Princess Crown Wooden Sign

A fellow cleft mum has been having a hard time of things lately and her little girl recently went through her palate repair operation. Through all the difficulties she is facing she continues to work for clapa in her fundraising efforts and has applied to become a contact parent for clapa, which means she will act as a point of contact for new/ other cleft parents that may need help with their babies. I thought she could do with a few bits to cheer her up so I made this little Crown Wooden Sign for her daughter.

Both the Crown shape and letters were bought from my favourite craft shape supplier LaserSmith. The heart was bought off ebay as bulk buy of 50, and the small stars were bought as a mixed box of embellishments from hobbycraft.

I started by placing my bits on the plaque to check they fit and see how they looked best. I planned to paint it with my Kobra spray paint in pink.

I always spray both sides of the plaque-even when the back is unlikely to be seen. I think it looks more professional. I ordered some items from some established crafty pages off facebook and was really disappointed when they arrived and were only painted on the embellished side. Especially as it was an item where the back could be seen, I.e. on a freestanding shape! You MUST make sure it is thoroughly dry before attempting to paint the other side though. If you have sprayed a thick coat (as I always end up doing because I'm too inpatient) I recommend waiting a good few hours before turning around to spray the back. However, it is a better recommendation to use the spray paint as instructed on the tin and just do several thin coats as it dries much quicker this way.

I glued the embellishments in place using superglue (I have found this gives a much better finish that a hot glue gun as it doesn't ooze out of the sides and it sticks well without the need to clamp it together for half an hour after gluing - can you tell I am impatient?)And those of you with eagle eyes may have noticed that there have been holes drilled into 2 of the crowns peaks. To do this I used my Dremel 3000 (see, it was an essential buy afterall :o)!)

So that my lovely CLAPA friend knew why the devil she was receiving this gift I also made her a card...

I would like to enter this card into the One Stop Craft Challenge Challenge #238 - Pastel Colours

It was a pig to try to photograph this card. I love the design, but again I am disappointed with the stamped sentiment, which reads 'THINKING OF YOU'..... YOU NEED NEW INK PADS :o)

Birthday Cards, Body Shop and Cystic Fibrosis

I attended a Mad Hatters Tea Party event today in aid of a little girl called Anya Bentham who is suffering from Neuroblastoma, an awful, very aggressive childhood cancer. Anya is a local girl and the community has pulled together brilliantly to raise money for her treatment. I heard yesterday that £200,000 of the £250,000 target has been raised. This is fantastic but its so sad to know such fundraising is necessary. If you would like more information about her and this terrible illness you can read about it on her just giving page.

I was attending the event as a Body Shop Consultant and have offered to donate all my commission for sales achieved at Anya events. I am a sucker for children and always do what I can for charities. If you are fundraising and would like info on. How I could help please get in touch.

I always over-pack my stall. Today I tried to limit what I put out and I was quite pleased with the final look. Still, room for improvement!

I met a remarkable woman there too. Her little girl had cystic fibrosis and was treated at the same hospital where Joseph had his lip repair, Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital. If I'm honest I was pretty ignorant about the condition and what it entailed, but she was able to explain how it affected her daughter and the implications for daily life. It made me feel pretty silly having been so concerned about a cleft in Joseph. Despite what she had to deal with, this particular mum had awe and respect for Anya's parents and what they had to go through with their daughter. A couple of days ago I posted a picture of some sentiment plaques I'd made and one of them seemed particularly potent...

I have since been quote hunting and really appreciate these words by Albert Clarke:
“In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy."
On a lighter note, I returned from the event to my creation station :o) It is my partner's sisters' 16th birthday this weekend so I needed to make some cards. Being a beginner my materials are only cheap. I love the linen effect cards used by itsallfiddlefart, but I've got a bulk pack of plain white cards from hobbycraft which need to be used first. 

I used glitter and silver card from a bulk pack bought from home bargains or B&M-I bought them a while back so I can't remember where exactly I bought them from or how much they were but I can't imagine it was much more than a couple of pounds for a 20 sheet pack. I cut the squares by hand but this took forever and I wasn't very accurate, which shows in the quality of the finished product I think. I really need to invest in a guillotine-any recommendations?  The little star embellishment was from The Works-I think it was £1.50 for a pack of 6.

I do like this card (I surprise myself sometimes). I always start with one idea in mind and end up with something that looks completely different which I kind of like. I'm really disappointed with how the sentiment stamp turned out. I had to improvise and use my promarker to colour the stamp as I only had dark coloured ink pads.....more thinks to buy!! :o)

I can't help but think this looks better in the photo than it does in real life. I've printed two  monkeys to represent her two cheeky monkey nephews as she likes to call them. I didn't stamp them very well and some of the finer details bled. I also used the wrong sort of ink pad to colour the stamped image. I'm told I need to use Acid based ink....the shopping list gets bigger and bigger!

Body Shopping and crafting was just about complete when my partner arrived home and I was able to have an amazing snuggle with my big, little boy! :oD

 

Playroom Door Hanger

Nap time = mummy time. I should be doing the dishes, or washing or one of the many other  household chores that await me, but the lure of crafting has distracted me. I've just been sharing a few of my makes on MSE so thought I ought to share on here too.

This a door hanger I made and auctioned off on my facebook page JJ Jewellery and Crafts. The auction was for CLAPA - Cleft Lip and Palate Association. My little boy was born with a cleft lip and palate which was diagnosed at our 20week scan. CLAPA were a fantastic support - I will undoubtedly talk more about them in later posts.

It was made by spray painting an MDF hanger (bought from ebay) in red, and decorating using my white uni posca paint pen. I used a broad nib for the 'warning' writing and some of the dots, and a medium nib for the rest of the writing. The monkey embellishment was bought from hobbycraft for about 80p (if I remember rightly).