Minion Card

 

My Daughter asked me to make a 21st birthday card for a friend "She likes French Bulldogs, Pugs and Minions" Hmm... No problem there then. I found an invitation with a Minion on it ( a minion is a character in the film Despicable Me) on the web which I used to work out how to make this card. (Maddy's Invitations)

You need a sheet of A4 240gsm black card folded in half.
Cut a sheet of bright yellow card slightly smaller than the front of the card and stick down.
Cut two 2 inch circles in grey, two 1.5 inch white circles, two 1 inch brown circles and two half inch black circles. These make up the eyes.
Cut and stick a half inch strip of black card or paper and stick it across the front as above about a quater of the way down the face then stick the eyes on top of this. I used sticky pads for this bit so the eyes are slightly proud of the card.
Cut a 2 inch circle for the mouth, Cut it in half then cut a semi circle out leaving the shape of the mouth as above. Note that the mouth is narrower at the left hand side than on the right. Cut across the edges, straight on the left side and at an angle on the right.
Cut a rectangle 3 and a half inches by two and a half inch strip for the dungarees and straps and stick down as in the picture.
The pocket is a 2 inch circle with the top cut off and inked in brown around the edges.
The logo is a black 1 inch circle with a blue square cut to fit. Punch a hole through the middle with an ordinary paper punch then, with the square standing on it's corner, cut the right hand corner out and stick a tiny sliver of blue on to it to make the horizontal stroke of the G.
I finished with four strips of black for the hair and two black gems for buttons. A small 21 is mounted at the bottom but obviously any sentiment can be put here.
I texted her the picture and she replied "That's amazing!!!" So that will do for me!

Chocolate Wrappers

As some of you may know I tried this out a few years ago. I still do it sometimes for friends or on special occasions. These above are printed chocolate bar wrappers that the children helped to make for their teachers when they broke up for the summer. The programme I have for this is very good and although I'm not really doing this anymore I have kept up my subscription as everyone on the web site is so clever as well as being helpful and kind  .

A nice suprise of nature

Trying to tidy the garden today, (again), I walked behind the sandpit and discovered these. They are wild strawberries, I didn't plant them but they are growing in the dirt and sand that has accumulated underneath the study window. The seeds must have been blown there and have grown undisturbed. They actually look better than my strawberries at the allotment but..... they have no taste whatsoever!

My life

Sometimes I wonder why I am the way I am. I have always been the hands on type, I'll try anything, help anyone and so on and over the years I've learned how to do a lot of things But... today I was standing balanced on top of a wooden gate six foot in the air, leaning over an eighteen inch gap, splotches of tar all over my arms and legs and banging nails into the shed roof. I'm fifty-six years old! I should be sitting in a deckchair, knitting, letting someone else do the work.
 Isn't it funny though, I wouldn't do that, I would want to be involved in whatever is going on. Also I still think I know best. My son was helping and between us we did a pretty good job. I ended up thinking that I am still teaching and guiding

my kids, Will now knows how to re-felt a shed roof.

Raspberry Crumble Cake

I made this for tea today, it is a different version of Raspberry Crumble where you cut into it and eat it like a cake.
Rub 4oz butter into 4oz of self raising flour until it resembles bread crumbs. Stir in 4oz sugar. Put half the mixture into a silicone cake "tin" and press it firmly down with the back of a spoon or your knuckles. Pour a punnet of raspberries over the mixture and press gently down. Add the remaining mixture and press down with the back of a spoon again. Bake for aprox 20 mins gas mark 5. Remove from the oven when cooked and stand a flat plate on top with a couple of tins or a bag of sugar on top of that. Leave to cool. I found that this was best served after being refrigerated and with some thick cream on top.

This is the cake I made for my daughters boyfriend's 21st.

It was a rainbow cake that I had seen on the Internet a few times. The first one I made was for my son's 21st. They were really pleased and surprised with it so I thought I would do another. It is a basic Victoria sponge recipe but with the ingredients trebled.
Cream together 12oz margarine and 12oz sugar until it is white and creamy. Gradually add 12oz self raising flour and 6 eggs alternatively
Divide between six bowls.

.Add gell food colouring Red, yellow, blue, green, purple and orange. Gell colouring is better as ordinary bottled colouring dilutes the mixture too much. Use an ice cream scoop to divide the mixture equally into the sandwich tins. I used two silicone "tins" I bought from the pound shop giving them a quick spray of 1 calorie oil before putting the mixture in.Bake at gas mk 5 for aprox 20 minutes.
When cooked and cooled sandwich together with butter icing (8oz butter mixed with 1lb icing sugar). Just put a thin coat on each layer as there will be five lots of butter icing between the layers as well as all over the cake. Cover the cake with the rest of the butter icing.

To decorate the cake I cut the numbers "21" out using my Cricut but I used the negative placed on top of the cake and, placing a piece of paper diagonally over the stencil, I sprinkled the first colour on. I then moved the paper about a sixth of an inch over and sprinkled over the next colour and so on.
 I then had the choice of either picking off the few sprinkles I had accidentally spilled or adding a few more to the cake. You can see what I decided to do! I put 21 candle holders around the cake and bought some rainbow candles from Asda. They are not on the cake as it had to travel. I haven't seen the inside of one of the cakes yet, although I am told there is a picture somewhere!

I saw a swan in the sea today just to the north of St Mary's Island near Whitley Bay. Apparently it's lucky to see a swan at sea so I will wait and see what happens!

I went for lunch with my daughter to Newcastle. We went to Eldon gardens and this is what we had.

It was a picnic lunch for two and came on it's own little picnic table. A very novel approach and it was all delicious.

Memory Journal

I made this for a friend's Birthday. It's an amalgamation of a few things I have seen and filed away either on my laptop or in my head!
The idea is that you have a journal and when you have a few spare minutes to write you pull a memory reminder out of the jar and write down your memories or thoughts.

I have used an ordinary spiral bound writing book from Asda for, I think, 28p. Cut a piece of brown card to fit the front cover and glue together.Choose about six co-ordinating papers and cut them into oblongs of different sizes to fit the front of the journal. Glue down leaving a small gap between each paper.

 I then downloaded various questions from the internet and cherry-picked what was relevant to my friends life. I grouped them into sixes with a different font for each group and double spacing between each question then printed them out onto matching scrapbook paper.

Cut the papers into strips and fold or curl in a few different ways then put into the kilner/mason jar. I added a tag decorated in the same way to match the journal and finally tied three pieces of matching raffia around the top of the jar. I also covered a pen in matching scrapbook paper to go with it. Again it was a cheap pen from Asda, a pack of 10 for 90. Simply cover with an oblong of paper and stick a flat bottomed jewel on the top.

Double Rainbow

This was outside of my bedroom window one morning.

A Journal

I made a journal for my daughter. She was so taken with it she asked me to cover some more books for her to use when she goes back to university.
I started with a plain note book and just covered it with nice paper. (from Paperchase)

 

The doll is a stamp by Julie Nutting.  I stamped it onto brown paper then stamped the dress onto patterned paper, this way you get the lines of the dress superimposed onto the paper. Glittered shoes and a hair band complete the doll. I printed out the saying and added the embellishments including extra glitter onto bits of the background.

Inside I stuck an envelope for bits and pieces onto the back of the front cover and a paper ruler. On the right is a cut down envelope that belonged to my daughter with her nick-name on it. This holds three different sized tags that she can use to write on or as bookmarks.

Evenly spaced out inside the journal are two more decorated pages. The top one has post-it notes stuck on and the other is decorated with a nice poem and a picture of our dog. When you decorate these paper pages you need to stick about three of them together for strength. Each page has a marker tag sandwiched between the pages as well.

This is the inside back cover. I made a pocket with a cut up sheet of printed paper and printed out another saying.
I enjoyed doing this and may do some more in the future.

Well, I knew this would happen. I am always short of time to do what I want to do. I have been crafting since my last post though and I will try and put them all up as soon as possible.

Crafty-emblies: March Blog Candy

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My First New Toy From My Holiday

I've just made these to share with some friends tonight. I wanted to use my new "toy" that I brought back with me. That's it in the picture, if you saw it at a car boot sale you wouldn't have a clue what it was for but it's for putting a different mixture in the middle of a cake. I've added yellow colouring and lemon juice and zest to the middle part then decorated them with chocolate butter icing and little eggs as it's Good Friday. I'm glad this worked as I had my doubts, I thought the mixture might stick but it was fine. Well worth £3.40!

New York

I've just gotten back from New York after spending a week there with my friend, Gloria. We went primarily to go around the craft shops and managed Michaels (twice) The ink pad, Paper Source, Paperie and I think it was A C Moores. We bought lots of craft stuff, things we hadn't seen here, different papers, some beautiful stamps and embellishments. We walked for miles but also used the underground and the bus, which wasn't as scary as we thought. Then we had to buy another case to bring our stuff home!

This was the view from our window

Altered Art

I'm part of a group of crafters that meet about once a fortnight and each time, as well as making something, we have a "mingle". We are given a challenge to come up with something on a common theme. This week it's altered tins. We were given a M&S mints tin to alter and this is what I came up with.
A little tin that holds two Yankee Candles and says around the inside "If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."
We take them to the next meet and swap them.

Cupcakes for Mothers Day

This is what we made yesterday, The plan is to make four of them and put them in a cupcake box from the pound shop and the children can give them to their Mums for Mothers day. It's very easy to make them the ones above were made by a five and a six year old.

This is what you need:
 I bought a pack of 12 fairy cakes from Aldi for a pound, you could make them using a Victoria sandwich receipe but we wanted to do this quickly. A bag of mini marshmallows, 40p from B&M's, some granulated sugar coloured with a few drops of food colouring, some food pearls or silver dragees and some butter icing (4oz butter mixed with 8oz of icing sugar).
.

First of all cut the marshmallows in half diagonally

Then remove the disc of icing from the fairy cake and eat it. Cover the top with butter icing.
Place three pearls or dragees in the centre of each cake.

Then dip the cut side of each marshmallow in the sugar and place six around the centre pearls then another twelve around those.






Finished!

Something for Free

Just had to post this. It's a gift card from Marks and Spencer. It is the most exquisite cut work on three layers and it's free when you buy a gift voucher! I don't know what I will do with it but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Half term activities

I'm also a Childminder and yesterday the children played with coloured rice. I bought kilo bags of rice from Asda for 40p each and coloured them with food dye, about half a teaspoon. I mixed them by hand and it was surprising how quickly they mixed, although my hands were a bonny colour by the end! Then I left them on trays, spread out, to dry over night. Yesterday I gave them a tray each, some scoops, spoons, and containers and they spent ages experimenting with the rice. Next, when they get bored with this we will make pictures with some glue and the rice. Then who knows what we might think of before I probably end up boiling it up to feed to the hens!

Bereavement Card

I made a bereavement card yesterday for a friend and because I was cutting out a lot of inchies I made two at the same time. I put the first together too quickly and realised I should have inked the edges. I did that on the second one and you can see the difference it makes in the picture. I also printed off the verse "Do not stand at my grave and weep" by Mary Frye for the insert as I don't think there is a more beautiful verse than that for a bereavement card.

In the begining......

This will be my second attempt at a blog. The first one, about two or three years ago, ended up with only two posts as I was time poor even then. Hopefully, this will be more successful. It will be a bit about me, my family and my crafting.