A New Baby

My boyfriend's sister is due to have a baby boy in 23 days, so I've been slowly planning and making a card for her for quite a while now. Pregnancies are nice things to plan around, they have a reasonably fixed 'time to go' period and I notice them far more than birthdays. (People that want interesting, special, time consuming birthday cards would probably slowly elongate their fingers or something, in my ideal fantasy world, starting about two months before the card is due. Otherwise in the fantasy world I'd remember two days before with a loud expletive, like usual.)

Anyway, because I was doing everything reasonably in advance, I decided to cross stitch the front of the card. This was a mistake. I don't know if everybody else who does cross stitch has super sonic fingers or something, but frankly it took me a long time, and a lot of catching up on 'the wonders' of Derren Brown whilst I did so. Frankly, torture*. But I'm not going to give somebody something else just because I'm bored, so it was finished.

I backed the sewn circle with navy coloured foam, and then made a ribbon rosette by sewing a running stitch down one side of the ribbon and pulling it so it gathered.

 On the inside I reverted back to papercraft. Nice, safe, quicker papercraft. I used contrasting gingham blue papers to provide a 'baby boy' background and make a frame for my message and the pram embellishment.

The message was written on vellum with a black sakura glaze pen (which gives a very slight 3D effect) so the backing paper can still be seen through the translucent paper the message is written on. I decorated the frame with some brads in the corners and then raised it by placing foam at each of the four corners.

I made two embellishments for the inside of the card - a baby's bottle and a pram. This was mostly cut out paper shapes, and then being backed on blue foam, although I created small, silver wire circles for the pram's wheels too. They were secured either with doubled sided sticky tape, or more foam pads.

* Also, note my total idiocy of sewing four balloons that were later hidden by the sewn circle. Idiocy.

44 days to go..

So I'm making tags for presents. For some reason, this is entertaining me far more than card making right now. 

Even so, I've only done three.

Stamps (of the punching and of the inked variety), brads, ribbon and a bit of colouring in. Crafting really isn't very difficult in its simplest form. It's just a bit of time and a bit of slight (okay, with me it's generally mad) expense. 

If you want the cracker template I used, it can be found here. 

Anyway, the real point of this post was to remind you that is is only 44(!) days until C-Day. Or - reading it differently - six weekends. 

Okay, okay. It's still quite a way away. 

Bah humbug.

Doctors and Anniversaries

Doctors and anniversaries don't mix. Something I forgot when I tried to plan a week or so with my boyfriend. Nothing super special, just a nice meal at a better class of restaurant than we'd normally bother with, and getting a bit dressed up. Of course, an 'impossible to move, you'll have to wait MONTHS for another one' (to be told, 'um, not sure, fancy some more tests?') doctor's appointment comes up. In another part of the country. After discussion and a lot of grumbling (my side, naturally. I grizzle on automatic. Everyone else is fine until they throw a strop to end all strops.) we moved our anniversary celebration forward a week so I could sit in the dark in a surgery somewhere (it was being locked up at the time.. Spooky.)

Which was fine, as I'm not a man in a comedy sketch who buys everything the night before. If I was, I'd spend most of my life - with its shifting schedules and confused drift - in trouble with somebody. Instead everything is done - to the letter - about a month before. Which is why I only have three Christmas presents left to buy. And why the card I gave my boyfriend had been dreamt up, sketched out, materials ordered, materials not turned up, Hobbycraft treated to a couple of very snippy emails and publicly abused on twitter, voucher been given by said craft firm, alternative items sought out, and finally made, weeks before it was required.

I quickly forgot quite why I'd decided to make a fabric card, just like I'd quickly forgotten my atrocious sewing skills when I'd planned it. I had also forgotten that 'extra large means extra time' - and this was an A4 card, rather than the A6 things I normally mess about with.

Anyway, I was reasonably happy with how it turned out. The pouch on the front contained a present and some chocolate truffles (heart shaped, of course. I am forever the romantic.) The hardest part was to get the edging to the 'G' to stay sewn on vaguely straight.

As you can see, I went back to very simple papercraft on the inside, gluing the card inserts over the fabric 'envelope' to help secure it in place. I used brads to secure the letter I had written and allow for the pages to be easily turned. (I do like a good hand written letter! - and yes, this being a hand made card blog, I know that doesn't surprise you in the least.)

I got a bit overexcited about making the first heart and ended up making another. Don't do this, it means your card will never be able to lie down flat and sewing it on may drive you to an irritated distraction. (Well if you attempt to just sew the centre of the heart to the centre of the card, anyway. The two 'breasts' of the heart insist on flopping about mournfully unless you give them a bra. Or at least attach them to card too.

My recommendation? You better absolutely, bloody adore him* if you want to make something similar. Or be a better needlewoman than me.

*Not my him. That's my job.

Would You Buy These?

Making cards has always been my hobby, nothing more than that. I did it for the enjoyment it gave me, and the pleasure it seemed to give other people. I have never had any ambitions for it to be anything more than that. A while back my boyfriend suggested (sadly whilst my mother was in the room, I believe, which has cemented the idea in everyone's minds..) that I should try selling them. I do wonder whether this was simply because he knew I was obsessed with sites such as Etsy and Folksy. Anyway, some talking happened and this blog eventually sprung from those talks.

Today I made my first ever set of cards. I think they are a reasonable standard, and I am simply curious: Would you personally buy them? Or at least look at them if you saw them in a shop? How much would you spend if so?

Set of Three Origami Star Cards

Wirework

Traditional Christmas

More modern

The stars

I would really love to get some feedback. If you have any comments at all, please either leave a comment, tweet me @tlchimera, or drop me an email at chimerascards[at]gmail.com. Thank you!

DIY: Origami Christmas Trees

Disclaimer: this is not an original idea by me. The original is here: http://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/Pages/Ideas/Idea.aspx?id=1353 

Finished Card

So this is the first of the DIY projects I intend to throw up on this blog from time to time. Little 'how to do's, rather than my usual random commentary, which never quite manages to talk about the card the post is about. I'd had my eye on the Hobbycraft project I've linked to for a while now, but a few things put me off: the instructions, the two hours suggested work time and the fact it was classified as 'advanced.' Admittedly, despite my love of origami, I've never liked the instructions and always sought out 'how to' movies to make things, so this may not be Hobbycraft's fault, but as I blame them for most things I will certainly blame this on them.

Anyway, they were completely wrong, so that was a relief:

• This is not 'advanced'. It could only ever be considered advanced if folding the card was the intermediate stage, and staring at it blankly was the beginner version. I'd rate it intermediate, but probably a low intermediate.
• Everything together - getting everything out for it, cutting stuff out, the origami, putting it together, embellishing - it took me less than an hour.

DIY TIME:

You will need:
A blank card.
At least four patterned pieces of paper.
Glue
Ruler
Extras: pens, embellishments.

Step One:

Find four patterned (or not so, I tend to think it looks better with some kind of decoration) pieces of paper. They do not need to be big, you'll be cutting them down quite a bit as it is. 

First thought: how big is your blank card?

I didn't obey Hobbycraft and used an A6 card rather than folding an A4 sheet. You can see from my finished card that the tree sticks out over the side. So if you are using an A4 sheet then Hobbycraft's sizes should be fine (12cm, 10cm, 8cm, 6cm), if you are using something smaller I would recommend using 10cm, 8cm, 6cm and 4cm. At the bottom of the page you can see an alternative card I made with sizes 8cm, 6cm, 4cm and 2cm. I wouldn't recommend this if you're doing this for the first time, as the 2cm 'branch' was a little fiddly!

So choose your sizes and cut down your paper so you have one square of each. You then need to fold each square in half horizontally and vertically as well as across both diagonals, until you have a 'star' of folds across your paper, as pictured. If you've ever made a fortune teller, (or practically anything in origami) it's the same process.

Step Two:

The next (tiny) section is easy too: just fold back down your horizontal fold so the pattern is on top. Advanced Hobbycraft? Ha!

Step Three:

The next part I've made a little video for. It's not complicated, but it's far easier to watch than describe. This is the part where you create the triangle.

Step Four:

So you have a triangle. It's starting to feel like origami now, isn't it? Well look more closely, you technically have two triangles attached by a fold. Now to finish off a branch of your Christmas tree, all you need to do is grab the front triangle and fold it to make a diamond. To do this you simply have to match the diagonal line of your triangle (the hypotenuse of the right angled triangle, for you mathematical types.) to the straight line of the central fold and sharply crease the new fold you are making. 

Now you just need to do this for the other three pieces of paper you cut out. Yes, that really is the complicated part of the design. 

Step Five:

So you'll end up with something like I have pictured to the left. To make the Christmas tree you just have to slide them on top of each other, in size order. I found they secured easily enough with just a bit of glue spread at the top of each triangle.

So you've made your Christmas tree, well done! Now you just have to decorate it - add a pot and a trunk for it if you like, embellish them, maybe add some layers of paper for it stand on or a Christmas message. You can see how I chose to in the one I've made for this walkthrough at the top of the page. I also made an alternative one, which is pictured below.

Last Christmas..

I really wasn't very prepared for anything last Christmas. Let's face it, I'm never prepared for any Christmas. Other than for what I need to do, obviously. If writing lists equated to actual presents being bought, wrapping paper and ribbon being selected, addresses being found, cards being made and then cards actually being written in and sent... I'd be done by now and have a comfortable few months ahead. Instead I started my seasonal card making today.

It started like this.

I apologise for the cornflakes. Well I don't really, they were nice (best eaten bone dry) and they shouldn't really be offending you in a picture. Besides card making and 'breakfast' (lunch) work well. In my head. It also started with a card made for a friend at uni, but this is a Christmas blog post (this is, in fact, obvious by the discussion of breakfast I know.) Anyway, most of my cards start out as me gazing at a lot of bits of paper and grumbling a bit. Ink pads and stamping blocks? This was a fancy* day!

I ended up making eight cards. Considering I didn't play theme hospital (blame the boyfriend for introducing me to that one) in the middle, that was a reasonable result. I'm choosing to ignore the hour or so on the phone to various friends. Sadly only one really merits the attention of this blog. Everything else was roughly a cut/slap on/stick affair. Hey I said all my cards were going to be individual, it's pot luck** if you get an interesting one.

No, the card I chose to make was loosely based on a window. If you have crimson, satin windows, black satin bricks and holly wallpaper, I practically created your living room window...

I spy stockings

Sadly I don't think this photographed well. The front is entirely black and red satin ribbon, and I haven't yet learnt how to photograph texture so it appears touchably appealing rather than annoyingly garish. The stockings (of a Father Christmas, snowman and teddy bear) are made of wood, which worked as a contrast. This was just a basic craft knife exercise, as well as canyoupleasenotfraymisterribbon one. I found when I'd finished that all the extra space slightly distressed me, in its open, holly focused blankness. Sadly, I need somewhere to write come the time a list tells me to do so.


*unnecessary. By which I mean they were only used once, and that was not for Christmas cards.
** It's not. Nice people get better cards. Fact.

A card of cringes.

My previous 'relationship' was one of those things that should only ever be talked about in inverted commas. It was short, pathetic, and doesn't deserve to be talked about. It did, however, elicit one decent thing.

It wasn't conversation.

Naturally, it was a card.

Mainly because it was around Christmas, so one had to be made. And I like making cards, so whatever happened to be on my mind (and it was a nasty little Christmas in general, so there were a lot of things) I think the card turned out well. Other than the fact it makes me cringe.

A black piece of card with various holes cut out of it, over a red piece of card, with different pieces of ribbon, card, stickers and shiny things stuck all over it. Not the most complicated thing I've ever made, but I think it looked nice enough.

I just hope that every Christmas card I send this year will put more of a smile on my face. A few, I know, will have my actual beating heart sewn in.