Now We Too are One

Hi Everyone,

I can hardly believe that my little grandson is now one year old. Where did the time go?

As expected Leo liked the tissue paper despite the fact it had no taste or nutritional value and stuck to his mouth. His attention was upwards to the balloons that were being bounced about by the adults. Well, who says balloons are for children only. It was a very humid day so we all melted into the settee while Leo sat happily biting into his favourite toy ...an empty cola bottle... calmly watching the world go by.

Leo's card was thought of about six months ago.  I suggested to Alice that she could make it for Evan's first birthday then any mistakes would be amended when I did mine. I am not called crafty for nothing!!

Like many of you crafters I hit a "block" and kept thinking, "I will look at it tomorrow", but all the tomorrows crept up and one day I knew that it HAD to be sorted.  With Alice's careful measuring and my eyeballing measuring I finally got past the block and into what I wanted to do. It was not however without its problems. As I said earlier we are in a heat wave, so working with glue and double sided tape is not easy when the glue is melting and tape has stuck to your fingers. I laid my almost finished card down and when I lifted it two "tiny" (even "smidgens") of tape had stuck to the two back photos. They had to be removed, as my subtle attempts at fixing were a total waste of time. Photos were removed, reprinted, insert added and card finished.

The card is pride of place on the birthday boy's mantelpiece.  My daughter very discreetly pointed out a little letter is missing on the inside verse. Ah well it happens to us all. It will be easily fixed and anyway Leo can't read yet. I still have a couple of nice photos to add but as yet they have not reached my laptop.

Leo 1

Birthday is over now so time to concentrate on other cards!!

Love

Now We are One

Evan is 1 today!

Craftywhippet and I had such fun thinking about our Grandsons' birthday cards. She came up with the idea that we could make a giant A4 stepper card (but twice the normal A5 size) and fill it with photos from the past year, with a larger photo from as near a year old as possible in the centre.

Large Stepper

I love working with photos, and resized them onto holographic card to fit the steps and rise up behind each other, managing to squeeze on 21 photos altogether. Tatty Teddy hearts paper on the A5 section, and Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles die to shape the larger photo, surrounded by name and age banners designed with MS Publisher, and finished with a glittery1and star.

To scale on trimmer

Evan's Auntie Debbie has been busy making Noah's Ark clay animals for on top of his birthday cake. Aren't they great? Her friend Victoria made the Rainbow cake.

Debbie got carried away introducing animals to their spouses

Off now to celebrate with his new Little Tikes Jubilee car... 

Tatty Teddy Easter

We got on with our filming yesterday, having prepared all week with waterfall, stepper cards, and digital cards from Spring Chic CD-rom. Now to film the introduction and ending...
Guess what? I forgot to check the battery for the remote control! However, that only required one of us to get off our seat and manually start/stop the video camera. Giggling together as usual, afterwards my brain suddenly kicked into gear and remembered I had a spare battery, where? In the camera case, of course. So we just filmed a little extra bit for the end of the video. We hope you enjoy Tatty Teddy Easter and look forward to your comments. What will we film next?

Here are some of the cards we made:

Tatty Teddy Easter sample card for Hospice

Tatty Teddy Easter card packs for assembling at Hospice

Tatty Teddy Baby Dedication card

Tatty Teddy Easter Waterfall cards

Tatty Teddy Spring Chic Digital cards

Tatty Teddy Easter mini Gatefold card

Tatty Teddy Engagement card

Tatty Teddy Ruby 40th Anniversary Stepper card

Tatty Teddy Birthday card for a crafter

A cut above the rest?

My die-cutting machine is a first generation Spellbinders Wizard, which works better now that I have the new plates. I later bought a first generation Cuttlebug because it is so simple for the embossing folders.

I have a fair collection of Spellbinder, Sizzix, X-Cut and Go Kreate dies too

At the last Craft Fair I bought a Memory Box die of a lovely tree, but, oh dear, I am having little success with it despite using thinner and ever thinner card with shims and hurting my wrist into the bargain!

I store my stencils and some dies in this A6 photo album

The Craft Group has been set a Challenge to make a tone-on-tone card, using only one colour throughout. I have used the tree and the frame dies in various tones of green, so we will see it how it eventually turns out.

The previous Challenge was to make a digital-program-only card, and you saw the stepper card I made on a previous post.  I have added more ruby tweaks to transform it into an anniversary card for hubby.

What makes you smile?

Blog prompt #10

Is it a product? a crafty friend? a particular blog? An event? Your family?

What makes me smile? Ooh, choices, choices... 

My new baby Grandson Evan, of course. CraftyGranny is NOT biased, oh no, LOL. Here he is about a month old now, with his new comforter, which my son called Kebab!

What else? Hmmm. Laughing with CraftyWhippet when the Outtakes happen.

Crafting can make me smile, if I'm pleased with how a card turns out! I liked this one, again made using docrafts, Digital Designer program for the stepper and decoupage.  The pergamano-type embossing was done on vellum with the Cuttlebug. 

I'm sure I will think of more and might add to this blog at some point.

Bank Holidays Now Mean CRAFT!!

Blog prompt #7

Write about your bank holiday memories as a child and how they differ now. Or perhaps you had a family tradition and you still carry it on now with your own family? Or perhaps bank holidays now mean CRAFT!!

Bank holidays were never in my thinking as a child, maybe they are not the same in Scotland as they are in England? Now being retired means we are unlikely to go away for the day on a busier day at the seaside! So - it's very likely that I will craft on a bank holiday Monday!


Yesterday was a holiday and I did craft, using DoCrafts Digital Designer computer program. I used the Forever Friends Retro Male disc to make a stepper card with a decoupaged bear for the Craft Group Challenge, when we meet in a few weeks.

Stepper Cards

View Full Album

The new videos Parts 1 and 2 showing some of these Stepper cards we’ve made, both A5 and A6, are now on YouTube.  We used the EaziScore board for scoring but you can use the Hougie board or whatever one you’ve got instead - or even no board!

Another Stepper Card

All crafted out

Craft Fair now done and dusted.  Mandala boards have been purchased and tried-out with a light-box, giving excellent shapes for matting and layering. Bags of iridescent and transparent white glitters for use in the making of glitter stencil cards have been tipped into containers; little plastic teaspoons from air flights or ice cream spoons are excellent for shaking the powder over the stencils.  Folding craft lamps with low-heat daylight tubes are now in position to shed light on sorting colours of card...

The craft group met and had a marvellous time trying out A5 Stepper Cards thanks to Jane.  Scoring the steps was made a lot easier by using the EaziScore Board as the lines are just the right distance apart.  Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph all our efforts, so there's just this one photo.  The 'steps' can be either side of the main part and can be decorated in myriads of ways, including having little messages popping up from the steps.  Decorative papers really come into their own and little scraps of card can be used up most usefully.  We enjoyed ourselves so much we didn't realise how late it was and had to scurry for home. 

A new video should be on YouTube soon.