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

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.

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 -

• more face masks for me, my mam and one for a work colleague. I haven't finished them yet so no photos at this moment in time
• sorted out some of my pinterest boards and looked for a few more things to try (https://www.pinterest.co.uk/skittleshideaway/)
  
• made two rough designs for new Christmas cards
• started an Instagram to post photos of my craft works, with hashtags and everything 😲 (https://www.instagram.com/skittleshideaway/)

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!