2020 …….. What A Rubbish Year ……

2020 is, I have to be honest, with no holidays, weekends with Marc and Rick or special occasions to mark the passing of the weeks/months/seasons, it’s all a bit of a blur.

In some ways it feels like only yesterday that I was here looking forward to a packed year of wonderful adventures, but then on the other hand some days/weeks/months seemed endless with not a lot seemed to happen,  even Eurovision was cancelled! 

2020 and this retched, retched virus robbed me of 3 months with this pair, we stuck to the rules as a family without falter, despite aching hearts, in order to protect them, as well as family, friends and strangers, like many millions of other families all over the world.

They are days that none of us can ever get back. 

Watching Bertie’s fourth birthday tea through the kitchen window, when only a couple of days before we’d been walking home hand in hand from nursery, talking non-stop and then after an hour or so doing the same again to collect Iris from school ……. sharing cuddles and snuggles and so many hugs and kisses, oblivious of what was about to happen.

Thank goodness they took it all in their stride and we did it! We are among the very lucky ones, we didn’t lose anyone, no one got sick, jobs were safe and in the summer we were able to form a bubble so, no matter what happened, especially towards the end of the year, we could be safely together again and continue making memories, lets just hope that the Covid vaccination program will soon be winging  its way quickly to a surgery near all of us soon.....

……… and that we and everyone we hold dear will continue to stay safe and our lives gradually return to normal, though I doubt they’ll ever be quite the same again, so that adventures can begin with more wonderful memories to be made.

Wishing You All A Very Happy Christmas

Most Excellent Charity Shop Find - Wooden Alphabet Tray

Who couldn't resist this little beauty for just 50p, all be it without any G’s and only one C?

To be honest it was the tray that I was really interested in, worth 50p every time, being made entirely from wood and very well put together. My initial feeling is to give it a good clean and sanding and then turn it, as it’s the season, into a festive printers tray, putting different papers in the back of each square and then filling them with some of the larger embellishments I have ………. or do I decorate it, without a theme, for either Iris or Bertie for their bedrooms.

The letters I am not sure about ……. Christmas/birthday words, initials on gift tags?  All suggestions very gratefully received …….

XXXXX  I am now going to take a week or so off to enjoy a really peaceful and restful Christmas, it's been quite a year, of which I have said very little, perhaps a cocktail or two will loosen my keyboard ...........  I should be back on 1st January 2021 to start all the fiddle farting all over again ......... Happy Christmas XXXXX

Nanny, Iris and Bertie Discover Sizzix Shrink Plastic

My apologies for a certain little monkey who got in on one of the shots!

To be honest, I can’t remember what prompted me to order a pack of 10 A4 sheets of white frosted Sizzix Shrink Plastic (Amazon £7.99) but Iris and Bertie have loved  and run with it.

It was Bertie who was the most enamoured, as he is continually fascinated by different materials, tools and how they work together.

…… And, in turn, I am absolutely fascinated by Bertie’s little pudgy hands, I could just eat them …… knowing that one day they’ll all of a sudden change, grow bigger, more masculine, perhaps even hairy and work worn, but I am sure they will be mechanically creative hands knowing the boy and his enquiring mind, because everything he makes has to have a purpose.

Iris is the dreamer, with an imagination that is a million miles away, her head always buried in a book and then fired by the adventures within them in all her games and creativity.

After being shrunk with the help of a heat gun these first attempts weren’t as flat as had been hoped.  Iris and Bertie had wanted to turn these mini, experimental masterpieces into brooches for mummy and aunties, but the strong glue I used to attach the brooch backs melted through the white frosting affect of the shrunken plastic resulting in clear patches and the fastening showing through.

…….. however, two layers of paper glued on the back of a new design quickly solved that problem. 

A couple of days later reaped much better results, with Bertie deciding that a hole to hold a thread  by which to hang his designs from might work better ……….

….….. especially when Nanny also found a little wooden tree to hang all their new and future creations from.

What a team ….. happy times to wash the school day away before tea, making beautiful tranklements and childhood memories ……. and  it don’t get any better than that.

Snowman Card Revisited ……

I posted this 5.5ins by 5.5ins card (below) a few weeks ago saying that I wasn’t really sure about it ……

….. well, I have played around with it and come up with a very apologetic, unimaginative, typical formulaic fiddle fart answer …….

……. in other words, I simply trimmed it down quite a bit, mat and layered it on red and silver and then faux stitched it to an inch of its life! 

Yes, I like it better, but, not that I am making any New Years Resolutions, in 2021 I need to step out of the comfort zone that I seemed to have been stuck in for the past five years or so and start moving away from my boring square cards, with a mat and layered sticker/embellishment plonked in the middle.  I guess, with not making orders with all the bizarre, weird and wonderful requests I used to get I have just got very, very stale and incredibly lazy as far as cards are concerned, slapped wrist …… and must do an awful lot better!

Charity Shop Shopping – Andy Titcomb 2000 Frog Prince Teapot

This has got to be my most favourite charity shop find of 2020 ……..

I love a frog prince so when I saw this ceramic teapot, measuring approximately 4.5ins tall and 7ins in length  in Oxfam in Evesham, just before our second lockdown for just £2.99 it had to be mine!  It’s beautiful.

I didn’t notice, until I got home that it was signed on the bottom, but I just had a feeling that it was a bit more “expensive and quality” than my usual standard of tat!

Well,  it would have  been rude not to Google Mr Titcomb http://www.andytitcomb.com/. and it seems my frog prince is not only quite collectable and worth perhaps a bit more than £2.99 I paid.

Harold, as I have christened him is definitely a keeper!  Goodness only knows when I’ll be able to enjoy a good old charity shop mooch again, it’s my greatest guilty pleasure ……. you just never ever know what you’re going to find!

Mums Monkey Christmas Cards of 2020.

I start thinking about my Mums Monkey Christmas cards pretty early on in the year, well the theme part at least, after 11 years it’s getting harder and harder to think of something new, so you can imagine how chuffed I was when this idea popped into my head all the way back in February!

I left the all important photoshoot until September when I got The Boyz to pose in front of their extensive cocktail cabinet in dressed in their finest festive garb.

I then used Publisher to add the sentiment along the top using Fontdinerdotcom Sparkly font………..  https://www.dafont.com/fontdinerdotcom-sparkly.font

….. before sending the finished picture to Free Prints where I paid just £1.49 for P & P  for more than enough 6ins x 4ins prints to make all the cards I needed.

The 7ins x 5ins, rose gold, glitter card blanks came from The Works and I think there were 8 in a pack for £1.50.

As per usual I went overboard on the mat and layering, using white, then red and finally gold mirror card.

The fur on The Boyz hats was also given its customary liberal sprinkling of white, iridescent, ultra fine glitter, simples!

I think these were the quickest Monkey cards I have made in a long  while, mainly due to the perfect size of the photos, where in previous years I have used 7ins x 5ins prints and have then had to cut my own blanks and find envelopes to match. I also think they are my favourite in a long while too. Now…… to think of next years theme ……. aghhhhhhhh, it’s never ending!

Make A Wish – Tiny Bottle Christmas Tree Decoration

Following on from last week, my box of 35 tiny Christmas bottle tree decorations have gone off to find new homes .......

….. and with them a renewed vigour for me to explore what else I can do with small bottles.  I think I have another twenty in a box, but they need a really good clean and polish before I can do anything with them. Then when this lockdown is over I will probably order some more from The Works (6 for £1), however, at the moment they are out of stock so fingers crossed!

This is a new design doesn’t have to be just for Christmas.  Inside is a small, solid, silver coloured wish charm, bought from eBay years ago (and still available) leftover from the time when I was making wish bracelets, this was attached along with a tiny, blue, iridescent bead to a silver eye pin and pushed into the middle of the cork stopper.

In the bottom of the bottle are lots of tiny, silver confetti stars.

I attached a hollow silver star to a thread and wrapped it round the neck of the bottle and on the top I glued a decorative,silver spacer bead with a screw eye hook and small pearl bead.  I didn’t put a label on the bottle this time as I thought the wish and stars more or less said it all.

I have had a couple of the tiny thermometers for years, from the time when I could afford to buy craft bits from America, I thought I could put one in a bottle with some snow and a label that says “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with a snowflake charm on the outside. The tree is going to be fiddly to stand up and fix in the bottle, but I think the Merry Go Round will work, again attached to an eye pin with a layer of fine, green glitter in the bottom of the bottle.

Sadly, the snowman charm was too wide for the bottle, he really belongs inside, with the snowflake on the outside, he also doesn't lie flat against the bottle which niggles me.  I just need to find a narrower version for next year.

I am also thinking a red heart, with red glitter and a red bead for Valentines day and rabbits for Easter, again I just need to measure a little more carefully to ensure they all fit inside the bottles before I make any more considered purchases.

Guest Crafter – My Aunty Beth Has Been At It Again …….

There’s no stopping my Aunty Beth in Bude ……….

……. another surf board and body board covered using hand coloured mandalas from some of her colouring books ……..

……. followed by several coats of clear varnish.

And then …….. she had a go at using ping pong balls to make Christmas tree decorations using, to start with posh, patterned tissue paper …………

……. plus a sprinkling of jewels, stars and snowflakes.

As I was having a really good craft clear out at the time I decided to send her my collection of Decopatch papers plus a few hollow metal hearts, as she would probably make much better use of them than I was going to do over the next few months.

Let’s just say, she ran with them and nailed it!

Ricks Framed Plastered Wall Birthday Card

This card measures 5ins x 5ins and uses a white linen effect hand cut card blank

This card is just a bit of fun made for Marc’s partner Rick’s birthday.  Marc and Rick are in the middle of refurbishing their cottage in deepest Worcestershire and while waiting for the damp course to be done they did a quick wallpaper strip and paint over job in the hall just to fresh it all up. 

Rick had to do a bit of temporary plastering, but rather than cover it up, decided to accentuate it by painting it grey, to go with the rest of the paintwork and then frame it, using old picture frames, again painted grey, leftover from his various exhibitions/shows.  How brilliant is that?

So, in homage,  I too painted a wooden embellishment frame grey, placing it over a patch of grey card that I’d added a swirl or two of PA glue to give the plaster some texture to create the card.

…….. simples!