Wonka bar

When my brother and his family visited recently, I got involved in various crafty activities with my nephews (my niece is too small to be into crafts at the moment!). And I also was given a little commission to make a prop for my older nephew to take to school on World Book Day.

He was going to dress as Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and he needed a Wonka Bar complete with a golden ticket to complete his outfit.

At first I was thinking of wrapping a chocolate-bar-sized piece of wood, but I thought this would be too heavy. So I looked around for some cardboard, and found a box for a computer keyboard that was being thrown out at work. I realised that this would be perfect for an oversized chocolate bar!

Here's how to make your own Wonka Bar!

1. Cut a keyboard box in half and push one half into the other. Or cut up a larger box and fold and tape it to the size you want

2. Cover the box in gold wrapping paper, just like wrapping a present, and tape in place

3. Take a couple of pieces of purple A4 paper or card, and wrap these round the box, taping in place

4. Look online for some ideas of lettering to use on your Wonka Bar. Print these out to use as a template, or draw your own lettering, and cut out of coloured card

5. Glue the lettering and any other decoration you want onto the purple card

6. Cut a rectangle of gold card, cutting the shorter sides with pinking shears or deckle-edged scissors

7. Stencil the lettering onto this golden ticket, with a permanent pen

8. Slide the golden ticket under the purple card with a little sticking out, so you can produce it dramatically!

Mini card

The younger of my nephews has always been obsessed with Minis, so sooner or later I had to make a Mini card for his birthday! I found a cool patterned paper, so it looks like the car is driving through a rugged landscape of hills!

Vietnam bookmarks

One of my fellow travellers in Vietnam, Dawn, let me know that she collects bookmarks. So when I came back I knew that one of my first craft projects should be to make her a bookmark. I went for a simple design, inspired by the Vietnamese flag t-shirt bought by one of our group, and I ended up making enough to send to the other friends I’d made on holiday too.

It was quick to make such a simple design of bookmark. I cut rectangles of red card, and angled the bottom to make it a bit more interesting. I punched yellow stars and stuck these on, and covered the bookmarks in clear film to make them hardwearing. Then I punched a hole and added some pretty string.

Folded banknotes

I came across the idea for making folded hearts from banknotes in Vietnam, when our guide in Halong Bay, Jenny, showed us one. The plan was to get her to show us how to make them, but we were so busy that we didn’t get round to that. Luckily I found a tutorial online.

It wasn’t too difficult to make the hearts, so very quickly I had created a whole batch of them from the leftover small notes from my trip. 

I sent the origami hearts to the friends I made on holiday, and to another friend I was writing to at the same time.

Rainbow card

A card for a new arrival in the family, which went well with the gift I gave her which included a wooden rainbow toy and a rainbow box of board books about scientists! 

Fathers Day card

This year we did Fathers Day a week early, because my parents were going to be away. I needed a last-minute idea, and after seeing a card in Asda with a picture of a rocket on it I decided on a space theme. We had been watching The Planets tv programme so it was very appropriate - the only problem being that Dad may have expected his present was the book of the tv show!

I chose my three favourite planets to illustrate (well, apart from Earth!). I really like how the font I used for the lettering fits with the retro space-age look of the card.

100 day project days 1-20

I started a 100 day project at the start of this month. I hadn't really planned to do one this year, after not finishing last year's, but an idea came to me when I was looking at my love of bold book covers. 

I looked at what the covers had in common, other than their bright bold designs, and realised that the faces were covered or obscured in some way. This got me thinking about all the ways that we can cover our faces or try to stay anonymous. I started jotting down ideas.

I realised from the start that I'd need to work from a template to make the designs quick and easy enough to make each day. I was going to make them all from paper to begin with, and cut out 100 10x10cm backgrounds and silhouettes. But after a few days I decided to try some on the iPad too, and transferred my template to there.

I've been finding the iPad illustrations really fun and easy to do in the evenings, so most of them are being done that way now, and I've actually got quite a bit ahead by doing two or three at a time!

Oor Wullie cards

At a recent craft materials sale I picked up a bag of Oor Wullie images, knowing that these would make great cards for men. And, to make things even better, I had some patterned paper with images of newspapers, which made a great background!

Strawberry card

Inspired by the present I was giving my mum, part of which was a patterned cup with strawberry seeds to grow, and which I wrapped in strawberry patterned wrapping paper, I came up with this card design.

Hippo card

My nephew had a bit of an interest in hippos the last time my brother's family came to visit. He started talking about whether we could make a hippo (not sure what from, but he did seem impressed when I showed him the family of fabric hippos on my parents' bedroom wall!). We later drew some hippos, and he talked about how he'd seen some of the concrete hippos that are dotted around town here.

Hippos were therefore a natural theme for his birthday card. I created a hippo template, then cut hippo shapes from different patterned and stamped papers, then attached them to a stamped background using sticky pads.