Paper Flower Vase

The second part of my centerpiece for the Valentine's Day party was a vase of paper flowers.  I made the flowers using my favorite flower dies- the Tim Holtz Tattered Flowers dies. I used the Jumbo die for all 3 of the flowers I used in this vase and the small one I added to the paper lanterns.

I cut flowers from plain tissue papers, patterned papers, metallic tissue, oiled tissue papers, and old book pages.  It is easy to simply layer them up and thread them onto some sort of stem. Here I simply used wire that was curled on one end to keep the petals from falling off. I add 4 or so petals and add a drop of hot glue to the back and smash it all up without burning my fingers, then I add more petals. I end with a thick patterned paper petal.  I used the wire to add whisky by bending it forward.  The M&M's keep the stems in place but look fun and playful.  I hear the girls ate the M&M's and I have to admit I never imagined they would eat them.... I may have dropped one or two and pick them back up and tossed them in a vase.

Each Vase also had a sweet heart cut from gorgeous wool felt that I got from Felt on the Fly.  Felt on the Fly carries gorgeous 100% wool felt. I have been looking for beautiful felt for a few years and am thrilled I finally find someone who carries every color imaginable and is great to work wit

BTS: Ryann helped me by holding up the white board. 

Valentine Waterless Snow Globe

I was asked to make the 14 Valentine-themed centerpieces that would then be raffled off as door prizes to 8th-grade girls. I didn't really know exactly how big the tables would be and I wanted to make something that would be a fun and interesting keepsake for middle schooler....like a big ol' basket of artificial flowers probably wasn't going to excite them.  I played around with a few ideas and settled on a cluster of 4 individual- but coordinated -items with a Valentine Waterless Snow Globe taking center stage.

The snow globes are made with a mason jars with clean sides. It does have a green/blue tint that I wish it didn't have, but the writing across the clear jar was so distracting I hated the way it looked and I couldn't get a wide-mouth clear jar in town.  I cut a small styrofoam ball in half and hot glued it to the lid, covered it with spanish moss and attached all the pieces to this.

I decorated the snow globe with little blue roses made from Tim Holtz Tattered Pinecone die,  felt and paper hearts, a fun Valentine tree with pink pearls that started as a Tim Holtz Idea-ology bottle brush tree.  My trees were misshaped from being in the packaging and I found if you mist them with water and let them dry overnight they fluff up. The pearls are cheap-o plastic pearls colored with alcohol ink.  I cut "Sparkle & Shine" from a WPlus9 die using silver glitter paper.

I wrapped a fun pink tinsel from Melissa Frances around the lid and hot glued it in place.  I tied a seam binding bow around the top of the jar an used glue dots- one under the bow and one on the opposite side -to hold the ribbon in place.  The tags were cut from Tim Holtz die. The bottom tag is cut from patterned paper. I wrapped a pink metallic embroidery floss around the bottom and glued a tiny little gold foiled heart made from a Minc'd piece of typing paper.  The top tag is stamped with a Tim Holtz quote and foiled using a glue stick and Martha Stewart Pink foil.  I die cut a heart from a piece of laminated foil waste (see more about how I made that here). Finally, the silver bell is colored pink with alcohol inks giving it a variegated look I love.

I hear the girls LOVED the snow globes. Mission accomplished.

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January 12 Tags of 2016

I going to try to keep up with Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2016 this year cuz I wasn't so good about it last year. This year Tim is taking a unique approach...he is revisiting two prior tags and merging the techniques in new and interesting ways.
For the January tag Tim revisited his Chalkboard Technique and Industrious Metal Technique.  You can read all about Tim's tag here.

From Tim Holtz

I am going to admit straight away that I have never been able to correctly do the Chalkboard Technique.  Tim uses a Ranger Embossing Powder called Frosted Crystal Antiquities and then lays chalk on top of it. I have tried so many times to get this to work...so....so....so many times.  The problem is that there is a sweet spot in heating the embossing powder.  There is a moment between still having powder and shiny melted plastic when Frosted Crystal is matte but melted enough to grab on to the chalk. This moment has eluded me every single time I have tried this technique...even when I am SURE it is matte and not over melted, I can't make it work.  It is frustrating because Tim has provided very detailed photos and instructions and he makes it look so easy time after time and yet I fail.

I've always end up using white embossing powder on my image and then going over the cardstock with chalk to fake the look.  This time I didn't even have any of the Frosted Crystal-my dog knocked over the jar last time I was using it- so I went straight to the white embossing powder.  Yes, it feels like I cheated... but then again I wasn't a stressed out frustrated mess at the end either.

I made 3 different versions of the tag. It is a really fun design and I enjoyed mixing and matching imagines and embossing folders to get totally different looks. 

For the Industrious Metal Technique I didn't have the embossing folder Tim used so I turned to my favorite ones from We R Memory Keepers. They have a new-ish line called 3D 

Gemstone 

ABC 123

I LOOVVEEE these embossing folders. They are spectacular with foiled cardstock as you can see below.

These are foiled using Heidi Swapp Minc foil/machine and the Gemstone Embossing Folder but I am sure that a pre-made foiled cardstock would look just as great.

The first design was the closest to Tim's tag. I used the gears from Tim's Industrial Blueprint stamp set. I added hardware, gold embroidery floss and seam binding.

The second one was also made from a stamp that came from the Industrial Blueprint...this time I chose the lightbulb.

Again I added hardware but on this one I decided the lightbulb filament needed to be wire. I used 2 different wires, one a thinner gauge and one a little thicker and simply bent the larger wire to fit the shape of the stamped filament and then essentially sewed it in place with the thinner wire.

My final tag turned out to be my favorite. Here I used butterfly stamps from Finnabair.  I took a class this summer from Finnabair and she is an incredible artist but also an incredible person.  She really takes a laid-back attitude toward art and is a very encouraging teacher who really wants her students to understand the products and enjoy the process.

Here I used the honeycomb folder from the Gemstone set. I again added the gold embroidery thread and also added gorgeous Moonstone sequins from Simon Says Stamp.  The butterflies are so fun and whimsical and even more so with Idea-ology Pen Nib bodies embellished with seam binding.

I have been posting my projects to my Instagram DaneeKaps.

Laters....