Challenging myself to be Gorjuss!

If you’re anything like me, you will look at the freebies which come with crafty magazines, admire them and tell yourself that you’ll make a card with them, or scrap-booking page or do something wonderfully crafty with them … and you pop them to one side.  From there they make it to a drawer.  Then to the bottom of said drawer.  Then you find them when you’re looking for something else and remember you were going to make something with them, so you put them on one side ….  and the whole thing goes round and round like a merry-go-round.

Well I told myself that I was to actually make something with my freebies from now on, so I began with these Gorjuss images.  Now I’m not a Gorjuss sort of girl.  I like the images and think those little girls are just so pretty and so well drawn.  But they’re not things I would normally craft with as I don’t kind of have a real ‘feel’ for them.  I think they’re kind of ‘too sweet’ for me.  (My daughter is the total opposite.  She LOVES Gorjuss cards etc.).

I sat and looked at the images , telling myself that I HAD to make four cards or I was NEVER  leaving that craft room (not even for a visit to the little girls room).  So I did.  I made four cards.

All the cards are made on a 6×6″ card base, dècoupaged,  matted and layered. 

This first card is dècoupaged (although you actually can’t see that it is in this photo) has the addition of Black Lace Washi tape, and some black Stickles at the corners.  The envelope is decorated up with a bumble-bee on the flap.  I wanted to put a foxes head on the flap of the envelope (as a nod to the fox in the Gorjuss picture) but couldn’t find the darn stamp.

This second card (above) is again dècoupaged, and I simply drew the wriggly lines around the lovely pale mustard layer, to sort of frame the whole thing.  The envelope is decorated in the same way, with patchwork hearts to echo the little heart she has in her hair.

Card three (above), dècoupaged, matted, layered and decorated using a very fine nib pen, and I added some buttons using lilac Stickles to bring out the lilac in the Gorjuss girly picture;   a teeny mushroom picture which I glossed and added a ribbon too.  The envelope is decorated with a dragonfly.  (I couldn’t get the light right for this card.  The pink spotted background is actually more delicate and pale than it looks in the photo).

Finally … card four.   Dècoupage, matted, layered, with the addition of a little ribbon and some Stickles. The envelope has a rabbit’s head on it, to acknowledge that the Gorjuss girl obviously likes rabbits because she’s holding one!

They’re not my usual type of card and I was absolutely outside my comfort zone, but I’ve done my personal challenge and made something with some of my freebies instead of adding continually to my stash.  But I’m glad I challenged myself to do them.  However – the challenge is ongoing.  I still have more freebies stashed away, and I’m determined to use them! (You have been warned.) 

All that remains is to wish you a very Happy Monday, and I sincerely hope that you have a lovely start to this new week.  Make a memory today.  Find one good thing which happened during the day and think about it when you go to bed tonight.  Go on … make yourself smile

Have a truly blessed day, my fellow blogging friends and readers.

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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 ~