It's all about the superhero's!

Last week my little man turned 5! 

EEEK! Where did the time go???

Over the last few years Wiyot has developed various favourite characters, first one being Wall.E, most of them being some form of superhero: Buzz Lightyear, Spiderman, Iron Man, etc... Last year the hero of the moment was Disney/Pixar's Mr Incredible.

In June, 2010 he received an invitation to a Superhero birthday party, it was no surprise who he wanted to go as! However, it was a surprise that there were very few Mr Inc costumes available to buy. Lucky for me/Wiyot my new sewing hobby had just begun.

So we "Dash"ed ;) off to the local(ish) fabric store and purchased some suitable material... thats right red and black lycra! Oh yeah!

First step was to draft a pattern using some cheap muslin fabric. I did this by following the directions in The Little Black Dress... Wiyot wasn't too impressed by this process! Hence there are no photos!

Once the pattern was finished, the fun truly began!

Wiyot was very impressed even at this stage...
Here he is reenacting the scene where Mr Inc
stretches and shows his belly :)

As soon as the fittings were in the red fabric, Wiyot was much more excited and didn't want to take off the pieces.

Two days later...

Please excuse the mess in these pics, this is what happens when you have only a week to make two superhero costumes... from scratch!

Show time!

I also knocked up a Jack-Jack costume for Shoshone, throughout the night! :/ Unfortunately, didn't really get any good shots of that one, but it actually turned out better than this one... Probably because I had gained experience working with the fabric.

Well, the costume was a big hit. People at the party even asked me were I bought it from :D

Wiyot wore it pretty much every day for the next few months and its still going strong... bit tight now though :/

And finally, what other card could he have had other than an Incredible one (for his 4th birthday)...

As always, a last minute job... I feel like a terrible mom admitting this, but I actually got up early and made it on the morning of his birthday (Sorry Wiyot!)

The latest craze is Spiderman... 

He's already put in an order for a new suit... 

Any ideas how to do the web patterns???

Happy Birthday Jacob

In honour of my godson's 1st birthday, I thought I'd share the card I made for him when he was born.

I had taken the photos ready to blog and never got round to it, but better late than never right? This is one of my favourite cards I've made to date. Completely original, personally handcrafting each element.

The background was created using perfect pearls in a spritzer bottle, then I sketched out the letters, baby and planets and added definition and shading with water colour paints. Then they were simply stuck onto the background. To add a bit of dimension I used sticky foam pads on the star, the baby and on the planets ring.

Simple but effective I think :D

Happy Mothers Day.

For yesterday that is...

It's been so long since I did any paper crafting, like Christmas 2008! Oh actually just remembered I made a kind of scrapbook/birthday card for my Granddad in August 2009... But, it seems like so long ago!!! Since blogging some of my previous card attempts, it made me want to have another go. So I decided to have a go at making a card for Mom :-)

From a cluttered up and trying to keep the house tidy point of view, I feel I have too much craft stuff... yet when I go to make something I never have enough and struggle, trying to find new ways of using the same bits... I have loads of lovely papers, but hate to cut into them for card making, I can barely stand doing it for scrap booking... just want to keep them whole...

Anyway, the flower stamps I used were in the first set I bought. I also used them in the card I made for my nan here. The large flower stamp is also from the same set. I've also used them in scrapbook pages, that I'll get round to blogging about at some point! Come to think of it the diamonte things were in the set with the stamps too... It was a qvc today's special value from a few years ago... had a lot of good stuff in there :-)

It's such a simple design, but it took me sooooooo long to do!

I have no idea why, it was one of those days when the creative juices just weren't quite flowing in the right direction. I did the flowery paper quite quick and the letter tiles, but then took me forever to lay it out and come up with a way to finish it of. I toyed with the idea of leaves and flower round the border, adding butterflies and whatever else I can't remember now.

I like it, but still not happy with it... just kind of frustrated that whatever it was that I was trying to do, just wasn't quite meshing

This post is a bit jumbled too... Still channelling the card vibe I guess?

Nan's Birthday Cards.

Feeling crafty, in the creative kind of way not the up to mischief kind of way, I decided to make some birthday cards for my Nan. These are 100% me, not a prearranged layout kinda deal like before...

This one was from Danny and me. I was really pleased with how the letters came out, they were made from a sticker sheet, from the negative letter if you know what I mean. Like, I'd already used the 'N' on the sheet, so I used the outline that was left behind. Does that make sense?

Well, anyway...


The other one was from Wiyot to his Great-Grandmother.

Again, really simple. Just a stamped image and then I used a water brush to create the subtle colour wash.

Pretty simple designs, but I really liked them :)

My First Card.

Not including ones I made for my parents growing up, this was probably my first attempt at a handmade card :)

Unfortunately I can't really take all the credit for this one, as it was part of a set where the designs are pretty much laid out for you... Having said that, the design didn't quite fit the way it was supposed to, so I did have to use some artistic licence to make it work.

In any case I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.