Crafting by nota very crafty mum - keepsake

Little E is three today and I thought it might be time to share a keepsake I am hoping to make for him.

When Eric was born there were so many ideas for capturing his first year - baby books, hand prints, etc, but it made me a bit sad that it all seemed to stop after this.

Then I started seeing long term projects - grown ups being given lamps filled with everything their mums had emptied from their pockets for years, journals full of letters from every teacher they had ever  had, etc. I have friends who have made lovely shadow boxes filled with memories or personalised art.

This is sounded a bit complicated! I am not sure when I thought of it, but at some point before Little E was one, I decided to try and collect a birthday badge for every year of his life.

My collection so far! Every year I've tried to choose a badge with something Little E loves. It was hard when he was one, as we weren't sure what he really liked. He did seem to like the colour orange, so I went for an orange badge and that has turned out to be his favourite colour (along with green). Diggers for his second birthday and it is all about super-heroes now he is three! He doesn't really know who Spider-man is, but he knows super-heroes run around going zap and say "To the rescue!" He spends hours at nursery playing super-heroes with the other children.

My plan is to try and do this until he is 18 and then have them mounted for a wall hanging. Time will tell if I manage this. I don't want to hide them in a drawer until that time, so I pin them to this cardigan remnant and they live in his room. I hope he will at least enjoy them even if I don't manage to finish my project.

Hope this inspires some of your own ideas.

Cake decorating - Person of Interest

My life has changed. There are pens for cake! After years of rubbish icing, I won't ever look back!

I've been planning a Person of Interest cake for months for Big E. He loves Lego and I saw the computer programmer minifig at a craft fair. I couldn't help but think he looked like Finch from POI. We love POI, so I had my TV theme this year for Big E's birthday cake.

I looked out for Lego figurines that I thought might work on the cake. I got a police officer body and a dog that looks Like Bear from eBay. I completed what else I needed from https://minifigs.me

 I found out about cake pens from a lady at work who, unlike me, is amazing at decorating cakes. Seriously, why did no one tell me before? I got a red one from Hobby Craft.

Exciting times!

Crafting by not a very crafty mum - Ruby Wedding Anniversary card

Big E's parents just had their 40th wedding anniversary. It was another nice excuse for me to try something new.

I saw lots of lovely ideas, but I did like the idea of a family tree. I got my in-laws to put their finger prints on a piece of card months before the event, in the hope they would forget what I was up to. I thought I would make them a pair of love birds at the top of their tree with their children, partners and grandchild as the leaves. I found a lovely sentiment to write on the card: "From strong roots grow beautiful leaves".

You'd probably need a bigger card if you have a bigger family!

Crafting by not a very crafty mum - peacock first anniversary card

My sister got married last year. She and her now husband chose a peacock theme for their big day. I was honoured to be asked to make the button holes, which I wrote about last year.

I was sure I could make them a card for their paper anniversary. I saw some nice children's crafts using coffee filters to make peacocks, but I couldn't easily get hold of coffee filter papers and Little E is still not that keen on painting.

However, when he does feel inspired, I keep it in a drawer to use for a later project. One of these became this:

As if by luck, we were messing about with paint in the garden a few weeks earlier. Little E was having fun mixing paints together and it was lovely watching him discover how blue and yellow become green.

I realised the blues and greens might work for a peacock tail and so cut out a circle from his painting. I had some nice shiny blue card to make a peacock body. Stick it all together and add some detail with a gold pen and I was done.

I also used this painting to make thank you cards for Little E's birthday. I have to make his artwork stretch when it is so limited!