Dinosaur Baby Shower Gifts

Hello, hello!

My colleague, Linda, and her husband have been trying for a baby for some time and with great joy, she announced in the autumn that she was pregnant!  So when I was looking for a fun, quick little project to work on a while back, I decided baby shower gifts would be perfect.  It didn't hurt that I had seen some really cute, new children's fabric come into the local quilt shop...  It was farm animal themed but in the end I decided against it because the background was very white and if you've had children, you know that's just going to be a never-ending laundry cycle.  So instead I chose the super bright and fun dinosaur fabrics.

I went with my go-to tote bag pattern as a nappy bag - it features 6 deep pockets all around the outside and a lot of room on the inside to hold nappies, wipes, clothes, bottles, toys and everything else you may need for outings.  I also made my go-to changing pad clutch, which you can roll around a handful of nappies and box of wipes and is super quick and easy to operate one-handed while holding baby.

I also decided to add in a few little bibs and I even picked up some terry cloth to back them with for extra absorbency (yup, lived hovering up bits of terry cloth around the flat for the better part of a month but totally worth it).  Finally, I made this adorable dinosaur-shaped tactile toy to totally match the dino themed fabric.

Thrilled mummy-to-be

Needless to say, Linda was thrilled with the goodies.  She later told me that her husband was completely blown away with them, too, and absolutely loved the dinosaur fabric (yeah!).  In fact, he claimed they were far too nice to dirty up with baby changing but Linda has assured me that she will use them with pride and joy.  So happy for them both.

Cutest Baby Ever Card

Welcome back!

Previously I've mentioned how everyone I know seemed to be having baby girls and so logically, I have a few collections of baby girl kits for making cards and things.  Now, of course, the tides have turned and everyone seems to be having baby boys - and I still have baby girl stash to hand.  Unperturbed by this challenge, I rose to the occasion with this Little One...Hello card and I was so pleased with the results, I decided it was time for a repeat.

This contemporary baby boy card is made entirely with the Simple Stories SNAP! Baby Girl kits.  I really enjoyed using the grey, green and yellow colour palette - so unusual from my normal choices but it really worked nicely together (and even colour-matched the accompanying gifts - more on that soon).

The overall design is pretty simple.  I wanted the sentiment card with its eclectic combination of fonts to really stand out.  I loved the impact that the layered heart die cut gave to the arrow.

The embellishment cluster uses some washi tapes, stickers and pins.  I was so thrilled to find a grey label sticker and thought the 'handle with care' type was perfect for a baby card.  I hemmed and hawed for a while on whether or not to add more to the cluster and in the end decided that less is more.

Little One...Hello

Earlier this month friends of mine had a baby boy.  Naturally this meant that a baby card was in order.  I got to work straight away and in very little time came up with this (if I do say so myself - and I do) adorable card.

Now, would you believe that this card was entirely made from supplies from the Project Life baby girl kit?  Yes, indeed.  Everyone I know recently has been having baby girls and so my stash of baby related papercrafting is overloaded with pink, frilly cuteness.  And then suddenly a baby boy.  Well, I was up to the challenge.

I started shifting through the Project Life cards, looking for any non-pink possibilities.  Now, don't get me wrong, I see no problem in little boys having pink things and dolls and I certainly see nothing wrong with little girls having blue things and playing with Tonka Trunks but it's probably safest to play the gender neutral card in these situations.  So...I went with the fab retro orange and brown combination.

The elephants, stars and moon are from the Simple Stories baby girl collection kit and aren't they just the cutest?  I piled the elephants up on the bottom in a little family train.

Having added the elephants, there was suddenly this yellow from the baby elephant that was out of sync with the rest of the design and colour palette so I searched the Simple Stories sticker sheet for a way to bring more yellow into the card.  I found the moon and added some stars to make a visual triangle.  The cork cloud was a nice way of anchoring the stars and adding another texture and dimension of brown at the same time.

Finally - and I didn't take a photo of this part - I added the sentiment inside.  And to my horror, as I was writing out my note to my friends, I misspelt one of the words!  No!  What to do, what to do?  I grabbed for a package of word stickers and found a selection that not only fit with the message but even worked with the colour scheme and completely covered up my faux pas - whew!