This afternoon has been more productive than any other in the past few weeks. Lashing rain and whistling wind clearly make for a good soundtrack to inspiration!!

With Valentine’s day on Friday I thought I should get around to making this year’s offering (see 2013’s here and 2012’s here). Niblet’s ever increasing Lego collection provided the inspiration.

I made a heart(-ish) shape from red bricks and photographed it. I cropped it and auto corrected it, so it looked a bit more Polaroid/Instagram. Then printed, trimmed and stuck it. Voila!

Niblet has a heap of friends birthday’s coming up in the next few weeks – no, I haven’t made all their presents (I wish I had that sort of time & inspiration), but I have made some more wrapping paper.

I have a bit of a thing for brown parcel paper, I would love to wrap everything in it – with some embellishments, of course. I get mine from extremely expensive ‘stationery’ store WHSmith, but only when it’s on offer (3 for 2 usually). It’s recycled and comes in rolls that are much longer than your average gift wrap.

After my previous, less than successful, foray into wrapping paper I decided that making a simple circular rubber stamp would be the way to go. I actually made two, 1 is 2p size, the other 1p size – great for cutting circles!

I also decided that after waiting what seemed like years for the block printing ink to dry, that using the many ink pads I have would be quicker and provide a much greater choice of colours.

As this paper was for a 4 year old girl’s present I went for more feminine colours, but have visions of shades of blues and greens for future grown up use.

This way also means that should it look a little ‘off’ once wrapped, you can simply add an extra dot!!

I feel like I had a good afternoon, despite the appalling weather.