Melissa the great

This is the card that turned up yesterday for Lord A's birthday.  My talented niece made it.  I LOVE IT!  So did my kids of course.  It is so cute, don't you agree?  (disclaimer: I might be a biased Aunt but really, that is cute)

Cards and paper flower balls

Wow, two blog posts in a row.... Well, I haven't had much of a chance to do much craft for myself (or blogging!), as per my previous post, but this last weekend was Princess E's birthday and Father's Day so a couple of cards were in order and I did some 'party decorating' upon Princess E's request.

This is my card for Princess E - a scrapbooking paper pinwheel on printed paper with the sentiment 'Have a whirly good Birthday!'. I absolutely love how this turned out and she loved it too, more importantly.

I made this card for the kids to give for Father's Day. I used one of Princess E's art project drawings for inside the square and then printed off the frame border with repeating phrases of 'we love you daddy...happy father's day...'. I also made a border with a white background and purple writing which I think I liked a little bit better but Princess E liked this one (and Lord A couldn't have cared less).

This is the birthday card my super talented niece made and sent for Princess E. I love, love, love her work. I am only sad that it got wet in transit and is a little distorted.

This is a little picture she did for me as well. How did she know I actually covet a pair of shoes just like that!

This is my attempt at a tissue paper flower ball as seen around various blogs and magazines (I originally saw them on Martha - here are the instructions). I couldn't find tissue paper here in Uruguay so I had to try and think of an alternative seeing as I had my heart set on doing one for Princess E's birthday. Well, I have used paper napkins here and they really aren't ideal but I am happy with the final effect. It turned out pretty well, considering, I think. Yellow is her favourite colour of the moment so I decorated the dining room all in yellow and white with streamers and balloons and the paper flower ball. I hung crepe paper streamers right across the whole doorway (hanging like a curtain) for her and the kids have had a blast running through them all weekend. I might even leave it up for awhile as it is cheering me up in the middle of winter right now.

I am hoping to get some crafty goodness happening around here in the very near future. DH came back from his extended business trip with half a suitcase of craft supplies (what a man - shopping in a craft store for me!). Woo hoo! He bought the lino cutters and stamp making slabs so I am going to have to decide on a design to carve a proper stamp now. That is the hard part - narrowing down which design to do. I will keep you posted on my progress!

Moving on....

Well, as predicted, that was one busy week!  Nice to take a breather now.  I have come down with an annoying head cold so laying low this week is just the thing I need.

So, I haven't really done much, crafty wise but just thought I would share a couple of things.

My darling daughter came up with this decoration for our vase and then I happened to spot something almost exactly the same on Apartment Therapy.  What good taste my little girl has!

This is the only other thing I have done.  Another card.  I actually just drew the cage using one of my kid's felt pens but I think it turned out pretty cute.  I really love the saturated colours of felt pens actually (they are underutilised I think).  Not exactly how it was in my head but I like it all the same.  I have more cards needed for family member's birthdays coming up so there may be a bit of a card making glut coming up!  Maybe I should do all of them for the year (well, the half that is left) at once so they are ready and can get posted in plenty of time (instead of me posting them so they would be on time...if I was actually in Australia....).  Ah, the tribulations of being disorganised!

I just had to share this gorgeous card made by my niece.  She is a very talented young artist and you can see her talent for composition here I think.  Is that sounding like a biased Aunty comment?  Oh well, too bad, I don't care!

I have a tutorial in my mind that I hope to complete in the next few days, sick kids allowing...stay tuned!

Day Nine of 'Housebound with Chicken Pox Child'

Ok, first let me say that I love my children. Love, adore, would do anything for them. However, after 9 days of being at home with a quarantined child (and a grumpy other child who has a particularly social nature and likes to go out A LOT) I would really, really like to go away somewhere by myself for quite a long time.....actually it hasn't been that bad but a bit of cabin fever is definitely starting to sneak in!

So, now I can show you what I have been doing over the last couple of days to try and ease the boredom/cure the cabin fever etc.

Firstly, I have made yet more cards. My niece and nephew's birthdays are coming up and, seeing as I can't buy cards in english here, a couple of cards were in order. I could have used a gorgeous floral art card from my very talented photographer friend, Karen, however I had a specific idea in mind for my niece (SPOILER WARNING MELISSA!) and I didn't think a teenage boy would be that thrilled with a flower - no matter the beauty of the shot - so I came up with these two.

Miss E was inspired and made her own card too. I love it - I think her colour coordination is often much better than mine (see russian doll card in earlier post).

After our card making time, A was in desperate need of some crafty fun so I came up with the idea of drawing a basic outline picture on the non-sticky side of some contact adhesive and then turned it over for him to stick little crepe paper squares on. It went very well and cutting up all the crepe paper wasn't toooo time consuming (good thing is, a little goes a long way and they will last for a number of projects).

Here is the drawing....

Here it is flipped over with the crepe paper ready and waiting.... (hint: turn under a couple or all corners to stick it to the tabletop so it doesn't move about when little fingers touch the sticky part)

Here is A getting busy....

Here is Miss E's turn....

Here are the finished products! I put another layer of contact over the top of them so they can hang around for awhile.

I'm Back!

Well, after a rather long absence on here I am back from holidays, over the jetlag and the kids are almost back in school. Today is a wonderfully cool rainy day and I would love nothing more than curling up in a big chair with a good book or a new magazine and a hot chocolate however seeing as I don't have a nice big chair, the ingredients for a hot chocolate or a good book I am going to steal a few minutes away from the kids to post an update! They are enjoying the rain too as you can see.

I seem to mainly be finding time for card making lately so I will show my latest attempts and also a 'vintage' project from my archives. How professional that sounds!

I have become a bit obsessed with russian dolls lately so I made a card with one. My hand drawn face is a bit wonky but once I get it right I will do it on the computer and make it look a bit spiffier. I need to work out how to take nicer photos of cards. Hmmm, another excuse to spend time surfing the internet! The left butterfly one is a readymade blank card with butterfly cutouts and I just glued a scrap of wrapping paper behind the cutouts and added antennae with felt pens and glitter glue. The other butterfly one is a readymade blank card with the square cutout and I have glued a gingham square behind it and then used mounting tape to stick 4 craft punched butterflies on top. Can you tell I love symmetry??

This is a photo of a very cheap Ikea clock that I changed the face of just using a pretty scrapbooking paper. Very easy to do but, if you feel tempted to try this, take the hands off in order and lay them down to go back on in order otherwise it could be a bit confusing once they are off. Could be. Just saying.....

Holiday wrap up (pardon the pun!)

Well, we had a lovely holiday season here for our first Christmas away from home. We had a motley crew for Christmas Eve dinner (and a record number of desserts!) with people from NZ, the US, Canada, Bulgaria, Romania and India. What a great mix and I hope the kids are absorbing some of our multicultural experiences. I have to say, I have never met anyone from Bulgaria or Romania before but I love their accents! I hope we get to spend some more time with them.

As for our crafty pursuits, well I haven't completed alot but I did manage one quick card and, after being so inspired by some of the clothespin dolls I have come across (namely these and these) I thought I would have a go. Now, bear with me here. I don't have access to very many craft products and I just happened to have a couple of clothespins on hand so I am only publishing this photo because I hope to show a much improved version later! Obviously, the aforementioned people have beautiful bigger heads for their dolls so my poor little pinheaded version looks very different. However the only way is up from here I figure! I am determined to work out how to get these basic clothespins looking halfway decent though so some thinking time will be in order. I have no idea why I have developed a sudden love of clothespin dolls as they are not really my thing, but I have, so this mild little obsession will just have to run its course...

Here is a little bag I whipped up for Miss E. It is meant to be a libraby bag so I put a little pocket on the side for her library card. I love how this turned out.

Christmas fun

Well, I can finally upload photos of craft projects rather than just baking. I have been busy doing a few things, three of which I am going to show here. I was inspired by many blog posts about advent calendars so spent a good evening covering 24 little matchboxes in various papers to put in a bowl for Miss E to open every day (A has shown zero interest so far). Miss E punched all the little flowers and wrote the numbers on them and then we glued them on together. Inside them I have printed off little slips of paper with a special activity for that day. I tried putting a little present in a couple of times but Miss E was very disappointed and prefers a fun activity much more. Nice to know. Bonus: saves me the trouble of trying to find things tiny enough to put in a matchbox! I was starting to regret buying the small boxes and thinking I should have bought the super large ones.... Just as a reference, the two sites that inspired me with their matchbox efforts are here and here. I did see one just like mine but in all shades of blue and white and they were placed inside a glass bowl but I can't remember where it was (despite much searching...).

Just as a reference, my list of activities for our advent calendar include:
- baking chocolate chip cookies
- going out for ice-cream
- playing tag in the park
- going to the beach to collect seashells
- visiting the christmas decoration warehouse
- a visit to Santa
- making cards for friends
- having a picnic dinner in our backyard
- playing hide and seek
- having a special games night
- getting to stay up late to watch a movie together in our pj's

I am still thinking of things to put in them.

Here are a couple of my card efforts recently. The photo is pretty bad. I can't seem to find a good spot to take photos here in this house but there you go. I had fun making these. Very simple and I just love using the scrapbooking papers - so many lovely designs. With the flower one, I just drew the branch freehand on some brown paper and cut out with very fine scissors then used flower and butterfly shaped craft punches on different papers. You really need to use a dense pattern for the best effect I find. Then I attached them with mounting tape for some depth. The Christmas one was very similar. I drew the tree trunk freehand and cut it out, used a circle cutting tool for the tree and found some free clipart for the bird silhouette. I printed out a square of paper with the words on it but, if I had access to all of Lynette's and my craft stuff, would have stamped it and used the heat tool for a raised print. I can't even remember the name of that special powder for doing that! Been away from the craft table for too, too long.... Oh, I remember now, embossing powder! Phew..

As my last project for this post, I also wanted to jazz up our very plain white walls in the dining room seeing as I haven't quite got around to hanging any art there. Apologies again for the horrible photo. This holly and word have simply been cut from thick card and put on the wall with blu-tac. I used felt pens to add some details to the holly like a leaf vein and some shading on the berries. I was planning on 'Joy to the World' but haven't quite finished cutting out the other words. That font is quite laborious to cut out let me tell you... I might cut out some music notes to scatter amongst the holly too. This is such a fun, easy thing to do I might keep going with other spots around the house (and with a simpler font perhaps). Stay tuned.