Hello to you!

Hello to you! I am taking a little time out to blog, safe in the knowledge that the housework is mostly up to date, and Dan is happily asleep in his bed! This may not sound like much, but trust me, it is really amazing to me. On Christmas day, Paul's and my main present was Dan, in his sleeping bag (which is really restrictive), coming into our room to wake us up. He had learnt how to escape from his cot, and needed to have a bed, as the escaping was a pretty hair-raising process. Then we came across a new issue, that of keeping in his bed. To start with we were staying in his room to stop him from escaping, and I stopped being able to craft as I was spending up to three hours in there. I got really down, the housework suffered, and none of us was happy. Then I had the miraculous revelation of just leaving him to it (with locks on a couple of doors to prevent him from flooding the house!). So this week he is finally happy, falling asleep in his own time (occasionally on the landing) and leaving us time to be adults again.

Anyway, enough waffling, I usually try not to bore everyone with family stuff, so now about the card! It was only my second ever commission, and I really enjoyed making it. I used patterned papers from an Artylicious CD, and I can really say that it was worth getting, as the designs are beautiful and I could print off what I needed on the medium I wanted- great for a control freak like me! And I have the co-ordinating stamps, of course :D

Colour: Distress Inks, Sharpies, Versamagic, Stazon, Cosmic shimmer, Aurora ep
Stamps: Elusive images and Cherry Pie (butterfly)
Other: Artylicious Damask Delight CD rom, Vellum cardstock (used inside and for the butterflies), mountboard (for hand cut numbers), paper roses, selvedge of silver ribbon, jewel brads, poem from Internet, Fiskars border punch.

The vellum cardstock is amazing to look at, but you need to handle it with extreme care as any crease or mark shows as a white line. I managed OK for this, but will only use is when nothing else will do otherwise!

Jambalaya kit

Another pressie, this was a recipe card and the dry ingredients for making Jambalaya- one of our favourite New Orleans' dishes (we had a week there in 2004). All of the herbs and spices were individually wrapped in cellophane and labelled, so all the recipient needs to do is put them in a mortar and grind them up!

Colour: Distress Inks, Versafine, Ancient Page
Stamps: Paperartsy, MSE
Other: gold wire, raffia, stiff card for box, cellophane

PS This is the last time you will see my beloved (and old) MSE alphabet, as I left the word 'spice' on the block after I finished. Paul let me have a lie-in and gave Dan his breakfast, and when I looked at the block later it was empty! I found 2 letters on Dan's place-mat, and one in his cereal bowl, but the other two seem to be gone for good- and there was no way I was going to look in his nappy for them! Farewell, lovely alphabet, I suppose I will need to replace you at last!

Box for the Jacob's ladder.

This isn't a new project, I'm afraid, just the finishing touch to the last project. I thought it would be nice to make a matching box to store the Jacob's ladder in. This is simply made from two pieces of A4 card, scored, stamped and folded, using my box-making scoring board. I doubled over the side pieces for neatness for the first time, and I wish I had done this before as the fit and finish of the box is greatly improved.
On Sunday I am going to make a children's version of this as a toy for Dan. My Dad said he would cut some wood pieces, and I just have to find the instructions for the ribbon layout. I still need to do my TMTA ATC for this week, the theme is 'holiday' and I'm wracking my brains for an idea!