Special Keepsake

- MONDAYS WITH GILL - 

Decorating a babies nursery is something I have not had to do for many years (my children are in their 20's and there are no grandchildren in sight) but I knew the minute I saw the papers designed by our very own Lady E for Lemoncraft  - Boys little world that I wanted to create a miniature train.

I started by using the engine piece of the train mdf set as a template to cut the papers that were going to be used to decorate it as I knew they would be difficult to do once the piece was painted and assembled. I painted the pieces with a dark blue paint taking care to avoid the slots needed for attaching everything together. Once the pieces were dry I covered the assembled engine and carriages with papers from the pack. I dry brushed more of the blue paint over the papers to cover the cut edges and unify the appearance. 

I adhered co-ordinating chipboard pieces to the front of the engine and to the front of the engine and carriages and then added paperflowers and tiny buttons as embellishments.  I fussy cut some elements from the ephemera sheet in the 12 x 12 pack (hot air balloon, aeroplane and rabbit reading a book) and adhered these to the back of the train pieces.

Although the train carriages could hold many things from candy to little gifts and keepsakes I decided that I would then make a series of mini-books, one for each carriage. To do this I used the tag images in the paper packs. Having cut the tags out I adhered them to greyboard creating front and  back covers for each of the books and then using these as templates cut 6 pages for each book using papers from both the A4 paper pad and the 12 x12 pad. I secured the books together using ribbon and then decorated the front of each book with more fussy cut images, chipboard pieces, flowers and buttons. The books were then placed in the train so that they can be added to at the appropriate time.

I had great fun creating this piece which I will tuck safely away until either my children get round to giving me grandbabies or a colleague at work has a baby in the mean time I wish you all many happy hours of crafting and above all that you stay safe.

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