Crafting by not a very crafty mum - Christmas thank you card

Our second Christmas with Little E has been and gone. Now for all those thank you cards...

Until Little E can write his own thank you cards, I will keep endeavouring to make creations for him.

At 14 months, we were finally scribbling! This has opened some easier (and less messy!) craft options.

Like this!

Getting Little E to scribble was becoming a real issue for me. It felt like all his little friends have been doing it for ages, while we were Ralph Wiggum at the back of the class eating our crayons. It's so hard not to compare your child to others, especially when all the books says they should be scribbling at 12 months. It didn't matter that Little E could walk by 11 months, throw a ball accurately and stack three cubes by 14 months, I was getting pretty paranoid about the lack of fine motor skills. I've seen lots of kids struggling with sensory processing problems and having to use specially designed writing tools to help them at school. I was already jumping 10 years ahead and wondering if this was the start of problems. Of course it's not, but I think most mums I know find it hard not to worry about the future.

So for months I'd been trying Little E on pencils and crayons with little success. He either nibbled on them or threw them around. At least he was having fun! I was pretty scared at the idea of giving him felt tips, but a friend suggested they are much easier for little kids to use.

So I bought these and they have been an instant success.

Unlike pencils and crayons, he doesn't need to press hard to make a mark. He was so excited and laughed to see the colours appear. They also wash out beautifully! Little E is very messy, so he had felt tip all over him, but it washed off him and his clothes with no effort.

I already had an idea for a card before we finally had scribbles to work with. I'd seen some cards on Pinterest, where you cut out holes in a top layer, so an image behind can appear through.

I thought it would be nice for Little E to "decorate" a Christmas tree for a thank you card. I bought the green card from the wonderful Pen to Paper in Headington (again) and set him to work.

I liked the idea of a simple shape of a Christmas tree, found a stencil online and cut it out. I placed it over the top of Little E's "drawing" and voila! I added the star, as it had some left over from another time and wrote the message underneath. Again, I took a photo and had this printed onto postcards.

Not bad.

So, that might be our last thank you card for a while! 12 months until Christmas and 9 months until his birthday. I'll go have a sit down and a cup of tea then. :)