A Card For Mummy - Helmar Creative Team

My Granddaughter was over a couple of days before her Mum's Birthday so with some help from me, a lot of flowers from my stash and some of my favourite Helmar Glues (Helmar Acid Free Glue and Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive) she created a card for her Mum.  I asked her what colour she wanted the bard to be and as I expected she wanted her 2 favourite colours (Yellow and Pink), so I narrowed things down and asked what colour the cardboard we stick things to "Yellow", what colour the paper should be "Pink", so from there I cut her some Yellow cardstock and got out my pink 6x6 papers and scraps so she could pick out the paper she wanted, she chose this paper with little butterflies on.  Then she had fun pulling out lots of yellow and pink flowers from my stash to use.

Now for the fun part, gluing things down.  I wanted her to give it a go each time to help with hand strengthening and fine motor skills but for the most part I had to put the glue where she wanted as she doesn't quite have the hand strength to squeeze out the glue herself yet.

 

When it came time to glue the flowers she placed the big yellow one down after I got some Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive on it.  Then she told me where each flower had to go and I put the Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive either on the card and then the flower was placed or I put it directly onto the flower depending on what I felt was the best way to get this done.
The little stick on flowers has barely any stick left so I used Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive to ensure a secure stick.  I always use either Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive or Helmar Acid Free Glue with dimensional embellishments and even my letters as I find the adhesive that comes already on them can wear off after time and I wind up finding a layout has fallen apart without the aide of Helmar adhesives.

Miss E was very proud of the card she made.  She did a great job picking spots for flowers so the butterflies looked like they were flying in the background to or from the flowers (what she wanted).  Looks like we have a 3rd generation papercrafter in the making.  :)

 

She Baby Scrapbooking Layout - Helmar Creative Team

After what is a really long break from scrapbooking for me I am so excited to be back scrapping and couldn't resist starting with this adorable photo of my Granddaughter when she met her cousin, she was about 18 months old here and just loved to chat away in her own language but amongst her babble we heard the words She Baby so that is the title of my layout.

Now to share with you how I created it.
First I grabbed out my very limited amount of pink scrapbooking supplies and created a bit of a page kit with scraps and 6x6 papers. 
I just started gluing layers to my matted photo with my favourite glue for scrapbooking - Helmar Acid Free Glue

Then I added my embellishments, the chipboard stickers weren't sticking so I added some Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive to ensure they stayed glued down for a lifetime.

I fussy cut a little onesie from some paper and adhered it down with Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots to give it some nice height.

I was really happy with my layout and then I wrote my journaling and was no longer happy so painted over my background with some pearlescent white paint and added some spats of ancient shimmery sprays that are in my stash.  I like how the journaling is still visible but no longer jumping out at you now.

Are you having a creative block like I was?  Just grab out some coordinating supplies and print a photo you love and start playing.  I find it really helps.

Robot Pen/Pencil Holder - Helmar Creative Team

Hubby got me a pen/pencil holder with dividers in it from the clearance section at Officeworks years ago, it had marks on it and he thought I would like to alter it but I couldn't decide on how I wanted to alter it until now, so I grabbed it out and some old thin robot scrapbooking paper I got from Spotlight several years ago and set to work.  Yay for stash busting ;)

I started by trimming 2 piece of my paper to fit.

I then ran some Helmar Acid Free Glue around the edge of one side of the pen holder and a squiggle in the middle, then spread it out with a foam brush and applied the middle of my paper to the side, Helmar Glue gives me the wiggle room needed to get a precise line up of paper to the edge and time to smooth things out.  Once I had the middle piece right I glued down the side pieces to the sides of the pen holder.

I repeated this with my other piece of paper.  I love that on one side the robots aligned perfectly and the other side it was so close that my only issue was having 2 blue together.

You could stop here but I didn't want to have 2 blue robots together so I went through my stash and found a robot die cut or sticker to adhere over the second blue robot. 

I decided to add some navy blue ribbon from my stash to the top and bottom edge of the pen holder using Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive to get a strong hold on the paper, unfortunately my hand wasn't steady so I got some where I shouldn't but mistakes are just a embellishment away from being awesome.

I then started adding stars from my stash randomly over the pen holder so my robot covering the extra blue robot felt like he belonged and to cover some of my wibbly wobbly glue mistakes, then I just randomised to make it feel natural..
I adhered the die cut stars down with Helmar Acid Free glue.
I adhered the resin and sewing patch stars down with Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive.

Apart from the resin and sewing patch stars everything is flat so the pen/pencil holder can sit on it's side for pens that need to be kept that way.
I love how it turned out, now to work out who gets it on their desk.  :)

 It even works as a book end ;)

Spring Birthdays Are So Sweet

I have a number of Birthdays in Spring so I find myself making cards when I have craft time instead of getting other projects done, but I don't mind, I am enjoying these little pops of creating.

Today I wanted to share with you the card I made for a special Birthday that occurred at the end of September.
My daughter and granddaughter both love the colour yellow so when I saw this new Butter Mini Collection from 49 and Market I just had to grab it for making my daughter a card and when I turned around at the shop they had a bulk bag of lovely big flowers that were mostly yellow and perfect for cards so I grabbed that too as I was just about out of yellow flowers, or so I thought.

To make my card I selected this gorgeous piece of paper and trimmed it to fit my card base (still working through that pack of 100 I bought 2 years ago).Then I edged my card front with Scatter Straw Distress Ink. 
I took it outside and gave it a coat of Helmar Crystal Kote Matte Varnish

I adhered my card front to my card base with Helmar Acid Free.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I selected one of the lovely big yellow flowers I bought and some smaller flowers from my stash and played around until I liked how I had them and then I adhered them down with Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive.

To finish the card I added a wodden flower using Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive to adhere it and then grabbed out some big number stickers to add her age.

 

I love how the card turned out and my daughter was really happy to receive it.

 

Health Potion

My family loves playing board games and tabletop roleplaying games today, some creative people have created health potions by putting red resin in the bottom of a cool looking jar and then adding the required D4 dice to it to hand out to players when the buy or find health potions.  I really wanted to make some but I don't use resin due to the health risks so I decided to try creating it with Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive instead.

It was really simple to do though has a really long dry time.
I just poured my Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive in, added a drop of red paint, stirred with a toothpick, popped as many bubbles as I could and left it sit to dry.
I checked on it after a day and it wasn't solid, I check on it after a week and it wasn't solid, at 2 weeks the dice were still sinking slightly so I just packed it away in a box as we now knew we were moving and forgot about it.  I honestly don't know how long to get solid but when I unpacked it it was solid and a awesome little prop so now I need to make more since my first experiment worked. 

Do you know someone who loves playing Dungeons and Dragons or any other tabletop roleplaying game that utilises potions in the game play?  Why not make them some cool props with your Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive it is much safer than resin and the results are worth the time it takes to solidify when you are putting such a think amount in.

 

 

Journal Keeping - Helmar Creative Team

You may remember my post in October last year where I shared my October Daily and how I was trying to get back into keeping a journal as I found it really helpful, well with the move my journal keeping fell by the wayside until now.  I decided to try something new and combine a simple Bullet Journal (BuJo) with journal keeping to make life a bit easier on myself with my memory keeping and planning.  Today I want to share with you a couple of my most recent journal entries.

I just grabbed a cheap dot journal from Officeworks to give this new planning style and journal keeping style a try, but the problem with grabbing a cheap journal is the paper is thin and has a lot of bleed through so I have been gluing in printables on some pages with the bleed through is bad or using my journaling to cover the bleed through.

A big part of my change is I am no longer typing my journal entries as I know if something were to happen to me my kids would like to have much of me recorded as possible, including my handwriting so I am now hand writing my entries, due to how this impacts my hand I need to get my entries done more regularly so initially I tried printing photos daily and journaling and I was using photo paper but it's thickness meant that my journal got really chunky very quickly so I have switched to printing on basic 80gsm printer paper and instead of using scrapbooking paper I instead print digital scrapbooking supplies on the same paper.

I started my August 1st entry by gluing in a page I have removed from the back and trimmed the bottom off onto the page with bad bleed through using my favourite memory keepting glue, Helmar Acid Free Glue.

  

Once I had the bleed through covered I grabbed my little photos (my printer shrank my print job for some reason so I wound up with some tiny photos, not one to waste things I went with it) and some embellishments that help tell the story and played with them to figure out how I wanted to glue them down with my Helmar Acid Free Glue.

 

My next journal session I was doing August 2nd and 3rd but got distracted and journalled August 3rd first, I realised when I was about halfway down the page so I left a space to glue in a tip in to quickly journal my August 2nd memories.
I had a journal card that had some white space at the top so I folded the white space down and trimmed it a little to ensure I didn't glue it to my photo that was going to be beside it.
I applied Helmar Acid Free Glue to the flap and glued it down to my journal page.

    

I then folded the tip in open and covered the edge with some copy paper that I had stamped with a circuit board themed stamp as my journalling for August 2nd was about using technology during covid.  I wound up covering the spot I had cut away to make it look more aesthetically pleasing.

I filled in the blank space under the tab by gluing in a fussy cut row of books on a shelf that I used to represent board games and added a cat sticker, this helped define that August 2nd was on the back of the card and the rest was August 3rd.

There are many ways to journal, if you aren't currently keeping a journal I hope this post helps you consider giving it a try.

Ikea Lekman Repair - Helmar Creative Team

I found myself needing a 2x4 Kallax instead of the 2x2 that I had for my scrapping stash, so I browsed Facebook Marketplace regularly in the hope of finding a bargain nearby, finally I scored a white 2x4 that came with 5 Lekman inserts (4 white which I gave to my daughter and 2 smokey), 1 of the smokey ones was broken at the back (the lady had felt pads on the side that faced the walls, which saved me doing that myself).  I contacted Ikea to see if you could get a replacement part and unfortunately you can't so Helmar came to the rescue as I really didn't want to send this to the tip if I could save it.

I grabbed out my Helmar Silicone Adhesive and Sealant and applied it to the break on the parts poking out and the inside. 
Note - I would later realise with the way this had to be forced back in place that I should have worn gloves and had some turpentine at the ready to clean up the excess when done.

 
I don't have photos for the next part as my photography assistant was off in Uni class.
Basically I pulled and pushed at the 2 sections that needed to go back together until I had them together, this is why I overdid it with the Helmar Silicone Adhesive and Sealant, I wanted to ensure some wound up in the break once I had it together.  This is also why I should have worn gloves, if you get it on your skin wash immediately.
This is when you need the Turpentine, so you can wipe off the mess you made when trying to get the 2 sections to click back together.



As it's at the back you can't tell it was repaired when it's on the shelf, it is now a perfectly functional Lekman to stash away goodies in.