Bunting – The Art of Cobwebs

A great big Thank You – from a big friendly giant!

Morning/afternoon/evening – all you lovely readers! (And those who don’t feel that lovely but really are very lovely indeed!)

I’m here and I’m still crafting … but I’ve had to back track on a project. [insert sad face here]. My much-loved Grandson began his new ‘big school’ this week, and the teacher had given all these little ones (on their visit to the new school a couple of months ago), a little bucket, which she asked them to fill with ‘stuff’ related to things that happened during the summer weeks before they started school.

My daughter (his mummy) doesn’t get out as much as she’d like to, due to a medical problem which can keep her not exactly house bound, but it doesn’t allow her the sort of freedom to come and go as much as you and I have and so I guessed that filling the bucket might be somewhat of a problem. So because of this I came up with the idea of making a little book/album and fill it with photo’s and mementoes of things that my Grandson did with us, his Grammy and Grandad, in the summer before big school. (Grammy and Grandad memories added to Mummy and Daddy memories would make up a selection of great memories for my Grandson to share at school). And making & recording memories is what’s been keeping me busy for the last few weeks. I’ve had tons of little things to do with this much-loved Grand-baby of mine (yes, I know he’s not ‘mine’, I have to share him with Mr. Cobs, and his Mummy and Daddy, and his other Grandparents, and his aunty and cousins ….and… and … on and on!, but when he’s with me he’s all mine).

It was a fabulous little book and I was so pleased with the way it was coming together. I’d planned that all the memories and photographs were going to be on large tags, which slotted into pockets which I’d built inside the book. I showed the book to my little grandson a couple of weeks ago and he loved it. It didn’t have the pictures in it at the time, I’d kept those to one side, but just wanted to show him the book – and I had the devil of a job getting the book back off him! He wanted to keep it and take it home. lol. Oh! I’ve just thought! … I perhaps should have told you that this darling, adorable little boy, who is just four and a half years old and the most incredible little chap who’s so easy to love, was born with Cerebral Palsy. It has affected his walking to some extent, and also left him a little behind educationally. His understanding is about 18 to 24 months behind children of the same age as he is.

I’m aware of how careful we should all be of our little ones, so instead of giving you his name, we’ll just call him little H here on the ‘net.

I’d almost finished the tag book, apart from a couple of photo’s and fixing a couple of feathers and an Oak leaf in place, when it turned out that his mommy decided that she didn’t want to use this book after all. [insert miserable face here].

I was at a loss about what to do with the tag book – it wasn’t at all big enough to use as a mini album, and I couldn’t make it bigger as the book itself was ‘made’ in full. So after a couple of days of looking at it and trying to come up with ideas, I decided that rather than lose the beautiful memories we’d made during the summer, I thought the best thing I could do was to de-construct it, and then build a proper mini album, and use what I had, in a way which would make it feel like it had only ever been like it was in its new ‘form’. So this is what’s keeping me busy and stopping me from keeping my blog up to date! (Sorry about that. Life!).

But … I thought I’d take this opportunity to share something I put together for this little chap (well, for his mum and daddy to be precise) – which was a Thank You card to all his nursery school teachers.

I had a Big Friendly Giant decoupage card – ‘un-constructed’ – in my stash for ages and never made it up. And, well, … I had a couple of days where I’d totally lost my mojo, so I thought I’d get the mojo juices running by making up the découpage card. Crafting something was better than just sitting there looking at my desk.

All the things needed to make up one card, came inside this ↑ handy wallet/envelope, from the makers of DoCrafts.

And this ↑ is what it looks like when you unpack the contents of the wallet/envelope

It was easy as melting chocolate with a heat gun, to put together. Just layer it all up. So I did … and loved it when it was made, and just as I was popping the last element in place, the phone rang … it was my daughter on the phone. We chatted for a while then I said that I’d made this card ….. and she said she needed a card to thank everyone at the Nursery School. She’d got cards for the teachers who had the most to do with little H, but she wanted one bigger card for a general Thank You, to everyone.

I looked at the BFG card and had an idea. I could turn this card into a thank you card easy peasy. So I did.

If you click on this photograph ↑ it will open up into a much bigger picture so that you can see it and all its layers. But … it’s not quite finished, so remember to click back to see the finished article.

I cut some flag bunting using a die, in four colours of gingham card: Biscuit; Baby Blue, Teal Blue and Pink, and mixed up the colours so that the bunting was a combination of all four colours. I die cut some alphabet letters to spell out the words ‘Thank You’, which I then mounted onto the flags and finally added some buttons, blue ribbon (to be the ‘book mark’) and a little card rosette with a button at the centre, for the top of the front.

And that, as they say, was all there was to it. But I loved the way it turned out. Just shows you that you can change a découpage card ‘kit’ to make it fit the occasion you want it to fit.

So … that’s me talked out, now it’s over to you. What have you been up to? Done anything nice that you want to share? Been somewhere lovely? Or just want to have a general chat? I’m in favour of anything you want to say. Say it in a comment below and I promise to answer.

In the mean time … Have a truly blessed day.

Sending love ~

What a Dream Scrapbook Page!

I have a ‘bought for the purpose’ scrapbook which, although it has a (sort of) ‘padded’ binder (cover) – in the centre of the cover it has a little cut out section where you’re supposed to slide a photograph into the ‘hole’ (from a little slit on the inside cover) so that it shows you what the scrapbook is about. Problem was that even though I loved the cover of the scrapbook, I felt that the ‘photograph’ section on the front was, well, a little too twee. A bit (kind of) predictable. I didn’t want a photograph on the front, I wanted something better than just a photo.

So I cut out that bit on the inside cover, and so got a ‘hole’ right through the front cover. (Think of a serving hatch into the dining room from the kitchen). I then cut up a scrapbook page saver, (one of those plastic page holders which you put your ‘made’ pages into to protect them) and carefully glued a square of that soft, pliable plastic to the front of the cover and then hid the glue with some pretty pleated ribbon.

Then … I made something which I was far happier with which would show through that window. I made … Page One of my scrapbook.

Such a simple idea. I kept the page white, but draped bakers twine across the page and attached it to little gold brads, which were to be the ‘drawing pins’ (thumb tacks) which held the bakers twine in place. Once I was happy with where the bakers twine was place on the page, I then glued it in place with some Anita’s crafting glue. (It’s white when you put it on, but dries clear).

I then cut out some little white ‘flags’ – from some thin cotton sheeting – basically the same weight as light weight shirt cotton, – which I then glued to the bakers twine and made Bunting!

I glued a little white doily to the centre of the page and while that was drying I made a little dream ‘diorama’ out of an old tin which I’d got when I purchased some ink powder. I’d saved the tin, not knowing what for, but knowing that it would come in useful one day. (I am SUCH a ‘crafter’). 😀

A couple of years ago I’d seen a picture of a little tin which was a tree ornament. It looked so pretty that it had stuck in my memory. When I decided what I wanted to use to fill that central space on page one – but something which would also ‘begin’ my scrapbook and give a taste of what was to come – the word ‘dream’ came to mind and so did the ornament. And that’s where the basic idea began.

The cover of the album is basically a mix of greens with a contrast of pink and white polka dot all put together in a (kind of) patchwork, – and with butterflies flying in various places on top of it all.

So the tin had to be complimentary to the cover, and since butterflies were going to be putting in an appearance further into the scrapbook then it was natural that they should be on the first page too! So I began with a scrap of pink polka dot paper, which I hand cut into a round to fit into the base of the tin. I then used some white glue, and glued some flower soft, in a mix of pink, green and white, into the bottom quarter of the tin. I wrote ‘dream’ on some paper and distressed it a little, then cut it into a banner and back it with some green card.

Thankfully I have a selection of butterfly stamps, some of them are really teeny tiny – so they worked perfectly with the tin and it’s lid. Just the right size in fact. The one inside the tin I stamped in an emerald green colour, but then coloured it in with a lovely fresh spring green.

But the butterflies which are outside of the tin, flying free (so to speak) I stamped using a grey memento ink (I think I used ‘silver’ actually) – and didn’t colour those, because I wanted them to look delicate, and pale to match the white of the whole page. I added some glue ‘squiggles’ and sprinkled some ultra fine glitter onto it – to sort of represent the flight path of the butterflies as they flew.

I glued down the lid using a little hot glue, and covering two of the pale butterflies, so that they looked liked they’d flown under the lid.

But I did have one slight worry. If the album, at some point in the future, had something heavy put on top of it, then I worried that the metal rim of the open tin might just puncture the plastic cover I’d put on the front of the album. If it didn’t puncture it – it might mark it permanently and it would then spoil the look. So I had to come up with an idea to solve that problem – just in case it ever did happen! (That’s me. I have to have a plan for everything in case something bad happens. If it does, then I have a plan. If it doesn’t then that’s great – but at least I had a plan! lol).

I got out the trusty hot glue gun again, and sorted through my white buttons to find some which had a vintage feel about them. I knew I needed to be careful about choosing the right ones – because the wrong buttons could spoil the whole thing.

Buttons found – I squidged a generous (but not a huge glob!) amount of glue onto the back of a button and carefully placed it on the rim on the tin, holding it there for a few seconds while the glue began to set. Then I did the next one. Then the next. Then … and so on until I’d glue four buttons, in descending sizes, on one side, and one further button on the opposite side of the rim of the tin. I left them over-night to see if they would do what I wanted them to do.

The following day I put my hand flat palm down, on top of the rim to see if, when I pressed, they stayed in place. They did. I then knew that these buttons would spread the weight of anything pressing down on the top of the album and so wouldn’t damage the plastic on the cover. Yay! I love it when a plan comes together!

I wrapped some rayon seam binding around the outside of the tin, in a fabulous warm olive-green colour, and then finally added a little rich, royal purple polka-dot bow to one side. The finishing touch. I loved the scrapbook already – and I’d only just began!

Page One was ‘finished’. I stood back and looked at it. It was perfect. It looked vintage. It had a friendly feel about it. It spoke of a promise which I knew was to follow in the pages, so far unmade, but I knew the plans I had for those pages.

Yes, this was going to be a scrapbook I loved. I could feel it.

I know that Scrapbooking is a fairly new type of photograph/memory saving way of doing things to the UK. Here in the UK we’re more used to photograph albums which we buy and pop our photographs into. But in the last few years Scrapbooking has taken off and it’s becoming more popular.

So .. do you scrapbook? And if you do … do you blog about your pages? If so, please leave me a comment and put a link to your scrapbooking page or to your blog in general, because I’d love to come and see your scrapbooks, and I’ve no doubt that others who visit this page would love to visit your blog too!

Have a truly lovely rest of your day!