Hello, I wish I could say my absence from blogging was because I had been in my secret lair hatching a master plan on world domination (*insert evil laugh). Sadly nothing that exciting has been going on but I have been incredibly busy at work and as a result been too tired on most days to think of new paper projects.

So today I’m going to share with you a project I did a while back for a friend’s mum. It was her 50th Birthday and though I unfortunately couldn’t make it to her birthday party I was able to make and send a belated birthday card. She was quite delighted with the card and sent me the most pleasant thank you note ever. To be blessed with the ability to put smiles on faces and create happiness in people’s lives, that’s what makes doing this worthwhile because life is to too serious and complicated already.

We’re all in a manic rat race for survival and relevance. I don’t know if I speak for myself when I say we shouldn’t necessarily be out to compete with others but to compete with ourselves. To be better than who were yesterday, to find purpose and meaning in life. We all have our personal struggles and you can’t say that you are better or worse of than someone just by judging from the outside, a lot can lie hidden beneath the surface and within the human heart. However what I do know is we all need to reach out to each other from time to time with a smile, a kind word or even a hug. You really don’t know how much of an impact you could have on a person with that little gesture of love.

Ok enough of my ramblings here is the birthday card with a very little behind the scenes of the making of the card. I used centura card stock, plain orange paper, beads, string and quilling paper. I was inspired to make an african-ish looking chandelier. Since we Nigerians like our patterns and embellishments I used my Silhouette SD to cut out the design and embellished the chandelier with a sting of beads to give it that cultural feel. I then completed the embellishment with a quilled 50.

This project was also my first attempt at quilling. What is quilling? I hear you ask. It’s the technique I used in creating the 50. It’s an ancient form of paper decoration where strips of paper are rolled, shaped and glued into decorative patterns. The Quilling Guild website (http://quilling-guild.weebly.com/the-history-of-quilling.html) say the techniques we use today are believed by some to have been originally practised in Ancient Egypt. Which I think is pretty cool! I hope I can learn more and channel this ancient african art form better in my future work. Here are the pictures of the ‘making of’ and completed card.