FIFTY Birthday Book

I just have to show you this wordbook I made from scratch!

It was my sister-in-law's 50th birthday and we were invited to her party. Once again I decided to make something as I know she appreciates craftwork. As there were no downloadable '50' wordbook templates on the internet, I decided to try my hand at designing my own. I used the letters f-i-f-t-y and played around with some A4 scraps of paper to get the proportions correct. After downloading a font called 'pharmacy' from the internet, I typed the word 'fifty' in MSWord, and made the letters as big as possible. I then cut each one out and pasted the letter onto a piece of grey chipboard, each piece progressively wider than the last one. The hardest task was to cut out all these chipboards pages! My hands were aching afterwards from all the pressure I had to put on the craft knife!

The first job was to cover and paste some nice embossed paper onto the front and back of each letter. The lefthand pages were kept for guests to write on, and the righthand side for photographs which she could paste in after the event.

The book really looked nice after all the embellishments were glued on, and my sister-in-law absolutely LOVED it!. All the guests wrote little notes to her on the tags provided. The pages of the book were bound together with 2 large rings, and then some nice organza ribbon threaded through and tied up.

The 'closed' book.

The back of the letter "f" showing little pockets made with small notelets in each one.

I also inserted her 'clinic card' from when she was a baby. I had inhertited this card with a suitcase full of photos when her father died, and felt now was the perfect time to give it back to her!

Two weeks after her party, we put her photos in and completed the album!

Baby Shower book

This was my first scrapbooking 'word-book' I made. I was invited to a baby shower, and because I am not fond of buying gifts 'made in China' I decided to make her a little 'shower' book in which all the guests could write a message at the shower.

I was then lucky enough to find a super little booklet kit at a local shop, with 6 pages cut out of chipboard, 2 binding rings, and few embellishments. The booklet was a huge success, and the mom was absolutely thrilled with this as a gift, so my goal was achieved! Here are the pages I put together - before everyone wrote on it - with odds and ends I had at home. I designed it so that all the guests would write on the left-hand page on one of the tags provided.

Masculine scrapbooking pages

While working on my deceased husbands' scrapbook album, I had very little problems doing pages for him as a little boy. These two matching pages were prepared around the theme of a train pulling the carriages, each with a successively older picture of him as a boy. The train was paper pieced "by hand". I still don't own a fancy cutting machine!

The page I enjoyed doing the most was the page of his airforce duty time. I still had some of his original uniform badges, so polished them up and added them to the one page.

However, finding a theme for a few portrait photos of him as a mature man was a different story! None of the photos screamed any particular theme, so I ended up doing 2 pages called "Portrait of a Man", and paper-pieced a little man to fit in with the pages. The other bits and pieces (hats, waistcoat, shaving brush etc) were all cut out of a decoupage sheet I found in one shop.

Table weights

Niki decided she needed to make some extra cash, so I got roped into paying for some items to make table weights. Not that I minded really, because I was glad she was doing some craftwork at last.  So we ended up at this one large bead shop, and must have spent nearly 2 hours there while she tried to make up her mind about which beads and stones matched, and whether they were the correct weight - or not!

Armed with this heavy bag of goodies we set up 'camp' at home in the craft room, and spread out everything on the table. Tiger's tail, pliers, crimps, newly bought shells and beads and stones ... we were ready to sell to the world!

The end results of this craft session were four gorgeous sets of table weights - quite exclusive actually (Niki has expensive taste). We set about working out their costs, and then adding a bit extra on for profit. Have we sold any of them? No. Two have already been given out as gifts - one for a 50th birthday and the other for a wedding gift. Of course we made exclusive boxes to gift them in as well. Now we just need another 2 weddings and they will all be gone! Must say though that they turned out rather nice.
(Top left = glass+pearl; top right=conch shell and pearl)
(bottom left=paua shell; bottom right=semi precious stones).

Denique Crafts

At long last I have found a name for my craft site ... Denique ... which is latin for - wait for it - "at last", and is pronounced de-ni-ke (and not de-neek). I also made the banner on top in a new free software programme called Inkscape, so 'at last' I'm getting there!! Hope you like it.

Scrapbooking - Mom's pages

 I started scrapbooking earnestly in 2009 after the girls had a book made up of my life to date, for Mother's Day. What a super present! My first 'book' was one of my mom, and I am happy with what the finished album looks like. Here is the second page of her as a baby.

 Of course, at this stage of my scrapbooking, I did not have much equipment and did all my cutting with a pair of scissors! Slowly but surely I built up my collection of what I now call 'essentials' such as various glues, shape scissors, various punches, and loads and loads of embellishments and ribbons and gems! I also acquired a few different computer scrapbooking programmes, making my life so much simpler!