How To Curl Twine: Vase of Paper Flowers

I am delighted to announce this news today:  I’ve joined the design team of Trendy Twine.  I first fell in love with Trendy Twine back in January when I was a guest designer. The twine is such a great weight and lays and falls so nicely. Trendy Twine is a three-color twist that comes in traditional colors mixed with white as well as custom colors mixed with other colors. It’s beautiful to work with and I couldn’t be more excited to join the team.

Let’s see some Trendy Twine at work, shall we? For this project, I made a vase of paper flowers.

　

I used flower kits from Little Yellow Bicycle’s Paradise and Wonder & Wishes collections to make the accordian flowers, added button centers from Basic Grey, then attached the flowers to floral wire stems. To incorporate the twine, I wrapped Twisted Lime twine around the five largest flowers.

To make a curled "ribbon" from twine, I wet the twine with glue, using Claudine Hellmuth's Multi Medium Matte.  While wet, I wrapped the twine around a straw. Once the twine dried, I unwound it from the straw and the twine sprung right back into shape. (Note the twine in the demonstration below is a different shade of green).

Here is a close-up of the curly cue twine ribbon.

To celebrate the new design team, Trendy Twine is having a blog hop and is giving a way a spool of twine (winner's choice) to a commenter chosen by random draw. You can find all the details on the Trendy Twine website here.  

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I really appreciate your visit.  I'll be back tomorrow with reveal day and a Prima contest from My Creative Scrapbook.

Linking this to Tip Me Tuesday, Tater Tots & Jello and Today's Creative Blog.

Home for the Holidays

It's good to be home for the holidays.  All the lights and sights and sounds and smells and festivities really put me in the Christmas spirit.  It's fun to pull out the holiday boxes and decorate the house for Christmas.  I wanted to capture a few of my favorite things around the house for this layout.

I decided to use patterned paper and embellies that weren't Christmas themed because the photos clearly indicate the topic. I used an 8x10 photo collage as my centerpiece, tucking a little journaling card behind it on the top left. Underneath, I added a border strip, spelled out the title and added a little chipboard house from the Pink Paislee Hometown Summer line and trees from My Mind's Eye. I finished the page with a little pop of color in the upper left, using a flower sticker from October Afternoon and a few buttons, and stitching around the page.

Wishing all of you a beautiful Christmas. I hope you find yourself home for the holidays.

Repurposing A Banner Stamp Set

I love banners. It's the most fun trend. You'll find banners on many of my projects and I have a couple of great banner stamp sets.  For the holidays, I thought I would repurpose triangle banners for Christmas trees.

I used this red rubber banner stamp set co-branded from Unity Stamps/Simple Stories:

From the set, I used the polka dot banner on the far left and the ledger banner next to it to make these trees.

I drew little tree trunks with a black zig.  Below is the full card. It was really quick to do.

I used a journaling card from Elle's Studio and patterned paper from a 6 x6 holiday pad from Basic Grey. The little stamped greeting at the top is from Fancy Pants.  Cardstock is Bazzill kraft.

Altered Frame for Halloween

I love altering ordinary picture frames around the house, especially for the holidays. I looked around our den and spied a nice black frame in the den that holds an 8x10 family photo.  I removed the photo and ended with this.

This project was really easy to make. I started with a piece of white cardstock, cutting it down to 8x10 inches. I grabbed some of my favorite Halloween paper, Echo Park's Apothecary, adding in an orange pattern from EP’s previous Halloween release for a punch of color.  I used a square punch to make 20 squares, then moved them around in a grid with five rows across and four down, leaving a little white border between them. I also left a white border around the page so I would have some wiggle room for the image in the frame.  

I tacked the squares down lightly with adhesive, then used a sewing machine to make diagonal lines across the squares with black thread.

Here you can see the squares before I embellished them. And, yes, the project is shown upside down.  Hee! I didn’t realize that until I uploaded the photos.  I tried flipping the photo, but it looked weird. So, we’ll just go with this. J

To embellish the squares, I used element stickers from Apothecary and Happy Halloween. I backed the stickers with cardboard to give them a little dimension. You can also use pop dots but for large stickers, like the tree, I prefer to use cardboard as it gives a smoother look.

So, there you have it. A really quick, fun project that you can make for any holiday. This was my last project as guest designer for Echo Park. I uploaded this project to 2peas and was happy to look the next day to see that of 425 projects, it had made the daily top 3 most bookmarked.  

August Freehand Scraps Kit

I just love the August kit from Freehand Scraps and had a wonderful time this month as guest designer. The kit is chock full of papers and embellishments from Bo Bunny, Webster’s Pages, Basic Grey and Crate and they all worked perfectly together. Here is a photo of the August Kit:

Here is one of the layouts I made from the kit::

 

This is my friend’s little girl last Halloween. Isn’t she the sweetest? I used Bo Bunny's Gabrielle papers here with embellishments from Basic Grey's Out of Print collection.  I misted the lace sticker above the photo to match her outfit and used ink and stamps to re-color the large die-cut butterfly, which is shell colored in the kit.  The letter stickers are from Webster's Pages. Here’s a closeup of the titlework.

I don't normally put the title at the bottom of the page, but it fit the design here and allowed room at the top for the butterflies to roam free.

While I had this Bo Bunny line out, I though I’d make a card. I fussy cut the big butterfly from one of the patterned papers, inked the edges, then “painted” it with Claudine Hellmuth’s multi-medium matte. I love that stuff. It is similar to modge podge but isn’t as wet or shiny. The multi-medium helped to stiffen the butterfly a little to give it more body and also allowed me to mold the wings up a bit. I added some pearls from the kit to the butterfly’s body. 

To make the card base, I used a premade 5x7 notecard from American Crafts and cut a piece of pp for the front.  I sewed it on, tucking in a border of lace from the Crate trim card in the kit. To finish the card, I added a Webster's button tied with twine (also in the kit) and stamped a short sentiment.

I'll be back later this month with more projects from the August kit. For more information about Freehand Scraps, follow this link: http://www.freehandscraps.com/

Gathered Ribbon Flower Tutorial and Sneak Peek

I'm really honored to be a guest designer for the August kit of Freehand Scraps. The new kit is chock full of yummy goodies, which I can't reveal quite yet. But I can show you a few sneak peeks.  Today, I am going to show you how I used a few products in the August kit to make a gathered ribbon flower.

One of the items in the Freehand Scraps kit is this Crate trim from the "Neighborhood" collection. Love Crate trims! I used the shell-colored ruffle ribbon to make my flower. This trim is perfectly suited for flower making because it has the nice elastic at the bottom, which is easy to run a needle through.

I used orange embroidery thread here so you can see my stitches. The stitches won’t show so you can use any color thread you have on hand. Make sure you tie a good knot at the end of your thread because you will have to pull on the ribbon to gather it.

Use your needle to make long running stitches on the elastic part of the trim. After you’ve stitched the length you need for your flower, use your fingers to gently gather the trim. The ribbon will naturally curl into a circle. You can make your gathers tight or loose, depending on the look you prefer. Once you have your circle, either backstitch or tie a knot in the other end of the thread to secure it. Then stitch the two ends of the ribbon together to hold the circle. Don’t worry about stitching neatly because none of the stitching will show once you add a decorative center.

The ribbon was a little too pink for my project, so after I had gathered the flower, I misted it with Tattered Angels’ “Peach Delight.” I love the way you can use mists to color ribbon and trim.  I always mist lightly first, then again if I want more color. The photo above shows the flower after a first spray with mist.  To give the flower a deeper hue, I misted it again.

The last step is to embellish the center. I used a small circle sticker from Basic Grey’s “Out of Print” collection topped with an adhesive pearl. Both the sticker sheet and adhesive pearls were in the August kit.  After my flower was completed, I used it as a decorative center on a die cut butterfly to mimic the butterfly wings in my photo.

Now you have a sneak peak at one of my Freehand Scrap projects. I'll post the full layout next week.