CTMH Rosette Christmas Tree

Welcome to my blog – especially to all my new followers.  I hope that you find some inspiration from my creative endeavours just I find inspiration from other blogs and blog hops.

Today I will be showing my version of the rosette Christmas tree that is shown front of our Holidays from the Heart Gift Guide.  Here is the picture on the front of the Holiday Gift Guide.

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There are instructions for doing the rosettes with the Artiste Cricut cartridge and Jenny Gilbert has really detailed instructions here.  However, I have been asked to teach my friends at Crafty Angels how to make these trees so I have done mine by hand so they are able to go home and do their own.

Here is my version of the tree:

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I have adapted the instructions from the archives of Close to My Heart which used a scoring board and a trimmer to make the tree.

The papers that I have used are the Sparkle and Shine papers from the Holidays from the Heart Gift Guide and they pleat so easily.

Before cutting the paper I used my ScorPal to score all the papers at 1/2″ intervals as it made it a lot easier to cut and pleat later.

I have cut the following pieces:

3 strips of 3″ x 12″

3 strips of 2 3/4″ x 12″

2 strips of 2 1/2″ x 12″

2 strips of 2 1/4″ x 12″

2 strips of 2″ x 12″

2 strips of 1 3/4″ x 12″

2 strips of 1 1/2″ x 12″

2 strips of 1 1/4″ x 12″

2 strips of 1″ x 12″

1 strip of 3/4″ x 12″

20 circles – I have used a 1 3/4″ punch for the larger circles and my CCS from CM for cutting two small circles for the top rosette.

As you can see I have reduced the size by 1/4 inch each so make the tree graduate to a point.  You could use another small rosette of 3/4″ x 12″ to place at the top of the tree but I have used my Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge to cut out snowflakes for the top of the tree as well as smaller snowflakes to decorate the tree.  The smaller white snowflakes have had glue applied and I have sprinkled some prisma glitter to give some glitter.  I have also stamped the stars from the Sparkle and Shine WOTG stamp set and fussy cut them out and put some sparkles in the middle of them for a bit of ‘sparkle and shine’.

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I have not used a hot glue gun as my skin does not heal easily and I still have scars from last Christmas on my fingers!  But I have discovered Liquid Glass from CTMH to be a really great adhesive for making the adhesive (and for rolling flowers).  The Liquid Glass gives you about a minute to manipulate into place and then it sets really quickly and it did not take me long to do the rosettes.  There are lots of videos on YouTube to show you have to form the rosettes  (I am sorry but I couldn’t find the particular one that I used).  I made sure I had the circles close by to place them on the rosette quickly before I lost the shape.  Because the adhesive set very quickly it did not take long.  Foam squares have been used in between the rosettes as well for additional height.

To finish I had to purchase some green and red ribbon as I did not have Ruby Chevron ribbon or the ribbon to dye with the re-inkers like they have in America.

The materials I have used are:

Sparkle and Shine B&T Duos

Slate cardstock

Daisy White Cardstock

Juniper Ink

Slate Ink

Ruby Ink

Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge

Foam squares

Non-stick scissors

Bonding Memories glue

Liquid Glass

Clear Sparkles

Prisma Glitter

Purchased ribbons.

I hope that you are inspired to make your own version of the tree.  A shorter version would look great as Christmas place settings with names on them, or doing a group of three different sizes would look nice as decorations together as well.

Have a great week as we spiral onwards towards Christmas.

Happy Crafting

Patricia

 

Christmas is Coming!

Welcome back.

Today I am doing something completely different from my usual cards and/or scrapbook layouts.  Christmas is not too far away and I have been inspired by the lovely ornaments featured in the Product Launch Guide from Close to My Heart on page 44 (Aus/NZ version).

For my ornaments I have used last month’s Stamp of the Month set Scandinavian Wishes heart image and lots of different colour inks.  Here is my efforts:

Heart Christmas ornamentsThey are really easy to do and the hardest part was picking colours to stamp with.  Here is a quick tutorial for you to make your own.

1) Using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge cut out the heart shapes at 2 inches.  I have used the fill option to fill the entire sheet and cut out 25 hearts.

Making hearts with my Cricut E22)  Stamp the heart image on four shapes.

Heart Christmas ornaments3)  I used my Fiskars trimmer scoring blade (but you can use a ruler and scoring blade or whatever you have available)  score down the middle of the heart and then fold the heart in half with the stamped image towards the middle.

Heart Christmas ornaments Heart Christmas ornaments4) On one half of a heart use a good strong glue – I have used CTMH Bonding Memories glue  which bonds really quickly and then put the 2nd heart onto it and try to get it matching as much as you can.

Heart Christmas ornaments5)   Glue the other half of the heart and place the third heart onto the ornament.

Heart Christmas ornaments6)  Glue the last two sides and place the final heart onto it and making sure that you get it as close as possible to the centre of the hearts.

Heart Christmas ornaments Heart Christmas ornaments7)  Using a piercing tool pierce a hole at the top of the hearts and then using a needle thread your string through (I have used bakers twine) and tie a knot at the base of the heart and one at the end of the twine to enable you to hang your ornament on your Christmas tree.  

Heart Christmas ornaments Heart Christmas ornamentsVoila a Christmas tree ornament!

It is so easy and I hope that you can give it a go as well.

Materials used:

Colonial White cardstock

Pacifica ink

Stamp of the Month set – Scandinavian Wishes

Baker’s twine

Bonding Memories Glue 

Piercing tool

Needle

Scissors

Next week will be our next Australasian blog hop featuring this month’s Stamp of the Month Set – ‘Illuminate’.  I can’t wait to see what everyone has done with this stamp set.

1311-sotm-stamp

 

Have a good week and see you next weekend.

Happy Crafting

Patricia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Close to My Heart Scandinavian Wishes Stamp of the Month

Hello again.

It is that time of the week again for another post and I have gone back to Split Coast Stampers to get some more inspiration for a card.  There are so many great tutorials there that it is going to take me quite a while to go through them all.  I am enjoying the challenge of stretching myself to do something different every week.

This week I have done a side spring card and the link to the tutorial is here:

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/sidespringcard/

I have discovered that it is a lot easier to practice with scrap paper first, otherwise a lot of cardstock can be wasted.  It took me some time to work it out, but once I did it did not take me long to complete the card.

I have used the Close to My Heart Scandinavian Wishes Stamp of the Month set.  This is a very cute and whimsical stamp set and a lot of the stamps will be really useful for other occasions – like the heart is going to be really good for Valentine’s Day.  This stamp set is only $5 when you spend $75.  You only have a few days left to purchase this gorgeous stamp set so be in quick to get your order here.

Here is my card:

Side Spring  card using CTMH Shine and Sparkle set and Scandinavian Wishes SOTM

 

Materials used:

Daisy White Cardstock

Ruby Cardstock

Ruby Ink

Sparkle and Shine paper

Cricut – Art Philosophy cartridge

My Acrylix Scandinavian Wishes Stamp set

White Bakers Twine

Tombow adhesive

Liquid Glass adhesive.

I have cut out the heart according to the size of the stamp – 2 inches and then for the background heart in ruby cardstock I have cut it at 2.25 inches.

I am loving the Sparkle and Shine papers from the Holidays from the Heart Catalogue as they are beautiful colours and have a lovely sheen to them.  The photo does not do justice to the beautiful silver coloured paper.

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I hope that you enjoy my latest efforts and I would love to see what you can do with this card.

Now I have to put my thinking cap on again as we have another blog hop coming up for next month’s Stamp of the Month set – Illuminate.  I was really impressed with all the participants entries and it was very impressive going through all the blogs.  CTMH really does make it easy to be so creative and inventive.

Happy Crafting.

Autumn is coming

Hello there

Autumn is finally here and the leaves are starting to change colour and to celebrate some rain and cooler weather at last, I have created an autumn layout on my StoryBook Creator 4.0.  I have used the Fall Appreciation 2012 kit as the colours are very autumnal.

Autumn Time

 

The layout was a sketch from an Artful Crafts competition and I inserted photo boxes to create the background layers.  Other than that this layout was a matter of clicking and dragging the embellishments onto the page and resizing them as required.  I got an honorable mention for this in the competition – I don’t think they had had a digital layout entered before.

Happy Autumn everyone in the Southern Hemisphere and Happy spring for the Northern Hemisphere.

Happy crafting

Patricia

 

I found the Easter Bunny!

Today I went out to take some photos down at the Hutt River and came across an errant bunny in the bushes around the bridge.  I managed to get one photo of it before it disappeared.  I thought the timing was quite timely especially as we have just had Easter in the weekend.  However, I could not find any Easter eggs – lol!

The Easter Bunny

While on Easter I have just purchased the Creative Memories Border Maker rustic fence cartridge and I could not resist making one last Easter card with it.  I can see myself using this cartridge a lot – and distressing it with inks as well.  This would look lovely with flowers and leaves climbing up on it on a card.  This cartridge is while stocks last only.

It seems strange to put a cute lamb on an Easter card in the southern hemisphere as Easter is a sign of Autumn for us with the changing colours of leaves and cooler temperatures (?), but it is a sign of rebirth that is universal.  I also love using the Classic Stickers from Creative Memories they are so colourful and pretty. Plus they are reasonably priced.

Easter card

 

The sentiment on this card was last weeks freebie from Creative Memories that I printed off from my StoryBook Creator, as well as the background paper.

Materials used in this card:

Creative Memories Cardstock – Green Apple

Creative Memories Stickers – Easter

Creative Memories Border Maker – rustic fence cartridge

Creative Memories Reflections Digital Kit

Creative Memories freebie sentiment

I hope that you all had a great Easter.

Happy Crafting

Patricia