Hi everybody, Daddy here, aka Hubby.

It’s Mummy’s birthday today, and because I’ve been off with the Monkey and Mummy over Easter, and have a couple of extra days off as well, I thought it was time I put my creative juices to the test, and make Mummy a birthday card, with Monkey’s help of course.

Now, my day job is very much office-based.  There’s more management in my day than there used to be, but essentially I am a keyboard warrior, and pretty much always have been.

I do love doing crafty things, and love gardening and making things, and cooking, but I really have never been that creative, so the Creative Challenge really is for me!

I always have an idea in my head of what I want things to look like, but it’s normally quite vague at the same time, and translating it into something actually in front of me is where I really struggle.

I can look at something and say whether its good or bad, the problem is that I rarely look at anything I have made and think it looks good!

So, onto the card making.  Mummy and Monkey have been doing a lot of card making recently, and I decided to go with the “Monkey Random Painting Generator” technique.
As you bloggers and blog-readers have probably already seen, Monkey loves to paint, and he loves to mix the colours – a LOT.

He just can’t let those paints sit all nice and neat together.

It starts like above, and then very quickly gets to this (check out the Monkey-Eye-View below).

But it does make for some really interesting patterns which can be great for card making.

Check out those colour combos!

So Monkey has made all the ingredients for the card, it’s now up to me to make it.  I’ve decided to make this a card from Monkey to Mummy, and the only thing I have had in my head is to try and make something with a birthday cake on it.

Throughout the day, as I have been waiting for the paintings to dry, I wondered if I could make a shape that looked enough like a cake, and tried to think about how to do some candles for it.

Note that at this point I have no idea what else is going to go on the card – I think I’ll wing it!  For such a serious planner, there are times where I just “do it on the night”.  Looks like this is one of those times.

Ok here’s what I have to work with.

Lots to choose from so as you can see I have cut out the shape for the cake, and also had what I hope will be a great idea for the candles, by taking that fiery looking bit to use the yellow for the the flames.

They don’t look bad!

Here’s the cake all stuck down.

One candle left, oh well.

Here’s where the wheels fall off the wagon.

Mummy likes hearts and stars, so I try to cut some out, and, well, they are rubbish.

After several attempts at hearts, I finally get something that does look half decent, and decide to cut out an “I heart U” style motif.  Stupidly though, I write the message on the front of the card without thinking about where everything is going to go, so I have a choice of where to put the other bits.

So I haven’t cut out the star yet, and still aren’t sure which of the above designs to go with, but I’m pretty happy with both really.  It will all come down to the star I cut out.

I thought the heart was difficult…

I started by reminding myself of the classic freehand, single-stroke star.

I then started cutting with scissors, and kept looking back at this star for guidance, thinking I should surely be able to do something that looks a bit like it (not that my drawing is very good).

But then, I have no idea how, but as soon as I have finished cutting it out, I realise that despite spending ages cutting carefully and looking back at the star above, I have randomly cut out a Star of David instead! WTF?

I mean how on earth do you accidentally cut out a 6 point star instead of a 5 point star? Hello?

Anyway, after several other tries later and a few swear words, I have something I’m happy enough with to go on the card.

So here it is.  The finished card.  Now, I know it’s not good, but I am just hoping Mummy can see that it was made with love, and see that it really took some effort (despite how random and slapdash it actually looks!).

I hope you enjoyed the first Daddy Post.  I promise not to come back too often – Mummy clearly has more skills on the blogging and Creative Challenge front than me – but this has been great fun to write and to share my little attempt at creativity!