Wednesday, 23 September 2020

Sympathy card

 A couple of weeks ago I found out that a lady (G) I had worked with for 6 years had passed away. She was one of the best, an absolutely wonderful, kindhearted and caring woman, and she had been fighting cancer for over a year. It was devastating to hear that she was ill, and even more heartbreaking to find out that it was incurable. Due to the pandemic I didn't go to her funeral. I wanted to but when you are only allowed 30 people inside the Church and knowing there would be so many people outside I felt it unwise to attend. That didn't mean I wasn't thinking about her or the family she left behind.

My work colleague was going - she had known this lady longer than me and had been told she could go in for the service. I made a card which she took with her.

Now, we found out that G had requested people to wear yellow, so that was where I started with the card. I cut a rectangle of yellow paper slightly smaller than the size of the card to act as a backing. I then cut a smaller piece of white card and blended green ink across the bottom to resemble grass. I didn't want this to be an overtly sad card as G was such a bright spark in my office, I didn't use any dark colours except for the words.

While I was waiting for the green to dry, I took out two butterfly cut-outs and stuck them together down the centre to give it a 3D effect. I used Dovecrafts 3D Pearl Effects pastel colours (blue, cream, green and pink) to give the top layer butterfly some colour and pattern. Unfortunately the two that I attempted did not come out very well, luckily I had one I made several weeks ago that did not look like I had just attacked it with massive blobs of colour thinking it was pretty... I grabbed a small square of orange paper and stamped the traditional "With Sympathy" message on and used black glittery embossing powder to melp it stand out. I also grabbed my small butterfly craft punch and cut a butterfly out from beneath the words.

When the ink had dried on the card, I glued it down and began to arrange my big butterfly, message, and I pulled out some small butterflies I had cut out one day to save paper waste in pink, purple and cream. Once in position I stuck them all down and left the card blank for me to write in when I was at work and had a bit of inspiration of what to write.

I didn't take any photos during the make of this card, I did a time-lapse video which I posted on my Instagram stories. I couldn't help a little laugh when the 40 minutes it took me to make this card was shrunk down into 26 seconds! I did however take a photo of the finished product.






Sunday, 13 September 2020

Break

 Went a bit MIA again... work got busy and so did my weekends!

I've just had a week off work (back tomorrow - booo!), spent a few days away with the fam, came home and did something I haven't done since I moved in to my house - tidied and organised (sort of) the craft room!! 

I have been doing a couple of little things -

Normally I'm pretty private about what I do but then I started this blog during lockdown and after my work colleague told my she made an Instagram for her house it occurred to me that posting photos of what I've made on Instagram is not a bad thing to do - it will literally help me to remember designs I've created previously in case I want to do them again if I thought they were great. It also gives me a little bit of feedback when people hit the 'like' button. So I started that on Friday, and aside from myself, I have 6 followers. I was surprised to have any! So if you are reading this and wonder what I have made that isn't already on this blog, then please do take a look at my Instagram. It actually surprised me how much I had made (and still had record of or still have to be able to photograph) before this blog.

So as my week off has now drawn to a close, I just have to wait five more days before I get another break. I'm looking forward to that one as I don't think I really made the most of this week off...


Ta-ta for now!