Masks Galore

Due to the virus and uncertainty of what going back to work is going to look like, I decided a while ago to jump on the mask-making bandwagon. This means that if we get told that we need to wear face masks when in shops etc, not just in ones where social distancing isn't possible, then I have a supply of fun and funky masks for me to choose from. Last weekend I spent the whole of Saturday and most of Sunday constructing 12 masks - 11 for women and 1 for a man, and of those 9 women's for me to go with one I had made as a tester several weeks ago. 10 masks seems quite high but working 5 days a week and wearing 1 a day, it's better to have spares right? The remaining masks are for my parents and my auntie.

Over the weekend I got a video call from my mam asking if I could make a mask for my grandad too. He and my grandma have not left the house since lockdown began and although my grandma has a letter saying she is not to go out, my grandad doesn't. So if there comes a time when he is able to leave the house in the company of my parents while my auntie stays with my grandma then he will have a covering to wear. Well, I started it and a couple of spare masks for my parents on Sunday night - cutting out the templates. 

All the sewing was completed on Monday, and I managed to remember to do the sewing in the correct order this time! I put them in a hot wash this morning so that they are somewhat sterilised and it looks like I have a lot of half bras on the washing line. I hadn't thought about that until I was talking to my mam at lunch time today.

This afternoon I'm going for a walk down to my mams house to hand over some of the masks. After her experience in the supermarket this morning it sounds like she needs them! 

The template that I used was one I found through Pinterest: https://www.craftpassion.com/face-mask-sewing-pattern/
I found this to be quite easy to do and has a number of variations from the same pattern, also I liked how there are separate templates for male and female masks - after all there are differences in facial bone structures! The main thing I needed to remember was if in doubt, re-read the instructions and look at the pictures.

I had been planing to write a post with a few more pretty cards that I've made but the mask request took priority and jumped the queue for appearing on here.

Badge clauses

It's been a little longer than planned between my last post and this one. Whoops!

So what have I been up to. Well without looking at my diary I can't really remember off the top of my head so clearly it hasn't been a memorable week. I made a start on the Brownies baking badge and the part of the Guides vlogging badge which I mentioned in my last post. For the baking badge clause 1 - I baked my favourite recipe for cookies. This was well received by a few parents who commented or liked the video. For clause 2 - I baked some muffins using a packet mix I found in the cupboard that was going out of date soon, then I decorated them using butter cream icing. I haven't yet been able to post the video from this session as I have been trying to edit it (speed up sections, and add extra videos at the start and end of the clip) but my laptop doesnt want to do that right now. For clause 3 - I currently have a chocolate cake baking in the oven for me to decorate tomorrow. This final decoration needs to tell a story of some kind so I need to have a think about what I'm going to do on that.

In terms of the challenge badge I have been umming and ahhing over the optional clauses. I finally forced myself to sit down and go through them to work out which ones I could apply to my situation (especially when it states things for the 'household' when I'm on my own!) and which ones will generally be good for me to do. From the 26 options there are 16 which I can do. So far I have completed 3 of these clauses. One I mentioned in my previous post where I coloured the rainbow, another was to make an edible treat and the third is taking part in an online meeting. I would say that the cookies and muffins are definite edible treats! I tried to share them with my parents but my mam told me to just keep and eat them myself... Each Monday the leaders from my unit have an online meeting, now as we are not doing online meetings with our girls I would view a meeting of leaders in this setting would count for this clause. Yesterday I started 2 more clauses which can be linked together, one to do a different job every day for the next 7 days (these are jobs I should be doing normally but severely lack motivation to do) and the other is to make a daily timetable and try to stick to it for 7 days, then reflect on it. I tried to do this weeks ago but failed miserably so I am determined to make it work. There is another clause which can tie in which is to plan a menu for the week. The only reason I haven't started this one is that I go food shopping on a Friday so there was no point in starting this one before I have the food in the house to use. I am going to look through my recipe books tonight to plan my meals from Friday (tomorrow), and with strong will power I will stick to it!

Once I have completed these three clauses I will upload images of my plans and will review what went well, what I changed etc. 

My next post should be up over the weekend and it'll be a crafty post 

Girlguiding challenge badge

Back in 2017 I did a trek on the Great Wall of China, raising money for Girlguiding. When I signed up I was celebrating my 10th year as a leader in my unit and wanted to give something back. Anyways, short history aside, one of the lovely leaders from this trek put together a group on Facebook for like-minded leaders who enjoy doing badges for themselves and not just with the children. The badges we do have been created by other leaders, units, divisions and counties from up and down the country. Our latest challenge badge was inspired by the current situation with the virus outbreak, social distancing and lockdown. We have 5 mandatory clauses to do and need to do a minimum 4 of 26 optional clauses. So far I have completed 1 mandatory clause and 1 optional clause. These were nice and easy to get done and ticked off: decorate the poster from the pack

Make or decorate the rainbow picture from the pack - I don't have the paint or materials to create my own rainbow but I did have the coloured pens to colour in the one from the pack!

One of the mandatory clauses is to complete at least 1 interest badge. It was recommended that we use the Ranger badges as we can access them on the Guiding website. I also have the badge books for Brownies and Guides as I plan to make some videos for Brownies and photo finished results of an activity for Guides as a way of encouraging our girls to try some of their own interest badges. Actually while I've been typing this I have just thought of a way to combine badges from all three sections: Brownies - baking, Guides - vlogging, Rangers - blogging. I had actually just planned on doing the blogging as I had started this blog but I think combining the three may be a good way to inspire me to do something different (although I won't be sharing the vlogs on here!). There are 3 clauses to each badge. I intend to do all three clauses for the Brownie and Ranger badge however I will only be doing 1 clause for the Guide badge as the Guides should be encouraged to work the activities for themselves whereas the Brownies can be encouraged with a bit more guidance or inspiration.

Well right now in terms of the Ranger badge, I completed part 2 of the badge by creating this blog in the first place. I'm working on part 3 and when I have created at least 5 posts that is complete (this may be the 5th post so thats 2 of the 3 done!). I just need to do a little research into part 1 then believe it or not that's the badge finished. 

I started looking into creating a blog at the start of April, before this challenge was suggested and before I knew there was an actual badge for it. I had chosen to use this blog as a way of showing all the crafts I was going to do during lockdown. Needless to say it took me a month to turn my head around and finally creating the blog although I haven't been creating the crafts as much as I had planned but posting about this challenge will help me to get back into the flow of things. 

Up and downs

This week has been topsy-turvy. Crafting has been next to nil, the only things I have made are gift tags to go on presents for my nephews.

I started my week pretty well - exercises, work in the garden and a walk to the park. By the end of the week and especially today I've hit a lull. Its hard to find the want to do things when you feel out of sorts. Today was just one of those days when I got up late (Sunday is the only day I don't have an alarm set), my cooking went wrong and I felt like just sitting and sulking. The only highlight is knowing that I've arranged for a courier to come and take my nephews birthday presents so he can have the most amazing birthday even though we can't be together. I wrote letters too, one to my sister-in-law letting her know whats in the box and wishing them all well, the other to my oldest nephew (his brother is nearly 6 months old so would probably want to eat the paper) telling him that I love him, that I can't wait to see him and play games with him when we can meet up.

Family is everything and being on my own in this lockdown really brings home the loniness that a lot of people are going through and have gone through for a long time. If I didn't have my mam or other members of family at the other end of a phone I really would go bananas. So if you read this and know anyone who might be struggling, just take a moment to pick up a phone, knock on the door (and stand back!), or even push a note through that front door. Everyone needs a friend now and again, it doesn't cost a thing to be kind and friendly.

Hopefully I'm going to pick myself up tomorrow and reset my brain to start fresh for crafts and everything else. I'm planning to write another post tomorrow about something else I'm going to be working on and the origins of this activity.

Flower Power

Tonight I have made a set of 6 cards with no prompting from anything and no peeking at ideas on Pinterest!

So last night as I was waiting for my laptop to do some updates I was looking at some things I have on my pegboard. In one container I have a mass amount of googly eyes, another has Christmas sentiments, another pre-cut paper shapes(butterflies and flowers), and the final one has little paper flowers with a gem centre. Now updates like to take their time so I decided to sort out this container of flowers into little bags for each colour, and while I was doing this an idea of a vase with s few of these flowers coming out would be nice. It only took me until 8pm tonight to actually make a move to do these!

First I needed to make myself a few vase shapes out of paper. Easy enough to do (and google ideas for a nice-ish shape to compare my poor drawing skills to) and I have far too much paper to know what to do with.

Once cut out, I just had to glue it onto a card, attach 4 different coloured flowers and draw on stems for the flowers reaching into the vase. I used 6"x6" cards to give the flowers more room to "grow", and I used a combination of Pritt Stick and Modge-podge to glue everything down. The Pritt Stick was better for the vases but the flowers needed more of a gentle touch to glue them down.

Now, I know my stems are not perfect. I don't expect them to be, but they are part of the little touches that add character and a more personal touch to a card than just sticking something on and saying 'hey, we're done now!'. This is not a completed card yet though. I like to add a stamp to the front of a card, depending on the purpose or decoration on the card. I made 6 cards in total like this so I used 2 different stamps - one saying 'Best Wishes' and one saying 'Friends are like flowers in the garden of life'. I like that last sentiment, it makes me happy to think of life as a pretty garden right now - especially when the sun has been shining and you get to sit outside!

 Each card is individual. One thing I like to do when I know I'm making multiples of the same card, is to make sure that no card is exactly the same. In these cards I have the two different embossed stamps, different coloured vases, different numbers of leaves, and the flowers on all of the cards are different (I only have 8 colours so that was a tad more difficult to do when only using 4 per card). Overall I'm happy and these turned out pretty well for having not made anything properly for a few months!

Creations Pre Blog!

Before I created this blog, I don't know how many cards I've created. I have to say the majority have been Christmas cards (I still have quite a few of those!) but there have been birthday cards and a couple of other special cards thrown in there - some I don't have images of anymore. Since the lockdown began 6 weeks ago in the UK, I had said to myself I've got plenty of craft supplies so I'm going to make a mountain of cards. Flash forward to now and I've only created 2 individual designs but 34 physical cards. One I can't put here yet as its my nephews birthday card but the others I can share.

I am a Brownie leader and in the current situation we are unable to meet with our girls. I decided that I wanted to have some cards ready to send out for when we are able to invite the girls back to the unit or if we want to remind the girls that we are here for them during this time. I decided since we are members of Girlguiding, our logo the trefoil would be appropriate to put on the front. The issue was how to do it - its one thing to print it out and glue it to the front of the card (and look a bit naff) but to do something a bit out the box for me was going to be the challenge. 

I printed out a couple of copies of the trefoil so I had spares in case I messed up, wouldn't be the first time! I cut one out and carefully created a stencil using a craft knife to cut the little bits out. I've never used a stencil before when creating cards so this really was a first for me. I got one of my ink pads and a round blending tool to dab the ink over the stencil. It took a good few minutes to get a good covering of ink over the stencil and when I removed it I was honestly surprised at the effect it had created.As the test stencil was just paper I threw it out and got to work creating two new stencils - this time sticking the paper to card before cutting it and the centre bits out. 

Once everything was cut out, I used a small amount of white tack to hold the stencil in place on the card before I got to work. I used one stencil with gold ink to represent the Brownie colours, and I used blue with the other stencil to represent the Guide colours (I couldn't do one for our Brownies and not our Guides). I've put some pictures below from the different steps.

Overall for the first time using a stencil I've found the effect it created on this project was brilliant and I'm looking forward to what stencils I can find to use next!

Beginnings

It's hard to know what something is going to be like when you decide to do it. I tried blogging before and it turned into something I forgot about and no one really knew it was there (not gonna lie, thats probably a good thing!). Now I'm going to try this again and make a better run at it.

So where to start... I'm Catherine - I took on the name Skittles the year I was involved in Camp America, I turned 30 at the start of this year and (like most people in the UK at time of writing this) currently stuck in my house under the rules of lockdown. I think that is enough about me on here for the moment.

I really wanted a fresh space where I could write about nothings and keep a record of the different crafts that I make. We've been in lockdown for 6 weeks so far and I said to myself at the beginning of this that I would create a lot of cards, make things out of fabric - safe to say that this has not happened yet. I have created a couple of things I'll share in the next post or two, one I can't share until later in the month as it is a birthday card for my absolutely amazing nephew. 

For now, we'll just see how this goes!