Do you have life insurance?
I don’t. I did, once upon a time, when I worked for a bank. It kind of came with the package. But that lapsed a while back, and one of the reasons I’ve never got organised again is because of the cost. But recently I was approached by Cavendish online to undertake an insurance based challenge. They asked me to compare and contrast the costs of life insurance found via their price comparison website, Cavendish Online with the meerkat fronted Compare the Market.com.
The results were enlightening. I compared two policies for £180,000 over 18 years (all children through university, we hope!) and with the policies located by Cavendish Online, I’d save £2.63 a month. Over the course of the policy, that’s around £568. Not bad eh?
As Cavendish don’t spend money on funky mascots, and that’s part of why they’re cheaper (every time they say, although obviously I can’t confirm that!) they suggested that I might like to use some of the savings in creating our own mascot. So with £10 splashed out on craft materials we got creative.
First of all, design. We had a few ideas, so I sketched them out.
You won’t be surprised to hear that Smallest chose the flower 🙂 She called it Power Flower – she was quite taken with the whole mascot design process.
Then we used a mix of chenille and ordinary pipe cleaners, and some fleece for felting.
Needle felting is a surprisingly relaxing pastime. It’s quite therapeutic continually stabbing a ridiculously sharp and jagged needle into soft felt 😉 You’ll want to be very careful when needle felting around small children – Smallest has tried it before under close supervision and done very well, but not on this kind of free form design. When we did it before we basically stuffed felt into cookie cutters and then stabbed the felt within it, which keeps little fingers out of the way. Felting a face onto a flower though is a bit more fiddly and I didn’t have any guides, so I did this bit myself.
What do you reckon, did I do a good job?
Of course, Smallest didn’t want to give up her flower, so we had to make another one. I haven’t quite finished the second face yet, but it’s coming along nicely so far.
So here’s Power Flower and her buddy in the garden, best place for flowers after all.
Thanks to Cavendish Online for the suggestion – it was a really fun craft activity. And food for thought on the insurance policy as well.
Disclosure – this is a sponsored post.
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