February Update

I have not been too well again, I think I must have overdone it packing the Uganda suitcases. In the end 4 suitcases went out and I could not carry stuff for weeks. Had to get my son to carry all the food shopping. Though I know it will all be greatly appreciated and needed where the suitcases are going. Hopefully the person will remember to take photos.

Some of the items in the uganda suitcases:
Shoe box of stationary items like pencils, rubbers, rulers, colouring pens
Shoe box for teachers stationary like solar calculators,  staplers, bulldog clips, laminated number squares
Shoe box of palette paints including watercolours and for small children
Shoe box of medical stuff like baby weight/height wheel, bandages,
Shoe box of cracker type toys including mini jigsaws, yoyos, crayons, football cards, stickers
Shoe box of 100 brooches (as in previous post)
Shoe box of christian stuff (as it was going with a missionary)
Bag of 12 bookmark kits for the children to practice handwriting
Three school sewing kits filled to the brim to help children practice sewing
Painting pads/books to go with the paints
A4 plastic sleeves for the teachers to keep important documents in
Some long skirts and mens clothes

The list carries on - but you get the picture that quite a lot of different stuff goes out - not just crafts and not just clothes. I've packed so hopefully someone will find their item invaluable.

This weekend I'm selling at a small local church craft fayre to raise funds to be able to send more stuff out and to give to the Ugandan people at the point of need. Hopefully I will blog afterwards and let people know how much was raised.

Recycling greeting cards for Uganda

In order to make quite a few craft kits for the children in orphanages and schools, I rely heavily on recycling greetings cards. I have to consider the weight and ultimately whether it is an easy craft that children will keep.

The person that goes out there visits around 20 schools/orphanages as well as churches and destitute homes. So trying to keep the weight down to be able to give to more people is essential. 

When sorting the cards for the Uganda project I put them into several piles:

Tag making
 
These are scenery pictures, flowers or backgrounds that look nice at 5cm to 5.5cms wide. I round the corners and make one hole punch.  The kits are then put together once I have 50 tag bases. The kit is simple, thinking of the weight: the 50 tags and 3 different types of coloured wool as well as a sample. I put basic instructions showing it as a handwriting exercise for the childs favourite quote or parable. The instruction label is on the bag, so when given to a teacher they can quickly see what the package is for. None of the scenes show window shops or dressed christmas trees or santa pictures.

Nativity/Bible pictures
As the suitcases are going out with the missionaries, I collect all the nativity and bible pictures and seperate them into sections. Nativity, Jesus, Church and crosses, bible scenes, Mary, angels. I then cut down the cards to take out any writing that may indicate Easter or Christmas. These can then be handed out at the churches they attend.


Minature jigsaws
I recently bought a cuttlebug 9 piece jigsaw die to be used on the greetings cards. The design for these cards are usually what I cant use for the tags because the picture is too big ie animals. It is also good for changing unwanted photos into something useful. They are put into small bags with a small sticker indicating what type of picture it is ie dog. These are to be given out to individual children in their family setting like a cracker toy. I am still trying to find a quote to make it a meaningful present - something along the line of : Not trying your best means the world has something missing.This would link in with if a jigsaw has a missing piece etc. If anyone has come accross such a quote please put it in the comment section.

Bobbins
Any cards that dont make the above, but are thick card - makes the bobbin pile. I get my square punch to them and then curve 2 sides with scissors - it does not matter the picture (as long as its not rude!). I then put it into my embroidery box ready for when I make up the sewing kits. I'm still hoping to find a smaller square punch that is not too expensive, as my square punch is the big lever pink woodware one - but it still does the job of uniformed sizing. Photo shows bought bobbin compared to my recycled bobbin.

Colouring in bookmarks
I also recycle the backs of the cards. Any cream or white backs, where there is no writing I cut out ready for stamping. Like the bible pictures, these are going with the missionaries. So I have stamped them with religious images. I use permanent black ink so that the image is well defined. These are put into kits of 50 bookmarks with a small set of colouring pencils.

Scraps
Any scraps from the above are then put into my punchies bag. I have quite a lot of different punches, most are the lever type as I find them easiest. I then get my bag out every now and then and have an hour just punching shapes out. These are then put into a craft kit for gluing and sticking. The kit would include some background card, then a whole lot of bagged punched shapes and a glue stick. It would also include a sample bookmark.

Whatever can't be used for the Uganda projects are used in different ways in my crafting.

Flower brooches for Uganda

I have been making so many flower brooches - they feel as if they are in my dreams too. Two days ago I had enough of brooch making and decided I would do something else.

Today while packing away the flower brooches I made for this years trip, the total number came to .....98. Then I have 2 bow brooches. So in total 100 brooches are going out to Uganda to give to people who have torn clothes. I have been told that the Ugandan people love their bright colours.

 I would like to publicly thank a few people who have helped me with them over the past few months.
- My son's girlfriend who matched up some of the flowers when I got stuck.
- My crafting friend for helping to sew on the buttons and the brooch backs.
- People on freecycle who have encouraged me by their comments

 All of the brooches are mainly made from recycled material .

The wool I have picked up from different charity shops, usually the small pieces that are around 50p a bag. The buttons were from freecyclers and charity shops. The silky type flowers were mainly from artificial flowers my mother gave me to recycle. The material ones comes from hair scrunchies and scrap materials people from freecycle gave me.

I did purchase some thick felt flowers, some crochet flowers and the brooch backs. Also from my craft stash which are not recycled were some flower embellishments.

When making them there were certainly some favourites like the purply velvet one with gold beads and buttons in this picture. Also the yellow scrap material rose in this picture turned out very beautiful.


Sorry about the poor quality photos, the sunshine decided not to appear today - but it is nearly the middle of December and we have been very lucky with the weather in South East England.

Uganda project

I am so busy sorting out the Uganda suitcases. I have a date for end of January for the suitcases to be picked up ready for taking out. Though I dont want it hanging over Christmas, so trying to sort it out now.

I am so pleased that people from freecycle have helped by giving stuff when they have clear outs.

At the moment I have packed one suitcase, filled with all sorts of school resources - these include folders, protective paper sleeves, staplers, solar calculators, colouring pens, pencils, block paints, the list goes on.

I am still making up the craft packs which will go in the second suitcase along with some ankle length skirts.

I have a long list of things to get done, it seems a bit overwhelming. Trying to take it a bit at a time as my health has not been too good recently.

I am hoping to photograph some of the packs before they go, and will hopefully post them here.

Tutorial for gift boxes from greetings cards

I have been asked for a template for the gift boxes, but as greeting cards come in all different sizes, there is not a template which will cover them all. So a tutorial is the next best thing. It is best to try it with an A5 card or similar first, as a trial run and then go for smaller cards once you have worked out the technique and measurements.

1. Find two greeting cards that are of similar size and the pictures will look good together. ie 2 red christmas cards.

2. Cut both of them to the exactly same size. This is very important - otherwise it will not sit properly as a box.

Decide which is top and which is bottom.


 

3. For the top of the box, measure 15mms from the edge on all four sides and score.

4. On the corners, the scoring should make a box. Cut it diagonally from the corner to the scored meeting point. Fold all scored lines.

5.  On each of the corners. On one bit cut up from the centre half way to create a folded small triangle.
Cut the other scored line half way down as seen in photo. This is to make an interlocking corner.

6.  Fold the slitted triangle into the half slit from the top to make an interlocking corner for the box. ( Sorry not very good at explanations - if anyone can describe this better - your welcome to use the comments section)

7. Do this for all four corners to make the box top.

8. For the bottom of the box do steps 3 to 7, but make the measurement 1mm smaller.

9. You may want to sellotape or glue the corners, but it is not necessary.

These 15mms measurement can be changed according to whether you want a deeper or shallower box. The size of the card can change as well. The only measurement that needs to remain the same is the 1mm difference between the top and bottom box.

This recycling idea does not work well with greeting cards that have extra 3D embellishments already on them.

Ideas to make the box special:

You may want to put a serviette / tissue paper in to not let your gift slide around.
You may want to wrap ribbon or the like with a bow at the top.
Add embellishments or name tags or write a poem in a coloured pen.

I hope this tutorial gets people to reuse their greetings cards. I would love to see some of the gift boxes that people have made from their greetings cards.

Bookmark kits for Uganda

I have finally put the recycled greeting cards into two bookmark kits.

Pack 1 of bookmark kit

These will be good for two different childrens group, whether they are at an orphanage, school or church. I made up one tag and then selected 50 bookmarks and added the wool into the bag - so they can choose the funky fibres to go on their bookmarks.

Pack 2 of bookmark kit

Recycling greetings cards

I have just recieved around 200 used greetings cards - which always give me a flutter of craft organising.

When I recieve a large batch of files, I immediately sort them into a few batches

• Nativity christmas theme
• Religous Easter theme
• Non-religous Christmas scene in different sizes
• Cards that can easily be turned into tags with a couple of guillotine snips
• Birthday and other greetings cards
• Mens greetings cards (as this is usually only a small amount)
• Backs of cards
• Used coloured envelopes
• Used inserts

Next I look whether I have any cards that are the same and these are put together to do decoupage. I also look for any cards that have inserts as the inserts can easily be taken out and a new insert added.

Then when it comes to crafting I can go to the different boxes according to what Im crafting for.

The nativity scene and Easter religous scenes I cut down and send as prayer tags for the Uganda project I support.

The non-religous Christmas cards are the ones I get most often through Freecycle, they are so useful.

• I make little gift boxes out of them.
• The scenery ones I make into inspirational tags to leave around the town and on the buses to lift people's spirits. 
• I find these are most often the ones where I can decoupage at its simplist two layer.
• I cut out the little characters to use as embellishments/stickers for the Uganda project, which means I can send out a shoe box for the kids to make cards without it damaging the environment or my pocket. I usually stick in a PVA glue bottle, some double sided mount tape and scissors with paper or card depending on weight allowed.
• These are the ones I bring out when I have children crafting, they are always popular

The backs of cards you can sometimes find half of the card with no writing either side - this can easily be sizzixed or stamped or punched. It is espically good when the backs of cards are of different colours. Sometimes though you can only get a small amount of blank card from this method, but still useful for small stamps.

The coloured envelopes I have shown before can be stamped or punched or if really frugal background paper for your cards.

The used inserts can be checkd for any nice design or for the edge strips which can then be used in your design (not for commercial use)

These recycling ideas are good for any toddler groups or schools or churches to take up. I would be very interested to hear if anyone finds this useful in their crafting.