A note to my grandson

Tag between two people isn't usually much fun unless it is between one grandparent and one grandchild. If you haven't played tag with a young child (my grandson is six) recently, you may have forgotten how creative they can be with rules that bend in their favor. Rules are made on the fly as you close in on the younger set. Unfortunately it seems that the older generation isn't supposed to make up rules in this manner.

As we played tag in a nearly empty parking lot last weekend, he was pleased that he tagged me last before being buckled into his car seat and led off by his chauffeur, also known as Mamma. Later that afternoon and evening, family and friends gathered at his house to celebrate his sister's first birthday. As my husband (Papa) and I were leaving, I asked our grandson to stand still on the landing by the back door as we left after getting good bye kisses. When I was an arm's length away from him, I tapped him on the shoulder and ran to the car, yelling "Tag! Gotcha!"

Yesterday I made this card and mailed it to him, lest he forget our standing in this duel:

Stamps are from My Favorite Things Biotic Bots stamp set, colored with Tombow markers. Kids enjoy getting their own mail. It is worth the price of a stamp to imagine the smile this will cause.

Paper pot of gold and rainbow

My granddaughter is having a rainbow theme at her first birthday party. Favors for the children in attendance are these simple pots of gold at the end of a rainbow, the gold being foil wrapped chocolate.

The pots, which could be cauldrons if this were a Halloween themed occasion, began as 4" x 5" rectangles, scored at 1" and 3" on the shorter side; 2" and 3" on the longer.

Snipping along the 2" and 3" score lines to the vertical score lines along each edge results in this:

I used double sided adhesive to attach create this box.

To make the pot or cauldron shape, I began with a 2.75" circle, one for each side of the pot. The yellow paper shown below is punched from Stampin' Up's Word Window. I liked that shape for the lip of the pot, but obviously that wasn't going to be long enough. I used that shape to make the black template above it. Two of those were cut for each pot. 

I trimmed off one edge of the circle to make the bottom of the pot, then cut a second circle to match.

For the next step, I placed one box on the circle with the cut off bottom and drew a pencil line to show me where to cut off the top of the circle. This is easier to do before you attach the circles to the box.

This might not be necessary, but in an attempt to keep the sides looking alike, I marked which end would be up on these lopped off circles before adding adhesive and gluing them in place.  

The top edges of the pots were also attached with tape runner.

I had originally planned to use Copic Markers but didn't have a red that I liked for the rainbow. I used Tombow markers instead, the color numbers seen below. For a little extra body, I backed the rainbows with black paper before inserting them into the pots. 

Here are twelve pots of gold ready for the birthday girl's party.

This is a 6" single-layer cake that will be the birthday girl's to daintily eat or destroy, whatever she wishes.

Time to get the party started!

For my friends in Copic classes

I think my granddaughter has the Wolverine grip already! When she is a wee bit older (she just turned one), I'll swap the jumbo Crayolas for Copic Markers!

Never Ending Square Greeting

It is possible to make this card without a die but I am a gadget girl and Inky Antics made this die which called my name:

Oh boy, this was fun! For a full description and video, click this link: Never Ending Square Die or continue reading for my experience.

First off, you begin with a half sheet of regular copier paper. This is going to be folded a lot and thicker paper such as card stock isn't going to be as pliable. I began with white paper. If you are a card maker, you will recognize the size and fold of a basic A2 card.

The card's crease is placed on the design edge of the die. Those flowers and doodads could be used on the card or on another project but I did not use them.

After running it through my die cutter (Big Shot), and creasing on the folds, this is the shape I had:

Per directions, I added adhesive to the upper and lower opposite corners and adhered those squares to their neighbor, according to the fold lines.

 Almost looks like the "Cootie Catchers" many of us made as kids, right?

There was nothing wrong with the white creation but I wanted a little contrast in my finished project so I went through the same steps with blue copier paper. I cut four 2.5" squarea of white card stock for the stamped images below.

Each of these images would be cut into quarters to fit on the quadrants of the blue card base. I placed the images with those cuts in mind. I missed clearly stamping the tip of the cat's tail but that was corrected with a fine line black marker.

The cat with Knit Happens and the dog with Hello Friend are both stamps from Taylored Expressions (cat: Grouchy Grumplings TEMD44 and dog: If Dogs Could Talk TEMD40). The ball of yarn and Just Unwind are from Avery Elle, Made with Love ST-14-35. The gumball and Bless Chew are from Stamps of Life, Bubble Gum 4 Me.

I added double sided tape to the back of each colored square. This particular Sookwang tape was exactly the right width. After backing each square, I cut each one into fourths, peeled off the backing and applied them to the card base. At this point you really need to watch the video above to watch how the card works. Even if I could take a decent video of it, I couldn't do it one handed. Here are the four finished faces of my card:

Coloring was done with Prismacolor pencils. The glass part of the gum ball has a clear Gelly Roll pen layer over it for a bit of sheen and both black and clear Wink of Stella pens on the black and red parts for a bit of interest. 

I will definitely make this card again. I think patterned papers and one small stamp or photo would be cute on the faces of this card, but I really like this version with the images and phrases revealing as they do.