Tag Archives: children

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

Christmas is coming…..

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There’s no escaping it now, Christmas is definitely on the way!  I’ve so far managed to escape Black Friday, which appears to have become a whole week this year, other than being bombarded with e-mails, and I have tried to avoid Cyber Monday with being a little bit more organized and ordering things over the last few weeks.  Now I’m just waiting for everything to arrive.

This weekend we have gone head-long into Christmas crafting mode in the house, as Alice brought home her letter detailing all the Christmas activities on at school in December, and her plastic cup for the pot goody stall!  It’s the Christmas Fair on Friday, so we’ve been thinking about what to turn the pot into this year.  We’ve already had a snowman and 2 Christmas trees, so it’s time to think of something else.

We did the traditional list of Christmas or Winter ideas, and had  browse around Pinterest and Google images for ideas.  We eventually settled on an ambitious design or Santa stuck in a chimney pot, complete with reindeer, snow and a robin!

We raided the box of model-making items for a tissue box, teabag box and two toilet roll tubes, then attacked my crafty stash for some dark paper, found some brown paper with the wrapping paper and some bits from old Christmas cards for embellishments.  There was pva glue, double-sided tape and felt everywhere!!  Wax crayons are great for drawing brickwork, and you just can’t make anything for Christmas without using some cotton wool for snow!

We had great fun messing up the kitchen, and here’s the finished result.

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I had to make the hat and I sewed the face to it.  We then filled the pot with little goodies – mainly glitters, glitter glue, crayons, pens and some sweeties.

I think it’s our best one yet, what do you reckon?

Happy Christmas crafting
x

Advent Calendar

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A few months back I started out with a mission to make an advent calendar for my daughter. I love the look of the little crochet stockings that I’ve been making for tree decorations, so thought they would make a great garland to fill with little treats. It would certainly make a change from a cheap bought calendar and could be re-used for years to come.

Making 24 little stockings proved more difficult that I had imagined. I originally planned for all the stockings to be a deep red with white tops, however, I fairly quickly ran out of the red! So the plan changed to include some dark green stockings with white tops. Here are a few of the first ones I made.

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I had to make sure I kept enough of the red and green to be able to add numbers on to the stockings, so I adapted my plan again to include some white stockings, with red / green tops.

Well after a few weeks thinking there was no way I would get it finished in time for Christmas, I am pleased to say I have finally finished it and we all love it.

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We’ve filled it with celebrations this year, and Alice is thrilled. It’s up in the hall, our first Christmas decoration and it looks lovely. The colours have worked well together and the stockings should fit in small gifts too, so there’s room for different gifts next year!

Well, it’s back to the Christmas makes for me,

Happy crafting
x

Half Term Art

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This half term we’ve been lucky to all have the week off and we decided on doing some new things as a family.

So on Monday we were up and out early for a trip out to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. I last went there when I was doing my art GCSE, back in around 1987/8, so I was looking forward to seeing all the changes. It was not really a surprise to find it nothing like I remembered. The galleries are really bright and airy, and the exhibitions are full of thought invoking pieces of art and sculpture. One of the most interesting pieces was a large cave-like structure adorned with knitting and crochet. It was very spookily lit, which made us think it was an old cave filled with cobwebs – very appropriate for this time of year. However, we were informed by one of the staff that it was actually the ‘Womb Room’ and with the low lighting inside it felt very warm and cosy.

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As it’s half term, there were several activities on offer for children. We opted for the ‘art hamper’ where we filled a small picnic hamper with art supplies and found an inspiring spot to make our own art. We decided on a bench overlooking the art garden and we all came up with something unique! It was great to do some drawing again, I realised it’s been a very long time since I actually sat down to draw a still life. But we all had fun and came away with our own piece of art.

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We finished the visit with the ‘welly walk’ around the sculptures in Whitworth Park. The weather was glorious, so we made the most of the dry conditions and played in the leaves, collecting some for possible future crafting back home. The walk involved trying to work out which of sculptures to find, using some slightly cryptic clues. We had great fun and particularly liked the out-of-season snowman and the upside-down trees!

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After lunch we headed off to The Imperial War Museum North, somewhere else I have been previously, but many years ago now. On arrival we were met with another menu of activities for half term, and we found ourselves in a studio doing still life drawing! This time of items from the Second World War. It was great that the parents were also encouraged to take part not just the children. So we all had another go with some beautiful pencils, drawing gas masks, goggles and incendiary bombs! This was all part of the ‘Big Draw’ and the gallery of work was pretty impressive – children and adults.

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We didn’t have anywhere near enough time to see all of the exhibitions, but we did do the Horrible Histories ‘Blitzed Brits’ exhibit, which was very popular with my daughter, even if she wasn’t really understanding everything. She loved doing the activity booklet, following the clues and getting hands on with all the interactive exhibits. It turns out I would have been a bomb disposal expert in the war!! Not sure I would have been any good at that, I see me more as a land girl or knitting socks for the troops.

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It was dark by the time we came out of the museum, so we had a quick walk over the ship canal to Media City, looking in vain for the Blue Peter garden, whilst enjoying the lights and the incredible moon. A quick cuppa in the Lowry while my husband set about taking plenty of arty photos in the dark, and then it was time to go home, thoroughly worn out!

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A great day out which we finished with a chippy tea. I would thoroughly recommend looking into any of these attractions and I think we will be going back to them again very soon. It was brilliant to do so much art too, I will have to see what else is on offer for the Big Draw week.

Happy crafting
x

Halloween Costume

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Half Term is upon us again and this time we have Halloween in the school holiday. We always made more of Bonfire Night when I was a kid, attending an organised bonfire and firework display at the local golf club. But things have become far more Americanised in the last few years, and the shops have been filled with Halloween costumes, accessories and treats for several weeks now.

This year I will be at the Ramsbottom Craft Fair on Halloween itself, so I am thinking about adding some spooky accompaniments for my stall. In the meantime, though, my daughter is having a spooky dress up competition at her dance school, so I have had to think about a costume for her.

I don’t really like all the ready made costumes, but I’m not the best dressmaker. We have bought a couple of costumes in the past, but all the children end up in one of about three outfits!  And with the issues raised by Claudia Winkleman after her daughter was badly burned, I decided it was time to use some imagination and make something a bit more individual. Plus she will need to be able to do her dance classes in the costume, so we needed something simple and effective!

We set about looking through the wardrobe and her dress-up draw, and came up with a purple tutu (a bit short), a headband with an orange witches hat, lots of plastic and rubber spiders, snakes and bats, some spider tinsel and a plastic cauldron. With that we set to work and I orders a black leotard and some purple and black stripy tights. I had lots of fun sewing spiders to the leotard as per my daughters instructions, then we added some more spiders, snakes and bats to the tutu. Finally I hung a couple of spiders from the hat and cut up the tinsel to add to the tutu.

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A bit of gruesome makeup should finish it off a treat. She loves the completed effect, we just need to think about a wand or a broomstick. I did suggest her Dad took her on a walk to find some suitable sticks, maybe this could be a project for the coming week while I get my stock sorted out for the craft fair?!

Happy Halloween
x

New Baby Cards

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A few weeks ago I received a request to make a large number of new baby cards, for a church group that give out packs of essential clothes and accessories for new Mums. So I started on a few samples. As I needed to be able to make a large number of cards in a similar style, I had to look at items I had in my stash that would allow for this. So out came my stamps and inks, as well as packs of pastel papers and some small paper doilies.

These were my first three samples.

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The feedback was good for these, and I really enjoyed doing some stamping for a change. So much so I think I will be making a trip to Clark Crafts soon on the hunt for some new inkpads.

The group often don’t know the sex of the babies, so they asked for some similar in neutral colours. I was slightly surprised at this request as I assumed everyone finds out now what the sex of the baby is at their scans. I didn’t want to know, but I was a real exception amongst the people I know. I decided I wanted a surprise, so all my initial baby purchases and the nursery were cream and beige. Anyway, I had to hunt out yellows and greens for the set of cards. It was much harder than I thought it would be to find little toppers that would go with yellow and green, everything I found was blue or pink!

I managed to make up the following sets in neutral colours.

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I hope this will become a regular order, so I have ordered myself a set of new baby dies to make my own toppers from the papers in my stash. I can’t wait to get on with some more, as it has made a lovely cheerful change to all the Christmas cards I’ve been making!

Happy crafting
x

Last week of the School Holidays

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Well this summer holiday really has flown by. I can’t believe we’re in the last week already, where has the time gone – does this mean I am getting really old? I feel like my feet haven’t touched the ground at all this week, as we’ve been visiting family, playing with friends and having fun in town.

We started the week with a trip into Ramsbottom and any trip there has to include a visit to the Aladdin’s cave that is Clark Crafts. I was determined (as always) not to spend a small fortune, but it’s so much easier said than done. We had a really good browse around all the products, finding more things that we ‘need’. I was quite good and just bought some more card blanks, but we found a lovely little craft kit to keep little ones amused.

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And at only £2.50, it was a bargain! We added some rainbow stickers (essential for any self respecting 6 year old) and foam shapes to the mix before calling in at the wine shop for Hubby’s birthday present. Well it wouldn’t do not to get him something from our lovely shopping trip.

Once home, the kits were immediately opened and the house was suddenly full of pom poms and pipe-cleaners. This kit is great, it came complete with self-sticking googly eyes as well as flat back gems, lolly sticks, and glue. My daughter started to make some spiders first, no glue required on these and all her own work, she cut up the pipe-cleaners for the legs and wrapped them around the pom pom bodies.

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We then had a look at what was left – absolutely loads – and decided on a caterpillar. She chose the order of the pom poms and I threaded them on a piece of cotton for her. We completed the look with googly eyes, a mouth cut from a piece of funky foam and rainbow antennae and hair made from pieces of pipecleaner. A truly rainbow hungry caterpillar, I think you’ll agree. Very cute though.

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She’s now thinking of other creatures she can make with the remaining pom poms. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

We’ve also had a trip to the Fusiliers Museum in Bury this week, where they had a craft session making peg dolls. The theme was heroes and heroines of the wars. So of course, we made a superhero dog with special ice powers, a posh lady and little red riding hood!

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This has sparked the imagination and inspired, we made a trip to find dolly pegs and tissue paper, as my daughter wants to tell her Rainbows group leaders about it and make them with the group. We have several little green aliens and red superhero peg dolls peeping out around the house now!

After making peg dolls we headed over the art gallery where there were crayons and paper available to do some art. We have been inspired this week watching Big Blue Live and Big Blue UK, so sea creatures have featured heavily in drawings. Here we have the pick of the art from the art gallery. Superb attention to detail I hope you’ll agree.

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Now it’s back to sorting out all the school uniform and making sure everything fits! I hope she doesn’t need more new shoes…

Happy crafting
x

Holiday Hama Beads!

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This week has been a big week for crafting, as the weather hasn’t been all that great. We had an afternoon with one of my daughters friends and she loves to do arts and crafts. So I managed to teach two 6 year olds to finger knit! I keep finding little strings of knitting all round the house now.   We also had a go at some French knitting, but that was a bit awkward for them to hold, so I ended up doing most of that one.

Anyway, we also have my husbands birthday coming up very soon and we had to do some serious making this week in preparation!  Out came the making box and the kitchen table was soon lost under piles of paper, funky foam, feathers and glitter!

This first creation is a desert island jigsaw for her friend to do.  The pieces are all leaves for a palm tree in the centre of the desert island.  She drew all the palm leaves and then very carefully cut them out.  I really like the little boat sailing into the picture, but I’m not quite sure what the tulip is doing in the sea!

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Her next creation is a rather fantastic card / picture for her Dad’s birthday next week.  She used loads of different ideas, and spent a lot of time using stencils and cutting out the birds, leaves and heart.  She also made her own envelope for a little letter!  I was pretty impressed with all the ideas she had and her attention to detail.  It’s such a jolly little picture with all the birds singing and a smiley sunshine – apparently the leaves have been blown off the tree and are slowing drifting to the ground.

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Next she wanted to have a go at some decoupage! Typically she couldn’t choose something simple for her first attempt. No sign of any die-cut sheets here! She found a set of Scooby Doo images we bought her quite a while ago and had a good effort cutting out each image, then ‘pinching’ my 3d foam tape to layer them up!

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What was great about this was that her friend saw one of the images she had created and she had to explain how she had done it for her!

Later this week we had a really bad weather day, so we got out the hama beads and while I was finishing off some projects, she set to work on some new creations for me to iron! This one took some time! She wanted to make some bunting, and then decided to add in a magician, complete with magic hat, wand and rabbit,  We also have the sun, moon and a magic star sparkle.  To complete the scene we have the always required dragonfly and some minecraft slime!!! This was a completely single-handed creation and took the best part of an afternoon. I love the imagination that’s gone into this and how she thought about all the little details with the stripes on the hat for the ribbon and the wand has white tips too. Brilliant!

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It’s such a shame the scene is so long as it was quite hard to get a good picture of. Here’s some of the smaller creations she also made. The seahorse is a template provided, but the butterfly is her own work, using a heart shaped board.

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I’m waiting for some more creepy crawlies to find their way into the makes over the rest of the holidays, as she’s taken a real love to snails in the garden! Eugh!

Happy crafting
x

A new crochet project

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While reading a recent issue of craftseller magazine, I was drawn to have a look at another craft blog, by the lovely lady at moji-moji designs. As I am still addicted to crochet and learning new stitches and skills with it, I have found this blog really interesting. I have to say my daughter also loves all the creations on there.

So I decided to have a go at one of the free patterns published on the site. As I have been making owls for my cards recently, they are somehow taken over my crafting! These little coin purses looked ideal for my daughter and her friends for taking a little pocket money out on their adventures, or for keeping little treasures close.

I decided to use some of my king cole dollymix dk yarns for these as the colours are so bright and vibrant. The basic purse shape was fairly straightforward to make, although I did have several attempts at the row that makes the flap bend over the purse! The eye patches and beak were a bit fiddly as they are quite small. But I think the hardest part for me is sewing them all together. It was quite tricky to keep the point of the flap inside the beak while sewing it. I then struggled with finding buttons the right size for the eyes. Typical! I have thousands of buttons in my craft stash and hardly any tiny black ones! So I compromised and found some purple and orange ones instead.

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I couldn’t find anything suitable for the blue owl, so had to raid Mum’s button jar! (Any excuse for a visit with her and the cats) Fortunately I also had a sewing box still at Mums which has plenty of press-studs in, so I was able to finish of the purses when I got home. So here are the finished articles, complete with chain handles.

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I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. My daughter loves her little blue one and her friends have loved theirs too.

I think I will try them in a thicker yarn and larger hook size next time.

I can’t wait to have a go at some of the other patterns off this blog too. My daughter has already asked for some of the little owls and a nest. Well that should keep me busy for a while!!

Happy crafting
x

Summer Holidays

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Well the school holidays are well under way now and of course, following the trend of the year so far, we have all been ill! I’ve had to have a week off doing anything with a bout of conjunctivitis, which having never had it before, I never want again. It has meant being unable to craft, read or use the computer as I couldn’t see very well. I spent an entire week wearing my sunglasses, which is not great when you’re inside the house.

Anyway, inspite of the set backs, I have managed to get my daughter crafting to a certain degree. I have been collecting up boxes, tubes and pots as usual, which will all be donated to the local nursery school when they start back in September. I love this as it’s so imaginative and is the ultimate recycling of re-useable rubbish. It certainly trims our bin and gives the school loads of things to use too. I really don’t know why more people don’t do it as it’s such an easy way to recycle and for the children to be creative. In the meantime, they make great model building materials at home.

My 6 year old is really enjoying making at the moment so we’re making the most of this. Here’s one of her larger makes, a city for some of her animals and figures.

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This was later populated with lego people and adorned with lego flowers, trees and bridges.

We’re also taking part in the annual Summer reading challenge at the local library. This year the theme is record breakers. As she managed over 30 books last summer, I think it will be a tough ask to beat that record this year, but she’s game for a try. The aim is to read 6 books before the end of the holidays and there are stickers to collect. We can’t wait to see what the first ones are. The fun books being chosen this year seem to be ‘Rainbow Magic’ fairies and ‘My little pony’. (A bit of a change from all the pirates and dinosaurs from the last couple of years).

As I am now on the mend from minor illness and my surgery we are hoping to get out-and-about a bit and maybe do some different types of crafts. We did get a lovely surprise in the post last week, as I must have entered a giveaway in LGC Knitting and Crochet magazine. I received a set of mini flower looms, so I can see these being found all over the place. Here are our first attempts, so I just need to find (or make) something to put them on.

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I can see them being added to some of my current under-construction projects, but we shall have to wait and see. They may be added to one of my previous makes that are currently residing in my daughter’s bedroom!

Well I see it must be time to get back to make some lunch before having a look at what we can do this afternoon – I can see paper, card and pens coming out of the making box!!

Happy crafting
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