After a very stressful and distressing week last week, I’m pleased to say I’m feeling a little better. It’s been tough to get refocused as my craft space looks over the devastation, but I am calmer this week . So it’s back to some crafting!
A few weeks ago I discovered a lady on YouTube doing some crafting challenges. I found her when Hunkydory were doing their goody boxes and she had posted some unboxing videos. I watched several of these on the internet so I could decide if I wanted one (or more) this time around. The ones I enjoyed watching most were by a lady named Lauren, so I subscribed to her channel (Lauren M & Co) and found she does lots of unboxing of craft orders, as well as some crafty makes and challenges set by her partner/son/subscribers. Anyway, I was really struck by her weekly challenges set by her partner and I think I might have to have a go at something similar in the future.
One of her other challenges though is to work through an entire kit / paperpad and see how many cards she can make with it. This is something I really need to do as well. I have so many papercraft kits and embellishments that I’m running out of storage space. I’d made a card for a friend’s daughter using some toppers from a very old Hunkydory kit and decided that this would be a great kit to use up. It’s the Dreams of Spring kit and it’s been in my cupboard since around 2013! So it’s well overdue using up.
It’s a massive kit and I have used some of the concept cards from it several years ago (baskets and rocker cards pictured). There was still a lot left though – 5 foiled aperture cards, 3 foiled decoupage sheets, 3 collage elements sheets, 10 sheets of toppers and 14 sheets of cardstock – so plenty to go at there!
I started out with the aperture cards, just to get me back into the swing of crafting, simply adding a few gems, bows, flowers and sentiments. One of these as already gone to celebrate a young lady’s birthday.
Next I decided to work through each die cut sheet as they came out of the pack. I also set myself the challenge of using up some of my stash of card blanks ( I have lots in a range of sizes) and I wanted to make some different style cards as well. It’s taken me a few weeks so far but I’m almost at the end of the kit (does that mean I can restock?!) It’s been quite good fun to use up so much co-ordinating card, colours and patterns and I’ve really enjoyed finding matching gems and ribbons to add some interest.
To help me on my way I used the inspiration sheet for a few of my earlier cards. What do you think? They’re quite large cards and so used large pieces of the card and papers. I’ve liked how this kit is foiled in silver as I usually use gold, so this has also helped to reduce my stack of silver mirri card.
Once I was into my stride with the cards and what to do with the toppers, I was able to make quite a few cards reasonable quickly Looking through my cards and envelope drawer I found some aperture cards and twisted easels, both of which I had never used before. These were trickier to use as they required some precise measuring (Cat Hollis over on Hunkydory has a trick for doing triangles to fit, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember what it is). I enjoyed making these and choosing the stoppers but they do leave awkward pieces for the scrap box. I’m quite please with how they turned out for my first attempt.
There were also three sheets of florals in the kit which I thought would be perfect for making flower boxes. So that’s just what I did. I hope you like them. They are all ready to be personalised for an event or person. I particularly like this one with the floral panels.
I’ve really tried to use up everything and stretch the kit as far as I can , so I’ve made quite a few smaller A6 cards with a variety of styles. These sizes are great for using up smaller pieces of card and also a way to incorporate some ribbon strips. I used an idea from Laurens’s recent project, putting a couple of card patterns together with a ribbon stirp across the join. I think they work well, although I can’t help being reminded of wallpapering with a dado rail! Is it just me?
I’ve also made a few panels using the card scraps I had leftover. I love making this type of card. I die cut ‘Happy Birthday’ sentiments from some more scrap pieces and I think the extra gems really finish them off well.
My most recent make was made using the sketch challenge in the latest Hunkydory magazine (issue 77) and I really like this style, so I can see me making a few more.
Well I don’t have very much of the kit left, just one piece of printed cardstock, a bag of scraps, a few sentiments and a couple of patterned paper shapes. Time to get my thinking cap on – or I could just move on to another kit maybe? I plan to ask Crafty-teen to pick me something to work through next – wish me luck!
I’ll update with the final card total from this kit soon – how many do you reckon I made?
Happy crafting
x
(Parkrun was at Worsley Woods, time 47:05)
