Vellum Roses

Today I have some handmade vellum roses to share with you.

 For my flowers I used the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals dies and cut 5 flowers for each rose that I made. I also used the fabulous flower shaping tool kit from Sizzix called Susan's Garden Tool Kit. I got mine on Amazon here. These are only a few of the tools that come in the set and I really have found that they make the shaping of your flowers much more realistic and easy. I did find I had to be a little more careful in molding the vellum as it can tear more easily than cardstock.

 To form my roses I just started with the inner most petals, which was 2 of the flowers that I cupped fairly tightly around itself and applied Glossy Accents to hold it together. You have to be patient with this step and hold it until to sets up a bit or it will just pop apart. I did notice the vellum takes a bit longer to dry on. I continued to layer the last 3 flowers around the cupped middle and fluffed or tightened petals until I was happy with the rose shape.

Here is the project I used the flower on, a thinking of you card. I love the translucent quality of the vellum for flowers. Gives them a more light and airy feel. I hope you'll give it a try and make some of your own. If you do I'd love to come see what you make and I do hope you enjoyed my creation. Thanks for stopping by!

Candle Box

 I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was filled with family and focusing on the amazing gift of God's love. I wanted to share one of the handmade gifts I gave this year, a box filled with stamped votive candles. I purchased a Silhouette cut file for this box which is designed to hold cookies and thought it would be a good home for the candles. I stamped the candles using the tissue paper technique. I have a tutorial here if you'd like to see.

My entire box was hand stamped using Inspired By Stamping Delicate Doilies II along with some gold heat embossing. I added a tag with a little winter blessings sentiment from Holiday Tags and a poinsettia flower with some lace ribbon to finish it off. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week recovering from the celebrations! Thanks for stopping by :)

From the Heart

I hope you've been having a good week! We got back into some school routine and it's been going well. I enjoy what I learn with the kids :)  I'm sharing a card today that has a little bit of a tutorial with it over at She's A Sassy Lady blog if you want to peek. I used some silhouette flowers cut from the Botanicals Cricut cartridge and scraps from my desk. The sentiment is from the Inspired By Stamping set, Spring Blossoms. I recently got a new ribbon storage system for my little craft space and love it. Whenever I add in something new it causes a whirlwind of re-organizing and in the process of that I moved my sewing machine to a much more accessible spot, so I plan on sewing on a lot more cards and projects now! I have a BabyLoc machine by Janome and love it. It has several fancy stitches on it which are fun. The one on the oval is a new one I hadn't tried yet, love the thicker line it gives. Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:
* Inspired By Stamping Spring Blossoms
* Botanicals Cricut cartridge
* Tag and border die from PTI
* Sequins from Hobby Lobby

Making your own sticky pick up stick and/or glue dots

 Hello! This month for She's a Sassy Lady blog I thought I'd share a little tip that I have found to be so useful and inexpensive. I love to use little rhinestones or flat backed pearls on my cards and other projects but find that picking them up and getting them placed just so can be difficult. I have tried tweezers, but those just don't work well for me. I have tried getting the tip of my finger wet and trying to place them, which usually ends up that they fall off my finger right as I am about to place them! I have seen the Quikstick but honestly didn't want to fork over the $8 or so bucks for it. So one day an idea struck me and it works wonderfully!

 I purchased some Tack it Over and Over from Michaels (I know Amazon has it too) and first started by making my own glue dots. I saved a used roll of purchased glue dots with a good amount of the waxy paper that the dots come on and just dotted the Tack it Over and Over on to it and let it dry overnight. It makes fabulous glue dots! Then I found an unused rub-on tool in my stash (but you could use anything that has a bit of a point on it, such as the pointy end of a pen cap or a bamboo skewer) and stuck one of the glue dots onto the end of it, kind of wrapping it onto it.

 Like this. It picks up the tiniest gems and pearls perfectly! To get them to release, especially when the glue dot is new and extra sticky, I use a small stylus tool (pictured above) to release it, but again just a toothpick would work too. :)

Now I can add my gems and pearls SO much easier and they don't fall off mid placement. And no more buying glue dots! I hope you'll give it a try! Thanks so much for stopping by :)

Supplies:
Inspired by Stamping sentiment stamp from Big Wishes II and Background Basics II
Flower is cut using the Cindy Loo Cartridge

Shabby Chic Butterfly Clothespins

Hello!  Today I have a simple project to share making some shabby chic butterfly clothespins. I'm also posting over at She's A Sassy Lady. My daughter's birthday party is coming up and the theme I chose this year is garden party, so butterflies and flowers are for sure a part of that! I wanted to make some little clothespins for decorations and also to use as favors (I'm thinking the mom's for this one;)  so let's get started!

I bought my clothespin at Walmart and you get a whole bunch for about a dollar. I chose to paint mine with some acrylic paint, also from Walmart for a dollar. You'll want to let them dry completely before the next step, but it's doesn't take long, just a few minutes.

What's shabby without a bit of glitter? :)  So I used my very favorite dry adhesive, Scor Tape. I just cut two strips of it to fit the front of the clothespin and sprinkled my glitter on. Love that there is no wait time for it to dry.

I wanted a layered look for my butterflies so I chose a PTI die and for the white butterfly I found a cut off the Art Philosophy cartridge that layered with it nicely on page 41 and cut it at 1 1/2". After die cutting I dry embossed the white butterfly with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dot folder.

Then comes the fun part, putting them all together and embellishing! I used scor tape to adhere all my pieces together and for the different centers of my butterflies I chose to use a button with embroidery floss, a little felt flower with a brad and a rolled flower with a pearl center. To tie them together so they are different but cohesive I used a silk hydrangea flower for each of them. The rolled flower was cut using the Flower Shoppe cartridge, page 13, cut at 1 1/2".

I hope you enjoyed my little project and if you make any I'd love to see them! Leave me a comment and I'll be sure to come take a peek:) Thanks so much for joining me today!

Altered Strawberry Vase

Hi! I have a little project to share with you that's over on She's A Sassy Lady's blog as well. I have been preparing for my daughter's birthday in March and decided to do a strawberry garden theme for her party. I made this altered vase for one of the decorations by giving a major face lift to an empty salt container. Let me show you how I did it:)

 When I bought this salt I wasn't thinking of re-using the container, but when I emptied it into the container I keep my salt in, I thought it would be a great thing to alter as it's sturdy and not too big around to cover with pretty paper.

 My first step was to select my cardstock base and what stamps I wanted to use as I wanted to do some random stamping to create my patterned paper. Since the theme is strawberry garden I pulled out a great strawberry set I have from PTI. I also wanted the top to have a decorative border, so I used an edge punch from Martha Stewart to create that edge.

 I got to work filling in the entire paper with the largest of the strawberry images.

This is what it looked like all stamped with no color.

 The great thing about this stamp set it's a multi-step so if you want to add the color by stamping you can or you could color it with Copics or pencils too. I chose to use the stamps to fill in all the images and this is the patterned paper I ended up with.

To finish it I wrapped the paper around the container adhering it with Scor Tape and added some jute twine and a tissue paper flower I made to finish it off. The final touch was adding Stickles glitter to all the berries and flower centers...gives it just the right amount of sparkle for an upcoming 5 year old's birthday party. Thanks so much for visiting, I hope you enjoyed my project!

Valentine Pillow Box Owl

Hello! I am so happy to be posting here and want to say thank you to Shelia for having me:) I'm Leah from Paperblossoms and for my project I wanted to share with you my process for making a sweet pillow box owl. I think this would be the cutest Valentine project or for birthday favors or just a cute just because gift. Let's get started!

I chose Kraft as my base color and used my Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge from CTMH to cut the pillow box. The cut is found on page 28 and I cut mine at 6". My favorite adhesive for boxes and such is Scor Tape as it's no wait time for drying and it holds really, really well.  I scored all my lines and after adhering it together you get......

this :)  Now we are starting to get to the fun part! Now you want to cut all the fun details that will bring your little owl to life.

For the scalloped borders I cut them using the Art Philosophy cart again, page 65 cut at 1" two times. I looked through some different cuts for my eyes and found these in the Artiste cartridge (also CTMH) and realized that if you didn't turn them to be scary, they are sweet, scalloped eyes. The eyes are found on page 77 cut at 1" with the Real Dial Size ON.  The heart,, which is for the owls feet, is also from the Artiste cart, page 66, cut at 1" with the Real Dial Size ON. Finally, for her little beak I just hand cut a small triangle out of the same paper that matched her feet.

I wanted to not have all the elements be flat, so to get some more dimension I just took a round tool, you could use anything...a pencil, pen, etc. and curled the heart, which are the feet, and after trimming all the scallop borders down to the size to fit across the box that will make the feathers, I curled them too.

Once everything was curled I was ready to start assembling all the pieces onto the pillow box. For the feet I glued them to the bottom of one end of the box being sure to leave the scalloped part of the heart hang over to give kind of a perching effect.

Next, I adhered the scallop borders for the feathers. My favorite adhesive for things like this is Scotch Quick Dry Glue. I find mine at Target or Michaels.

Once the eyes and beak are glued on you have a very basic owl. But, she looks a little naked to me ;) So I got to work on all the fun embellishments of some ribbon, flowers, a button and what girl can go without some sparkle?!

This little sweetie is going to my daughter for Valentines day filled with some fun treat. I hope you enjoyed the process of my pillow box owl! I think they would be just as cute if made up for a boy....which I have two of so I'll be working on those next. Thanks for stopping by! hugs.....