Christmas Wreath Tutorial part 2

 The second type of flowers I used on my wreath were rolled flowers which I did in two ways.  These are the  first ones with the flatter edges.

Firstly draw and cut out a spiral, you can draw a circle first if you want and then do the spiral inside but I usually just do a freehand one as I think it makes the flowers more interesting when they are all different.  Adjust the size of the spiral to the size flower you would like.

 Then use your nails to fold over the outer edge of the spiral like this...

 

It should look like this once you are done

Then start winding from the outer end, keeping it quite tight, I usually start with winding it around a thin paintbrush for the first few twists.

Then release it to the tightness that you would like it to be wound and put some glue on the circle at the bottom, I usually use Glossy Accents or a glue gun and then just hold it in place until the glue is dry.

 

Your flower is then finished!

These are the other variation....

So exactly the same as before cut out a spiral but then cut a wavy edge along the outer edges of the spiral.  You could of course just cut the spiral with a wavy edge to start off but that makes the base wavy too and it is then harder to stick down.

It should look like this...

 

Once that is done start winding tightly again from the outer edge.  I usually do it in a bit of a cone shape with the bottom edge being tighter.

Then once again apply glue to the bottom circle and stick down.  I usually use a pair of tweezers to grab the centre and twist it a bit once I have glued it but before it dries to tweak it to exactly how I want it.

To make the wreath I cut out a circle using a plate and a bowl from the kitchen (very technical I know) and then painted it green so that the background could show through the flowers.

 

I then chose some matching ribbon and tied some around the circle, leaving it open at the bottom where I knew I would be putting the chipboard plaque.

 

I then gathered all the elements that I wanted to use together and just laid them out on the wreath until I was happy with the positioning and then just stuck it all down using a hot glue gun.

Of course if you want to make less flowers you could always use some of the beautiful flowers that come with the Noel range like the Cranberry Rose Trim or the Antique Lace Petal which would both look gorgeous on a wreath!

I hope my tutorial was helpful and if you do make your own wreath please leave me a link as I would love to see them! :)

TFL!

Christmas Wreath and Tutorial

One of my latest assignments for Bo Bunny was to make an item of home decor for Christmas.  I decided to make this Christmas wreath which was so fun to make!  I used the totally gorgeous Bo Bunny Noel range which I think works beautifully on this.

There have been a few requests for a tutorial so here goes!  As this will be very long with loads of photos I will do the rose and the leaves today and then will do the other 2 flowers and the wreath in another post tomorrow :)

The first flowers I am going to show you are the roses...

I have seen a few tutorials for these now but the first time I saw them and was inspired to make some was after seeing them on a my friend Gemma'a blog My Simple Life that she learned to make at a crop.

Firstly you need to cut out three 6 petal flowers, I use a Woodware punch but you could just make your own template and use that.  I have a large and a smaller punch so I can make them in 2 different sizes.

Cut the flowers as in the following photo so that you have cut out a 2 petal from 1 flower, 1 petal from another flower and the last flower just has a slit. I normally fold the flowers in half a few times to work out where to cut evenly.

Take the 3 main flowers and glue the 2 edge petals of each one together so you have 3 full flowers in different sizes, a 5 petal, a 4 petal and a 3 petal.  You can peg them while they dry although I use glossy accents and it normally just dries in a few seconds anyway.

I then use a thin paintbrush to curl the edges of each of the petals a bit.

You have 2 options with the base of the 2 bigger flowers, you can either cut a piece away or flatten the bases.  I usually use the back of my hole piercer to flatten them so they will sit nicely.

I usually cut a small piece off the end of the 3 petal flower.

Then take the 2 petals you cut off before, curl the petals and then roll them around something (I used my trusty paintbrush again!) and glue the edges together.

Then take the single petal and roll it (you might have to cut a small piece off the bottom).  Put a blob of glue inside the 2 petal roll and put the 1 petal roll inside.  You will probably need to trim the end of this to fit it neatly in the flower, you just need to test and judge how much to cut off.

Then just start gluing the pieces together with a big blob of glossy accents starting with the biggest at the bottom and moving until you are satisfied that the petals are in the best alignment.

 

 Leaving you with your rose :)

  

 For the leaves I just drew a template on some cardboard and then cut out a whole lot of leaves.  I inked all the edges and then embossed them in my cuttlebug with one of the cut and emboss butterfly folders.

Once they are embossed you can either sand or ink the embossing to enhance it or leave as is.

I then just bent the leaves a bit down the middle to give them a bit more shape and depth.

I hope I have explained everything properly, it is quite hard to put down in words, if anyone has any questions just let me know! :)  I will be back tomorrow with the rest of the tutorial. :)

TFL!

Christmas treat boxes!

Seeing as it is December I think it is safe to mention the C word! ;)  I just love Christmas and could happily have it a couple of times a year!  We are having loads of lovely Christmas things over on the Bo Bunny blog this month!

My first contribution to the Christmas projects were these cute little treat boxes.  I found these little take away boxes at The Works for only 99p for 5 so of course I had to buy them to decorate!  I used the beautiful Winter Joy range for these as they match my tree colours beautifully and I was planning on hanging these on the tree with some treats inside for the boys.





Products used:
Winter Joy Snow Angels
Winter Joy Brrrr
Winter Joy Stripe
Winter Joy Clearly Stamp
Winter Joy Purple Pom Pom Wrap
12" Winter Joy Chipboard
Bo Bunny Bling

Others:
Embossing powder
Liquid pearls
Ribbon
Fibres!
Silver balls saved from a Christmas cracker!

You can see the other holders created by my very talented fellow team members here

Just sharing some photos from the last couple of days!  The first one is of Kieran before his young voices concert yesterday.  We couldn't get him into school because we were snowed in so him and Paul had to walk and then catch a bus to the venue so he could take part.  Paul also went to the concert and they both said it was totally awesome!  Having watched a clip online for it I can just imaging how fab it must be, it is 10 000 children all singing together with whatever well known singers they can get.  Paul actually phoned me from the arena so I could hear and 10 000 kids singing together is very loud but totally amazing, I even got goosebumps over the phone!  It was such an amazing experience for Kieran and Paul is such a wonderful father to have put in all that effort to make sure he could take part even when we were snowed in.  They left at about 12pm and Paul then dropped him off at the arena with his teachers and then walked around in the freezing cold till 6pm when he could go into the arena.  They only got home after 11pm, after walking from the bus stop in the middle of a blizzard!  I think they would both do it again in a heart beat though! :)

These next photos are of Christopher yesterday when we went out sledding while Paul and Kieran were out.

That was the snow yesterday and it snowed most of the night and all day today and is currently snowing at the moment!  Needless to say as we live on a big hill and the only way out of our area is up or down a very steep  hill.  We did try yesterday but the car was sliding all over the place and me and the kids got out and walked back home and Paul had to try and get the car back.  We were all snowed in again today and by the looks of things it will be the same tomorrow so that will be the 3rd day the kids are off school!  The scary thing though is if this is what started in November, what is the next 3 months going to be like!

Will be back tomorrow or the next day with another Christmas project :)

Bo Bunny Card Kits

I have been a seriously bad blogger!  We are going through some rough times at the moment and life has been very stressful and busy and I have not had much time or energy to do much scrapping or blogging :(  And the scrapping that I have done I can't show yet!  This is what I do have though.....  I just adore the card kits that come with the new Bo Bunny ranges....

 

They are really beautiful cards and all the hard design work is done for you so you can just throw together a quick card if you want or jazz them up as the design team did in this post or even re-arrange everything and make your own cards.  I got the Midnight frost kit and made a couple of the cards.

The only other thing I have done that I can actually show you is two quick pages I did for a cj for a very special ladies birthday!  Like me she is a Twilight Fanatic, the leader of our online group and a really lovely lady, so our group got together and made her a twilight cj for her birthday.  I kept the pages very simple as I was the last person on the list and only had one night to do them and bind the book so it could be sent off the next day to arrive in time for her birthday (and I am a veeeery slow scrapbooker!)  :)

 

Well I can't really see things calming down around here anytime soon but hopefully I will be able to get a bit more scrapbooking done soon and post a bit more regularly!  One thing I am actually quite happy with is that there is another cybercrop on UKS coming up and I think it will maybe be exactly what I need, a weekend of just scrapbooking and forgetting the rest of the world for a couple of days with no stressing and worrying as my wonderful hubby always takes over all the cooking and kids etc for me when there is a cyber crop on :)

TFL! :)

Blog Candy Winner!

Well it is finally time to announce my blog candy winner!  I had lots of entries and did double entries for all the people who were all ready followers of my blog.  I decided to forgo the random org number generator this time and got my youngest DS to pick a winner out of a bowl......so here goes!

So the winner is Sarah !  Congratulations Sarah , please send me your address and I will get your prize off to you in the next few days :)

I also have a layout done by my youngest son who is 8 that I wanted to share because it is just so cute plus he did it and then asked me if I can put it up on my blog like I do with mine and who could resist that!

Isn't it brilliant! :)  One of his obsessions is Gogo's and that is a very small sampling of all the Gogo's that he has!  Both my kids scrapbook occasionally and for some reason neither of them really uses patterned paper, no idea where they get that from seeing as I am a patterned paperaholic! ;)

We went to Gullivers theme park for Halloween yesterday with my BIL and family.  The kids loved it of course and got all dressed up for the occasion.  We spent all day going on rides and then it ended with a show and a massive fireworks display which was just amazing.  This is the kids in all their gory glory!

I hope everyone else had a great Halloween if you take part in it!  Tfl!