Aloha, all!
You know by now that I don't necessarily spend too much time in my blog posts talking about my family. But with three grandchildren here visiting for 10 days, it's hard NOT to chatter about how much I enjoy them!
In my last blog post, I shared how they worked so hard to make Thank You notes for our neighbors who helped out when we needed them on Sunday. While we were all in the craft room making the Thank You cards, I became aware that their mom had been going through my stamps, and all of a sudden more cardstock was being punched than was necessary for the Thank You cards, and some non-Thank You card stamps were being hidden under pieces of paper on the table. As that day was my birthday, it wasn't hard to figure out that there were some birthday cards being made on the sly!
And oh aren't they fun! The card on the far left was made by 8-year old granddaughter, Kiara, who commandeered the Banner Punch as well as the Cupcake Builder Punch. She knows I like flowers and butterflies so out came the Bitty Butterfly and Petite Petals Punches, too. She even used Tempting Turquoise Classic Ink to match the Happy Birthday stamp from Sassy Salutations with the Tempting Turquoise Paper Stack paper she used for the Cupcake. What fun!
Five-year old Carson made the card on the top. Oooh, there's that Banner Punch again, which he creatively used as the base for his own version of a cupcake, made with the Mosaic Punch to form the Cupcake Top. He stamped Happy Birthday by himself (!) and then his mom helped him punch it out with the Modern Label Punch. The card at the top right was our adult daughter's design. Again, knowing I love flowers, she worked with a variety of colored cardstock which she punched with the Pansy Punch and embellished with some In Color Dahlias. Her Happy Birthday was also punched with the modern label punch which she layered on top of some Chocolate Chip Cardstock punched with the Decorative Label Punch.
Finally, 11-year old Morgan made that lovely card with the pastel cardstock punched with the Banner Punch (definitely the hit punch of the day!). She'd seen one of the cards that I'd made "hanging" the banner punched pieces from a ribbon "string," and she decided she wanted to know how to do it. I taught her how to do it, and off she went! I cannot believe that she saw my Pennant Parade Stamp Set and recognized a Birthday Party Hat in it!!! Her final touches were the strips of cardstock on either side to "hold" the banners. We had used some Pumpkin Pie cardstock for her to learn how to use the Scallop Trim Border Punch on both sides of a strip (there was a math lesson involved there as we determined how wide the original strip had to be). Once she finally got it down, she was pretty tired of the whole routine, so she decided to use the "practice" pieces for the card. She'd counted out how many punched pieces she needed for the two banners, and then hand wrote the letters.
I can see that, if I had these children nearby, there would be lots of crafting going on in my craft room! What fun that would be!!!! I hope that if you have children or grandchildren, you sometimes just let them go in your craft room. I found it was easier that I limited them to just punches and cardstock for the first go round. Their imaginations were definitely in full motion just with the punches and all the colors. By the time they leave, we'll have done some scrapbooking, too, and for that I'll bring out the Sizzix and framelits as well as the punches. I can see more fun now!!
