Thank You – The Art of Cobwebs

I saw a magazine on the supermarket shelves and fell in love with the Bee themed ‘freebies’ which were being given away with the issue. I got home and, over a coffee, I flicked through the pages, and found a few pages of ideas for what you could make with the papers. I fell totally in love with one card, and knew that I’d make it at some stage, because it was just too lovely not too.

Last week gave me the perfect moment. I needed to make a ‘Thank You’ card and thought the bee themed card I’d found in the magazine would be perfect, and so, changing some of the papers, and adding my own sentiment, I made my version of the card.

In the magazine the maker had used some black corrugated card for backing the main central picture. I had no black corrugated card. I had red, blue, yellow, pink, kraft brown, green, orange …. practically a whole rainbow … but no black. “I’ll just use black card” I said to myself. But … I really loved that corrugated look. So … I did the next best thing….

I pulled out a sheet of the yellow corrugated, drew up the measurement I needed in pencil, and, taking a (cheapy) permanent marker pen, I began to turn that yellow card into black card. I chose yellow in case any of my colouring was a bit uneven, it would at least look like it was meant to look like that (can we say ‘distressed’?) – as it would tone with the yellows on the card. See … I do think ahead sometimes! lol.

By the time I’d filled the square, I’d emptied that pen. Thankfully I had another, because I needed to colour up four Candi dots for the corners!

I added ribbon, … and I like my ribbon more than I liked the ribbon in the magazine. My ribbon has flowers on it! (Much posher! lol) Then fixed everything in place.

In the magazine they’d used a very pale shade of lemon paper as backing paper – but I preferred something a little warmer. So chose a lovely, yummy yellow which looked like it had gently kissed the orange paint pot.

For the sentiment, I inked up some plain white card, then using a stencil and two ink pads – a shade of warm yellow and a pale burnt orange, – I gently inked through the stencil to make a honeycomb pattern over the card. I then stamped the ‘Thank You’ sentiment and cut it using a die, and backed it with some plain black card.

I added the four Candi dots; a ribbon bow at the top of the card; the sentiment; and finally added some bees which I’d cut from some of the printed cardstock.

Then I turned my attention to the inside. I’m not that keen on blank insides, and always try to put something in a card which adds to the whole thing in some way. I chose a decorative die and using some black card die cut it and fixed it in place with glue. VOILA! One thank you card for my wonderful neighbour.

Thank YOU for popping in for a visit!

Well ….. today is the last Monday of January 2017! We made it through the first month of the year! Give yourself a mental cheer! February will be a doddle because its way shorter than any other month – so it’ll a walk in the park. Yes? 🙂

Have a truly wonderful week. May nothing stop you from making good choices. May you carry an inner warmth which, every time you think about it, makes you smile. May you share a joke or a smile with another person. And may you do something which helps to change someone elses day around. Make someone feel better about themselves. Smile at a stranger. Pay someone a compliment. Just be nice to people. Everyone you meet really does have something which troubles them. They need help to smile sometimes, and maybe this week it will be your turn to help them. Give them a reason to smile.

Here …. here is my chance to make you smile. This squidge is a visible squidge, from me, direct to you, because I think you’re truly amazing . . . .

. . . . sending you a warm fuzzy hug and a heartfelt squidge, from me sat here to you sat there.

… Be good to each other. ~

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 ~