been cancelled.

Thats been the main thought running through my head for the past two months, hopefully tomorrow we'll find out what the UK plan is for Christmas and we can all chill out a bit!

It's been bust at work and with the second lockdown (I haven't been furloughed this time!) I've had plenty to do to keep me busy - so much so that I cancelled a week off out of paranoia that I'd get furloughed after it 😂 I have however just had a long weekend as I was really starting to feel burnt out from all of the stress and pressure that I apparently never show. So my plan for this long weekend was to get those Christmas cards made.

 I sat down on Friday morning, looked at my craft materials and literally had no idea where I was going to start. I wanted to make use of some of the dies that I had bought and picked up of the Christmas magazines I've picked up over the years so I got out two of them which are very similar snow globe shapes. I just kept running them through the machine until I realised I probably cut too many out. Here are a couple of the snow globes:

 

 

There was so much glue everywhere with these... So while I had the glue out I got out some festive paper and covered the front of several smaller cards and let them dry before attaching 3D stickers to them - simple yet effective. I have a thing for stickers, especially Christmas ones. They might seem a bit like cheating to make cards but combining them in the right way, on the right background then they can look great (I think they do at least...).

So that summed up Friday, I think I came out with around 25 cards. Saturday morning brought another batch. During my Slimming World Zoom meeting I was sat in the craft room so I used that time efficiently and made up some of the decoupage packs that I still have and later attached them to cards. I made a few more before I started to wane a bit with my inspiration when I had to go do a bit of tidying for my parents coming over for dinner (they are still my support bubble so this is allowed). The last three I was quite pleased with. I had taken inspiration from an activity we're planning to do with the Brownies and Guides - make a Christmas tree shape card out of paper. I made the tree: half a large circle of green paper, fold it into 3 and fold back the outer edges so it opens like a door in the middle before cutting out snippets of paper from the side to give it a more tree like effect. I took the tree and on the middle section I stamped "Merry Christmas" and used glittery embossing powder, and on the outside I added different features for baubles to each card - pom-poms, coloured gem stickers, and red/green pearls. To make it more obvious that they were trees and not random bits of green paper stuck to a card I dug out some textured brown card to create tree trunks. 

 

I am posting photos of most of these creations to my Instagram. Really I should post a blog before I post the pictures but it takes seconds to post to Instagram whereas it takes a few minutes more to create a post... I'm so lazy! In theory I'll be making more cards and posting more pics as it draws closer to Christmas when I'll start posting or handing them out to family and friends. 

Christmas is the time for giving, caring and sharing with everyone. It isn't about the presents, it isn't about what you got off people or the physical value. It is about coming together, it's about family, and most importantly sharing love and kindness to all. It's been a hard year, I've been lucky in that I haven't lost anyone but at the same time so many have lost loved ones and can't spend time with the ones they love. Loneliness is hard, its worse at Christmas time and it has affected so many more people this year. So I decided that I was going to send Christmas cards to any of my contacts who wanted to receive one. Some of them are going to get one just because I have their address. I don't expect to get anything back but this is my way of saying to people - I see you, I'm thinking about you, I care about you.

 

C x