DECEMBER!!!

... and when I say 'December' followed by lots of exclamation marks its a not in a 'ooh December, how exciting!' type way.. no, its more of a 'ooh December!! surely not! where did that year go!' type way!! lol

but anyhooo.... its here and so we'd better get busy with:
*  the christmas decorations (still in garage, not on tree),
*  the christmas cards (that will be bought this year rather than made)(oh the shame! but I'll make the 'important' ones)
*  and the general merriment and festivities that the season brings... yay!!

I finished the small flower ball I mentioned in the last post, and here it is:

This was created with 2in squares of book text - very fiddly! lol  and to finish it off I glued pearls into the centres. This will go on the christmas tree I think... (not that I've thought about the colours on the tree this year... tho I am liking the fact that all the decs are in the garage rather than in the attic! much easier to get to! lol)

Here are the two balls together - showing the difference in the size.. I think I've got these out of my system now... fun to make..

Paper Engineering, Part 2....

I recently started to follow Phiona Richards (@rarenotions) on Twitter (quick question - what did we do with our time before we tweeted? lol - don't bother answering...) who made/showed something that reminded me of an origami flower ball that an NCFE Student at SACC made a few years ago and it prompted me to make one (it was on a 'must try that when I get 5 minutes' list that was tucked away in the recesses of my brain), and here it is in all its origami-button-embellished loveliness.. really happy with how it looks - all 12 flowers, 60 petals of it!
Phew thats a lot of folding and sticking!

Loved making this - great project for making while you're sitting in front of the tv, folding & sticking, folding & sticking...

I really like the button centres....

This flower ball is made from 4in squares of paper, I'm currently working on one where petals are made from 2in squares - teeny tiny - I'll post a picture when its done. ;o)
On twitter, where I posted the pictures yesterday, people asked for instructions (waving at you Jean!)- the flower ball is not my design and I found the instructions on the web - there are lots of them out there - this is the one I used:
http://folio-love.com/diy-2/diy-paper-flower-tutorial/  This is the instructions for the flowers and then I guessed/played/looked at photos of how to stick all the flowers together to form a ball - which is quite easy to work out (or there may be another tutorial out there for that.