Welcome

I am a day late for my blog but I lost the battle with the light last night to take photos.  It is heading into Autumn here and Easter is just around the corner so the days are getting shorter and the dark came up quicker that I had wanted.  I went out with my aunt yesterday and found some very cheap foam crosses and thought I would have fun dressing up the cross to put on the wall in my shop.  It is also fitting as my new landlord is a church.  Here is the finished product hanging on the wall at Gift Hutt.  I am going to look at doing another cross up for ANZAC Day with red poppies.

 

To cover the cross I have used the lovely B&T papers from the Yuletide Carol Reflections paper range.  This particular paper is really versatile for lots of different projects apart from Christmas.  I wasn’t sure about it at first but now I love it for doing backgrounds.  I used liquid glass to adhere the paper onto the foam – the edges are not perfect as this is not a perfect cross but I did what I could.  I had to have a join in the paper and hid this with the Black Striped Twill.

I really like using different techniques for making flowers and for these flowers I have got my inspiration from another company on how to do these flowers.  They used dies and stamps but I used my Cricut cartridges – Artiste and Art Philosophy and kept to a very neutral palate – Colonial White and Flaxen.  I love how you can make all different sizes instead of being limited to the size of the die.

For the flowers I cut the flowers from the Artiste cartridge page 54 Accent 3>Shift at sizes ranging from 2″ down to 1/2″ in increments of 1/2″ as this made a good contrast in sizes.  However, I used flowers that I had cut out earlier and I think the sizes were only 1/4″ difference and I think the centre petals are a little big.

After cutting the flowers I used the small spray bottles to slightly dampen the flowers.

 

Once they were pliable to use I then used the shaping tool to create some texture and pattern on the petals.

 

I then pleated all the petals by hand and twisted them slightly.  Using the large ball embossing tool I then made the flowers cup up.  Each flower had two of these layers.  These were then left to dry.

 

For the centre of the flowers I used the next size down flower and using the same technique I created the cups for the centre.  However, I did not pleat the petals this time.

Here are the completed flowers ready to put on the cross.  As you can see I have done three different sizes to create some depth and interest to the flowers.

Before putting the flowers on the cross I cut out several leaves from the Art Philosophy cartridge page 35 <Branch2> size 2″ from Flaxen cardstock.  I then played around with the placement of the leaves and glued them down with the small glue stick.

I placed a bow on the cross first and then had some fun with placing all the flowers in a pleasing way.  I finished off with a pearl flourish (NLA) and then some clear sparkles in the middle of the flowers.  For the final touch I embossed three butterflies from the Armour stamp set with gold embossing powder and fussy cut them out and used liquid glue to adhere them to the flowers.  I would have preferred to use pearls but unfortunately, CTMH do not stock them.

Here is a close up of the pearls, flowers and butterfly.

I then went on to create some cards using the same papers, flowers and colours and the His Love stamp set that is only available until the end of the month.

Here I have used my own design and used a spare flower and leaves to embellish the card.  I have used the black sequins from the Mini Medley Accents – Black to finish it off.

For this card I have paper pierced the lily and finished off with the Black Strip Twill.  The pattern for this and the following card is from the Make it From Your Heart Volume 1 pattern no. 25.  I have first stamped the lily image on the Colonial White cardstock and then again on some scrap White Daisy and Flaxen cardstock and then fussy cut out the images and pieced them together to make the lily stand out.

Finally, I have turned the card around and put the Bible verse on the card and finished with the smallest flowers – 1/2″ on the leaves in Flaxen cardstock.
Materials used:

Cardstock – Colonial White, Flaxen, White Daisy

Paper – Yuletide Carol B&T

Stamps – Armour, His Love

Inks – Black, Versamark

Liquid Glass

Ranger Gold embossing powder

Clear Sparkles

Black Striped twill

Bakers Twine Neutral Metallic Assortment

Mini Medley Accents – Black

I hope that you enjoy my latest creations.

Have a good week and Happy Crafting

Patricia