Author Archives: Crafty Kath

Half Term crafting

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I can’t believe that half term is over again. This year is flying. With only a week to fill, there’s not that much we can do really. After a visit to Grandma, a shopping trip and a treat cinema visit that is.

So this week, we’ve been making some cards. Firstly was a get well soon card for Nana (my Mother-in-law) who has been a bit under the weather recently and had a hospital procedure. I let Alice loose with my small die collection and she chose my newest purchase, a spellbinders bow set to make this lovely card.

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While Alice was busy making her card I made a birthday card for her friend. She chose all the papers and the main topper, but I put it all together.

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Alice was given a large loomband set for her birthday and she decided she would like to make her Nana a gift to go with the card. So we looked through a book with instructions on how to make some loom band charms. She picked one of the simple patterns and made a could of tulips. A regular size one made using two bands for each link, and the smaller one which uses a single band doubled over for each link. The regular one was much easier to do for me, but her little fingers managed well on both. She loved it and has reignited her love for all things loom band. The house is now full of bracelets and necklaces!

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I’m going to have to think of something different to make over the Easter holidays. They aren’t that far off now.

Happy crafting
x

New style cards

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I’ve been looking around for some inspiration and ideas to make a new range of cards for this year. While watching one of the shows on Create and Craft tv, I saw one of the crafters make what they called a dangler card! I’m not sure of the name, but I really liked the way her card was put together, so I decided to have go myself. With My Mum’s birthday, Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary and Valentine’s day all coming up, I thought they would make a different card. It’s also been a chance to use some of the enormous stash of coloured card in my craft room!

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P1240823I’ve never been particularly confident using embossing folders.  Don’t get me wrong, I know how to use them, but I’ve never really found a use for them in my cardmaking.  So it was great to finally use one of the background embossing folders for the birthday cards.  I love how it gives some extra interest to the backing.  I used some linen card on these and adding the embossing just gives it a bit more oomph!

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P1240821I thought I would take it a step further and use one of the heart dies I have.  This intricate one is from Spellbinders and I’ve only ever used it as an embellishment, so to use it cut out of the main card elements was something totally new for me.  I really enjoyed making these cards, the blue one is for my Mum and Dad’s 45th wedding anniversary (sapphire, hence the blue).  The red one is for my husband for Valentine’s Day.

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Finally I changed the shape of card and went for a square card with circular aperture.  This time I used the delicate heart die to make the ‘dangler’ and added a tattered lace die cut butterfly.

All of the dangler pieces are attached using acetate, so they almost look like they are floating.  I’m not sure whether a ‘floater’ card is better or worse than ‘dangler’, but name aside, I like this new look and think I will be using this style as my focus for cards this year.  It’s a great way of using up the plain coloured cardstock I have and can’t wait to get going on Christmas cards, I can see floating snowflakes everywhere this year!!

Time to think about Mother’s Day though first.

Happy crafting
x

Fudge

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I’ve been thinking about what I could make with the rest of the can of condensed milk after making the marzipan hearts. Eventually I just looked at the can and there was a recipe on it to make chocolate fudge.

It was a pretty easy make – condensed milk, chocolate, and icing sugar! I wasn’t hopeful though, it looked a bit odd while I was making it, but the suggestion was to add some nuts and then leave it in the fridge to set.

I decided to add some marshmallows and raisins as well as some almonds and this is the result!

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It was a nightmare to get out of the tray and to cut up, but it tasted fabulous. It is pretty rich though so only a little piece at a time for me!

I will definitely make it again, though I will have to find a better tray to put it in.

Happy crafting
x

January Birthdays

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January and February are busy months for birthdays and anniversaries for us. So the beginning of the year is always taken up with family crafting. This year I’ve decided to have a real go at using up some of the numerous card-making kits I’ve bought over the years and see what I can come up with.

The great things is that all the people celebrating are of different generations and have totally different likes.

I started off with my in-laws. I was inspired by a visit to see the Flying Scotsman on our local steam railway and made this card for my Father-in-Law using a Hunkydory kit.

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I followed this with a card for my Mother-in-Law, using another Hunkydory kit, this time the little book of birthdays. Such lovely designs and I just couldn’t help adding some die cut butterflies!

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Next it’s my nephew’s first birthday. So not a card he would appreciate so much as one for his parents! I was given a set of balloon dies and some number dies for Christmas which was perfect for this occasion. This is a great card for using up offcuts of papers.

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I’ve also made cards for my Brother-in-Law, Sister-in-Law and my husbands Best man. The little book of birthdays and male images have been a great investment here!

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Finally for now is my other nephew’s fifth birthday in a couple of weeks time. He’s mad about Star Wars at the moment, so I made him a spaceman card. I hope he likes it.

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Well it’s time to get back to desk, I have my Mum’s birthday and Mum and Dad’s 45th wedding anniversary to make for, as well as Valentine’s Day!

Happy crafting
x

Making Marzipan

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My daughter, Alice, was given a lovely baking set and set of recipe cards for her birthday and we have been looking longingly at all the lovely things we could make. So with the weather being so miserable this weekend, we got everything out and decided to have a go at making almond hearts. Now we could have done this very easily and just bought some almond paste / marzipan, but we thought we’d do it properly and use the whole recipe. Having quickly looked in the baking cupboard I thought we had everything we needed, so it was with great dismay I discovered we had no ground almonds at all!

This meant a much lengthier than planned walk round the neighbourhood shops looking for ground almonds. Eventually after 4 local shops and over an hour of walking we found some and head back home for a cup of tea and to get making.

The recipe is very simple but involved quite a lot of kneading. We split the paste in half and coloured one half with red food colouring. Then left it in the fridge for a while to harden up a bit and make it easier to roll out.

We were both quite impatient to make the hearts, so I did the rolling out and Alice cut out the shapes.  We did think about making some stars too, but the hearts looked so lovely in the different colours we thought we’d stick with them.  They’ve really got us in the mood for Valentine’s Day too, although I don’t think they will last that long to give out to all her friends!!

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This is definitely a recipe we will try again.  It’s fairly simple although it has left me with most of a tin of condensed milk.  I shall have to get my thinking cap on and see what I can make with the rest of it, it’s far too good an ingredient to waste.

Happy crafting
x

My daughter’s Birthday!

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With Alice’s birthday being so close to Christmas and New Year, it’s always difficult to organise anything. In the past we’ve had a family meal out and then taken her and a couple of friends to a local soft play centre to let off some steam before going back to school. She’s growing up though now and soft play centres are staring to look a bit young for her, so we decided to have a proper party for her and few friends a couple of weeks after her birthday, so that we could arrange invitations.

We decided on a ten pin bowling party and the bowling alley provided all of the invitations, so there was no need for me to make any. I was a bit disappointed, but I threw myself into making the party bags instead. I must have been feeling a bit mental to take on this task as I was thinking about making the bags, decorating them and then sourcing everything to go inside them as well. It doesn’t sound like much when you say it quickly, but it was taking ages! I had a couple of practices at making the bags / boxes, but nothing was quite right, so I ended up on a shopping trip for gifts and found a selection of gift bags in blue and red that I thought would do the trick.

I set about making rosettes for each child and a personalised gift tag for each bag. My daughter chose the papers she wanted me to use – Papermania cupcakes! The rosettes are made using a template from Papermania and uses very little glue, but a lot of cutting. I enjoy making them, but making ten did take a while. I might have to keep my eyes open for a die to cut them out in future. I don’t mind all the folding and sticking together though, it’s quite therapeutic. Fortunately I do have a gift tag die which worked well with the papers and for the size of the bags.

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I really wanted to make them a bit different to what we normally get in a party bag, so instead of loads of sweets, cheap plastic toys and other such tat, I had a great afternoon browsing the sales. Each bag had a piece of cake and a couple of sweets in, but the girls bags included hair chalk, lip balm and hair bands, while the boys had shower gel, a flannel and a snake. Alice was quite upset that I hadn’t made one for her, but she did enjoy putting all the things in the bags and tying on the tags.

I’m pleased to say they all seemed to go down well with the parents as well as the children.

The party was a success too and Alice ended up with plenty of presents. So we thought it would be a nice touch to make some thank you notes too. I used up some scrap bits of papers for each little ‘envelope’ and used a scalloped circle die to make the flap. I printed out the notelet from the computer and we stuck each one inside each little envelope. Alice signed each note and wrote the name on the front.

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I think they look quite cute and she loved giving them out. All in all I think it was a success.

Happy crafting
x

New Arrivals!

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My Christmas present this year has been these two little lovelies! Since we lost Stella and Guinness earlier in the year, I’ve been coming to terms with the emptiness in the house, but I knew I would want to bring some more cats into the house at some point. Well we had our fabulous holiday and I have (hopefully) got over all my hospital admissions for the foreseeable future, so I decided a few weeks ago that I was ready to look for a couple of kittens.

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A friend of mine is a vet and she had a mother cat with five kittens abandoned at the practice, so we have now become the owners of two of the little kittens. So meet, Lily (tabby) and George (tabby and white). They are both quite shy, but I am sure that they will settle in soon and we are all looking forward to them playing around the house. I can’t wait for them to fall asleep on my knee too!

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Happy crafting
x

Boxing Day Floods

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Having spent Christmas in the South West with my inlaws, I missed being part of the floods at home. It was rather upsetting watching it from a distance, trying to keep up with exactly which parts of Bury were flooded or were going to flood. I spent most of Boxing Day glued to facebook and the bbc news. Several friends and family members lost power for a time, and I was dreading what we would return home too.

We arrived home last night and couldn’t see very much in the dark, I was expecting the worst though! So I’ve just been out to feed the birds, and this is my back garden!

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More like a lake, and this is almost 48 hours after the rain subsided! It much have been awful on Boxing Day itself. Fortunately, the house is several feet above the garden level, but I’m really glad I hadn’t followed through with my wish to have a shed / studio space at the bottom of the garden, I don’t think there would have been much left to salvage! I think I shall persevere with my little craft space in the spare room for the time being.

But we got off quite lightly compared to many in the local area. There is a road bridge out of action because of the pub collapsing in Summerseat, and a couple of footbridges are having to be demolished. And we’re set for more rain to come. I hope 2016 brings a drier Summer!

Christmas Cake

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This year I tried to be really organised and managed to make my Christmas cake in early October. And as I should I have been feeding it with some brandy every week since, that is until I ran out last week! So today was the day to take the plunge and decorate it.

I haven’t had much time between finishing Christmas orders and Alice’s dance classes and shows to really even think about a design this year, so it was a bit of let’s see what we’ve got and do something spontaneous! I cheated and used some ready-to-roll icing and I used some strawberry jam to stick the marzipan to the cake. I didn’t have a great deal of the icing, so I rolled it quite thinly – my husband isn’t a big fan of icing anyway so that’s a bonus. Having a root round by baking cupboard I found some little roses and silver balls, so I decided to have a red / white theme on the cake, with some little silver balls between each rose.

Alice then found my little snowman and Christmas tree so they were also added before we finished off the little scene with some sifted icing sugar ‘snow’ and a large handtied ribbon bow.

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I normally don’t get round to eating the cake until mid-January, but in the meantime it looks nice on the pre-Christmas table!

Happy crafting
x

Early Christmas Baking

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Now that the Christmas holidays have started it’s time to get into the spirit of things and do a spot of festive baking. It’s very therapeutic to get out the mincemeat and make up some tasty treats. I decided to begin with a batch of my mincemeat parcels. They are so tasty and make a lovely alternative to a mince pie. I have a number of packs of frozen filo pastry in the freezer that need to be used, so this was an ideal quick bake.

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After the parcels were finished, I enlisted Alice to make some festive ginger biscuits that we could share with friends and family over the holidays. The recipe we have is in a little Hello Kitty Christmas book that we bought for Alice a few years ago. It’s a really simple recipe and makes absolutely loads of biscuit dough. We chose some different Christmassy cutters and set about making the biscuits.

It was a good job there was loads of dough because I had a minor moment with my oven and completely burned the first two batches! I forgot just how fast my oven is when I’m baking. Anyway, we still managed to make about 60 or so biscuits for sharing. Alice’s favourite part of the baking process is the decorating, and we used plenty of icing pens, hundreds and thousands, and other little Christmassy bits from my cupboard.

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Once finished we took some round to the neighbours, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

Happy crafting
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