Cards and Crafts : 12/1/19

I love seeing little girls in pink dresses and when I saw the adorable Onesie dies from Crealies I knew just what I had to make! Cute baby girl dresses and of course it had to be pink!

I made a special type of scrapbook / mini album where each dress is your canvas for adding photos and journalling . Each dress has a front and a back , so you can add a minimum of 4 photos in each dress and tuck in even more if you add pockets inside each dress.

Unlike conventional albums...the pages are not attached to each other but each dress has its own individual hanger from which you can take out the dress and look at the photos inside or add a bit of journalling within it.

I made the hangers out of wire and prettied it up by wrapping satin ribbon around the wire hanger.

I also made the stand using skewer sticks and ribbon. it is quite long and has room to hang lots and lots of dresses! Can you see the dangling crystal heart ...it is adorable ...if I may say so myself!

I made 10 dresses in all and kept the dresses fairly simple but you can embellish away to glory or follow the minimalist style!

All the dresses have ribbon roses, bits of lace and paper buttons die cut with Crealies dies. I also made a cute shaker baby bottle using the Crealies bottle die. It is tiny and filled with hearts and stars and turned out sooo cute!

Baby Girl Scrapbook Tutorial

Here is how I made the Dresses
Even though you may not have the Crealies dies I have used you can adapt this idea to a hand cut pattern or any other die cut you may have

I die cut 2 dresses using Crealies Cardzz die using thick card stock and pattern paper to create the back and front of the baby girl's dress.

The front and back of the dress are joined at the sleeves using a 1/2 inch width strip of reinforced card stock.

Take a strip of card stock around 1 x 1 and 1/8 inches and score at 1/2 inch and 1/8th inch after that.

This piece will help to join the front and back of the dress. Optionally reinforce this joining piece of card with duct tape or Tyvek.

Fold along the score lines and cut this into two along the 1 inch length so that you have two 1/2 inch pieces scored in the middle. Each piece will have a 1/8th inch strip in the middle and a 1/2 inch strips on either side of this.

Stick the 1/2 inch parts onto the sleeves of the dress as shown below.

Fold the strips. Leaving the 1/8th inch part, apply glue to the remaining 1/2 inch strip and stick the back of the dress on to this. This way you will make a dress with enough room inside to add pockets and each half and slip in a couple of photos.

To glue the dresses, liquid adhesive is a better choice that tacky tape as it will allow you to adjust your dress to get a perfect alignment of the front and back.

After roughly adhering and ensuring correct alignment...lay the dress parts flat and press the joint to ensure a good adhesion.

I made 10 dresses with space to add 40 photos!

You can make your own dress hangers using a bit of wire . My hangers are tailor made to the dress size and measures around 4 inches across.

I first made one hanger roughly using wire and then nailed 3 nails to a piece of wood to help wind the wire around the nails to make all the hangers fairly uniform in size. The loop at the top was made by wrapping the wire around a pen and then I wound the remaining wire around the nails . It was time consuming and not the easiest of tasks as I was working with really stiff wire and had to take frequent breaks but in the end it was totally worth the effort!

The best thing about this style of scrap-booking is you can add more dresses to hold more photos and you are not limited by the number of pages of your album

and it does look super cute when displayed!

I hope you liked this idea.

Here are the supplies used:-

Crealies Dies/Stansen :

Birthday Toy Train

Hi crafters...sharing a huge birthday present I made for my little niece who is celebrating her 5th birthday this month. Her favourite colour is pink and so I went really overboard on the "pinkness" here!!
This project was made exclusively using Crealies dies. I used the Crealies train Cardzz die to make the cute train and lots of other dies from Crealies to add the fun elements

Birthday Toy Train

Since I am going to be taking this all the way to Kerala my hometown where my niece resides I needed the whole ensemble to safely fit in my suitcase...so I came up with an idea to have the individual parts fit together with tiny magnets in the wheel bars.
So this is like a real toy which you can assemble and then take apart and store!

Birthday Toy Train

The first wagon 2 wagons had balloons galore for the birthday girl and this one which is my favourite has floating glittery clouds and the birthday girl's name in matching letters .

Birthday Toy Train

On the 4th wagon I added elements you may see in a typical little girl's birthday : lots of pink ...pink frocks, toy balls, cameras , pink bows and hearts!

Birthday Toy Train

On the last wagon I added something yummy---strawberries!

And more balloons and buttons and a giant 5!!

Birthday Toy Train

Don't you just love those strawberries.

Birthday Toy Train

Ok ...here is how you can make a Toy Train Treat Box/ display for a special occasion.

Make a Shaker Number

The new Crealies number dies in the Cardzz category are really huge and are perfect to make banners and huge decorations. For my toy train I made 2 big number 5 's

Here is how you can easily make a shaker number.

Die cut your base using the largest shadow number.

Tape the inner 2 numbers together and die cut double sided adhesive foam.

Shaker Number Tutorial

Stick the number frame cut with the adhesive foam onto your base.

Shaker Number Tutorial

Add shaker elements.

Die cut an acetate sheet using the middle number.

Shaker Number Tutorial

Stick this onto your adhesive number frame.

Shaker Number Tutorial

Press well to stick

Shaker Number Tutorial

Add a frame made using the inner 2 numbers and add it over your shaker

Shaker Number Tutorial

And you have a quick and easy Shaker number.

Birthday Toy Train

Make Toy Train wagons

Toy Train Tutorial

If you want to make a sturdy but lightweight toy train you can use foam to give strength your paper train.

For each train wagon/engine

Die cut 3 pieces [1 in pattern paper, 1 in card stock and 1 in foam- to be sandwiched between pattern paper and cardstock] for the front and 3 pieces for the back.

To make the wagon boxes

You can make the boxes from chipboard or make the wagons using cardstock like I did for this project

Toy Train Tutorial

To make one wagon you need just one 18 x 12 cm paper.

Toy Train Tutorial

Score it on all its edges [ by turning the paper as you go] at 4 cm from the edge[ = 1 3 /4 inches]

Toy Train Tutorial

Once your paper is scored make 4 cuts as shown to enable you to fold your paper into a box.

Toy Train Tutorial

Snip off a bit of paper to create gluing tabs

Toy Train Tutorial

It will look like this:

Toy Train Tutorial

Optionally snip off triangles from the outer end of your gluing tab as shown below...this is not compulsory...it just gives a neater finish to your gluing

Your paper will look like this now...all ready to fold and glue into a box

Toy Train Tutorial

Fold all score lines and you will get a shape as shown below

Toy Train Tutorial

Apply glue to your gluing tabs and glue.Use paper clips to help keep your parts together as your glue dries

Toy Train Tutorial

My toy train has 5 wagons as the birthday girl is celebrating her 5th birthday!

Toy Train Tutorial

Stick the boxes onto your wagons and your train boxes are ready to add little toys, candy etc

Toy Train Tutorial

Since the toy train is very big with 5 parts I wanted a mechanism to take apart the pieces and put them back together like a real toy...I made magnetic parts to join the wheels of the train

Toy Train Tutorial

Cut 3 strips [in cardstock, foam and silver paper] and 2 wheels using the dies in the Train Cardzz set.

Stick the foam in between the pink cardstock and silver paper...this makes your part sturdy and prevents it from buckling while keeping it lightweight

Toy Train Tutorial

I made 8 strips to join 5 of my train wagons

Toy Train Tutorial

You can simply glue the wheels on to your strips or if you want a really good adhesion use brads. Poke holes on either end of the strips and through the center of your wheel and join the wheel to your strip using the brads. I added magnets to the backside of the strips under the wheel and magnets onto the wagon wheels as you can see in the toy train individual pieces below