Crafty As L

This Christmas has been a heart-wrenching one for my family as it was the first one without my Mum being present.   Sadly, her dementia has progressed such that Dad can’t care for her any longer and she is now being looked after in a local care home.   Mum doesn’t recognise any of us now and doesn’t know what Christmas even is.   We took the difficult decision to leave her in the home on Christmas Day, where she has familiar surroundings and people, rather than bringing her to our home to be in the company of “strangers” who love her.   It’s made for an emotionally-charged time for Dad, my sister and myself.   The past couple of times I’ve visited her, she’s not quite been herself, which has been very upsetting to see and it’s really made me miss my Mum.   She was a very creative lady and could knit anything!   Among other things, she taught me to sew and to use a sewing machine when I was a child so I thought that I could ‘reconnect’ with her thro...

After getting all my photos ready for my blog post yesterday, I then forgot all about actually writing the thing!   So, here it is, a day late.    I realised that the number of cards I had made so far this year was only enough to do the cards that needed posting so there’s been some panic crafting this week to get the rest made. To start with, I remade the Alex Siberia stencilled Holiday Wreath cards in non-trad, muted pastel colours and finished them with gold gems for some sparkle.   They looked like I’d bought them from Next! Next was some batch making from a design by Shirley, one of my Visible Image Design Team mates.   After realising that I had no 5” x 7” card blanks, I modified the design to use only one tree rather than three.   I also used some of my own designs using up some inky panels on my desk with heat-embossed snowflakes. For my family cards this year, made a Christmas jumper using Visible Image’s fab set and backed with glitter heat-...

It’s nearly time for the big day, so our Design Team post theme this week is, appropriately, ‘Celebrate’.   Whilst it might be a bit late for crafting this project for Christmas Day, it’s a great little project if you’re having a celebration for New Year, or indeed anytime. First, I made the base to hold the gift.   For my miniature, I needed a box 2¼” square and 1” deep so I cut a strip of thick black card 2¼” wide and 8½” long and scored it at 2¼”, 3¼”, 5½” and 6½”.   I cut a circle from the middle square for the bottle. I reinforced all the fold lines before folding the box, adhering the 2” tab to the inside of the base.    The aperture was slightly too small for the bottle so I cut a series of tiny slits all the way around the edge to widen the opening but ensuring a snug fit. Next, I cut two 2¼” strips of heat-resistant acetate.   It MUST be heat-resistant acetate, otherwise it will just melt, like this… Each piece was scored at 2¼” and then ...