Paper Cutting

Good morning! How lovely and sunny is it today?!

I was even up earlier than usual (mostly due to dog sitting this weekend and having to let the dog out early!) but seeing the sunshine just makes you that bit happier doesn't it!

With my recent house purchase going through I've been trying to keep myself busy without spending a lot of cash, those bills are flying out of my account so finding cheap things to do is essential at the moment.
Having already bought the starter kit from Paper Panda a few months ago I've been making things for friends and family, and wanted to branch out to a few other templates, and so I picked up her '20 to make' book from Amazon for £3.99.

The book actually should cost £4.99 according to the back, and with Amazon you can get free postage too so what's not to love!
What I was most interested in was the content of the book itself, having seen a few snaps on the Paper Panda Facebook page I was intrigued. Not all of them will be suitable for me but for less than £4 I was sold.

In the original starter kit there were a few gorgeous templates that I practiced on to get my skills up to scratch. It's not a difficult hobby but practice definitely helps and you get used to how much pressure you need to apply and how often to change your blade.

Here are a few I did for practice:

I love the one above, I am hoping to find somewhere to put it in my new house!

Next I started making my way through the book. A colleague has a young daughter and I agreed to try out the Unicorn template, it looked a bit small and fiddly but definitely a new challenge and the finished design looked so pretty. Here are a few progress shots:





I love how quickly you can start and finish a design when you have a template for it!
This looks so pretty and I managed to finish it in 2 evenings after work, it really doesn't take that long.
She will be putting a purple colour in the background for her bedroom.

For my mum I made the owl design - we have a bit of an owl obsession within our family and this design is really cute, I really like the heart on the owls chest and the little snail on the branch too! The little details make the designs so much better. I'd love to be able to make my own templates!

Speaking of which, I have recently drawn out my own template for my kitchen. I am obsessed with tea and Alice in Wonderland and wanted to combine the two in my own design, making it quite simple but pretty with lots of details, what do you think??

I still need lots of practice with cutting straight lines and working out how to create objects without cutting them out entirely. The hardest part is keeping all of the design in one piece!

As a first go I'm pretty pleased but I think you can always see more errors in your own designs than other people can, hopefully when it's on the wall I won't be able to notice them so much!

My next project will be to create something similar to the image below, I want to buy a map and cut out the following quote in a similar style of swirly writing. It will be a challenge to get the writing onto one piece but once that is sorted hopefully it will be easier.

I've been really getting into papercutting recently as its a really therapeutic hobby. Cutting things with a sharp scalpel does wonders for your sanity!
I'd love to do more but creating templates is quite difficult, finding them online and paying for them to be emailed to you is much simpler.....but sometimes you need a challenge don't you?

And its also great to have something completely personal to you. Have you tried papercutting? Do you like making your own designs or objects for your home?

Do you have any ideas or templates that you've seen?

I'd love to try out some different ones, especially for weddings or new babies!


L xxx

DIY Wedding Planner Book

Hey All

I fancied doing a bit of different post for you today. I love doing all things crafty and used to make a lot of my own cards at one point.

One of my friends from back home got engaged recently. Her boyfriend text me a few days before to let me know he was going to do it so that I would go down and visit them that evening.

After spending a good 8 years discussing what our future weddings would be I wanted to get her a special useful present. I thought a wedding planner would be a great idea so she could keep all her ideas, appointments and details all in one place.

Due to only have 3 days to get it, I knew online shopping wasn't an option so I started to look up and down Cardiff centre. I found myself quickly disapointed with what was on offer. Tacky covers or not worth £20 for a plastic folder.

I decided then I'd make it, I could personalise it, have it tailored to her and it would be how I wanted. After an expensive trip to paperchase (who knew glue was expensive, I had no time to raid cheap shops as it was Friday evening I got my supplies and started making)

As it was a Wedding planner I picked the heart book which was around the £9 mark. It has black pages which I though looked nice. I picked up heart confetti to decorate the book and pages with, The pink and gold paper was to decorate title pages and I also got document holders, pritt stick, a silver pen and sellotape, The pink was cheaper and seemed appropriate.

My first task was to count the pages in the book and think of all the headers I needed. For example I had dress, food, venue, budget, catering, menswear, flowers, table decoration, photographer, entertainment and a few other.

I started by writing wedding planner on the front of the book and sticking little confetti hearts in the middle of the hearts. I really liked how this book had a pink tie to keep it all together too.

You can still slightly see the guide lines here where I haven't fully rubbed them out. For the first page I got a nice photo of them and wrote the date of the engagement.

For each of my header pages I wrote the title for the section and used some of the pretty fabric paper to make each page look nice.

For each mini header I wrote a small title at the top of the page and put hearts either side so she would have plenty of room to write. For each category I thought of I then thought of the sub categories she would need to think of to complete that. For example for the dress I had pages for inspiration, shops and appointments and dress documents, For catering there were places to visit, tasting and final menus. (People think when someone proposes to me I'll be a bridezilla, I have no idea why, I just know what I want and the little details matter ha!!!)

For sections I thought that needed documents I cut the A4 document holders in half and stuck them down. I thought having these would make it easy and then everything she needed would be in one place.

I was so pleased I made it as my friend really loved it and said she couldn't believe I had done it all for her so quick. She is now well into her wedding planner and has told me the book is well used.

It's made me want to do more handmade gifts. I think they can sometimes be more special.

What do you think of this? Are you married? Did you have a book? Is it wrong to make myself one just for inspiration ;) I could be like Monica ha!

Love M

xxx