This week I have mostly been cutting up bits of paper ...

Talk about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions! Over a month since I set the new blog in motion and not a peep from me! Good blogger, eh? And yet so much has happened.

This week, I have mostly been getting back to my creative roots, and playing fast and loose with a layout pad and scissors. And a bit of sellotape. Purely in the interests of mountain rescue, you understand. Thing is, the last issue of Mountain Rescue magazine caused something of a stir in the hills, what with its little illustrations of the newly proposed livery for mountain rescue vehicles. Turns out that half the readership at least (the male 'half', I'd hazard a guess) had too much time on their hands. Must be this year's apparent reduction in the call-out rate after a two-year high – now they don't know what to do with their time...

Anyway, this half of the readership with all this time on their hands also had free access to a goodly supply of magazines, scissors and ooh, maybe a Pritt Stick or two. I should be incensed really. The time I spend working on that mag, and all they want to do is cut it to shreds?! But it turns out they might have been on to something, as Mister Vehicle Officer has kept reminding me. At every opportunity.

Many pages may have lost their lives in the making, but the resulting dinky little paper Land Rovers (all say ahhh!) sparked an idea. Why not create a money box model, get a forme cut and printed and sell them as fundraisers? Great idea, Mr Vehicle Officer, but you try getting bits of 80gsm laser paper to do your bidding. The air, I can tell you was blue. It's not so much the working out of the shape – that's easy – it's working out how to cut the thing out of an A4 piece of card, and where the tabs and slots will go to make the thing hold together for longer than two seconds – let alone hold money. Which is the general idea for a money box.

Anyway, two days in – with a fair few rusty craft skills polished in the process – I have the template. It's off to a fundraising meeting tomorrow morning, so hopefully they'll agree it's a great idea.

Well, that's the template worked out, now all I have to do is get the artwork sorted, nice and colourful, of course, then get it printed and out there...