Winteer Trees Shadowbox

Hello all. Lora Mahaffey here taking my turn for the awesome sauce that is Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts!
When we are in this busy time of year I sometimes want to do something that has a repetitive nature. Seeing a pattern can be relaxing and calming.
Except if we're talking a zig-zag of spiders.
Maybe not that.
Anyway, I find making something that is repetitive kind of soothing. I'm sure I'm projecting here, but maybe in all the holiday chaos, looking at something that repeats itself might be that way for you too.
So here is a little serenity and calm in the midst of the bustle that we call the holidays.
Or you can just say it's four trees in a House Room Box - 4 Cubbies.
I'm good with that!

A view of the back....

I began by cutting my papers for the sides and back and also for the back of the four cubbies. I glued the house together and set it aside to dry.
While it was drying I put a coat of gesso on the Chipboard Shingles-Pointed and the 1 7/8 inch Snowflakes (which are coming soon).

After the snowflakes dried, I gave them a coat of matte medium and while they were wet, I sprinkled glitter on them.
A lot of glitter....

If you  put a saucer or a bowl underneath what you're glittering, you can reuse the glitter. I found these little ceramic dishes at a junk shop. It says 'United Airlines' on the bottom, so I guess these were the plates they used to serve meals on way back when.

While waiting for all that glitter to dry, I glued the shingles to the roof. It took four rows of shingles to do the whole roof.

After the glue dries, it's really easy to trim the shingles down to the width that you want them with a big pair of scissors. I cut mine down to about 1 3/4 inches wide.
At this point, my house was dry so I glued on all the papers I cut for the house and inked the edges a bit.
I wanted my snowflakes to sit about half an inch away from the back of each cubbie, so I measured cut four pieces of foam . painted them white and glued them to the back of each snowflake. I glued them into each cubbie, making sure they all lined up up with each other.

I didn't have any trees that were tiny enough to fit in the cubbies, but I had a bunch of small bottle brush trees that I had no other plans for, so I measured how tall I wanted them to be (about an 1 1/2) and cut their little tops off so the the tops became the 'new' tree.
I added some little pearls, some tiny little snowflakes and some more glitter and glued the trees in front of the large snowflakes.

I trimmed edges, added snow and (more) glitter to the roof.......

And a painted candlestick holder for as a pedestal.

I don't know about you, but I feel pretty calm and happy right now.
Happy Holidays!

SUPPLIES:
Chipboard Shingles-Pointed
House Room Box 4 Cubbies
1 7/8 inch Snowflakes (coming soon)

The Candlestick Holder, Retro Bottle Brush Trees, pearls (White Pearl Mixed Tin), Stickles glitter (in Diamond) and 5mm Thin Snowflakes (on the trees) came from Alpha Stamps.
All the papers were from Graphic 45's lovely Winter Wonderland .

Thank you for visiting!

Frosty Autumn Crown

If I were a queen, I might have a selection of crowns like one would have a selection of shoes based on occasion and weather. A warm summer night concert? Maybe it would be the strappy high heeled pearl white sandals and the diamond and emerald tiara.
A frosty autumn evening ribbon cutting ceremony? Hm.....perhaps the fawn colored suede boots and this loverly thing.

 Not quite winter, but ready to usher it in.

I began with the a template which is available in the Winter Crowns Kit from the amazing Alpha Stamps.

I traced and cut three pieces from the template. my front paper, a thin piece of cardboard (for the center-to give the crown strength) and a white inside piece just to give the back of the crown a more finished look.
Next, I cut a generous length of ribbon, about 30 inches, centered it on the cardboard and glued it on with some strong white glue. (I used Aleene's Fast Grab Glue) I let that dry thoroughly.

 Using the same glue, I glued both the front piece and the back piece on.

While they were still damp, I gently worked a curve into the piece by carefully bending the entire thing section by section, making sure that I didn't crease the paper or bend it too forcefully creating a fold or bubble in the paper. It takes a little time, but it's worth it and if you go slowly enough, you won't buckle your inside paper.
When you can get it to a point that it's flexible enough for you to tie it on something head shaped (I tried my husband, but a) he didn't want to wear a girly crown and b) his head was too big.) In the end, I found a nice pottery jar with an average head circumference and tied the crown around the jar and let it dry there.

After the crown dried, I glued some Gold Tinsel
to the top edge of the crown and used some clips to hold it in place until the glue set up. Clothes pins or paper clips would work as well.

Since a large portion of the center of the crown is going to be a medallion cut from the Vintage French Ads Collage Sheet, I marked (with a pencil) where the collage image was going to go, and applied the tinsel only where it would show on either side of the image.
I also glued tinsel to the bottom edge of the crown.

Before I glued the image to the crown, I used a white Sharpie poster paint marker and painted out the center image. I glittered up a snowflake from the Chipboard Snowflake Shape Set, glued it to the center, applied some Mixed Size Ivory Flat-Back Pearls and piped some Stickles in Diamond and Gilded Gold onto the design.
After it dried, I carefully curved it and glued it on to the crown.
Next came the big leaves...two different colors, so pretty! Called Golden Night Wired Leaves.

 Then the snowflakes on the leaves. The larger of the two is called White Glittered Snowflake Embellishments and the smaller ones are Tiny White Snowflake Buttons that I cut the shank off of so they would glue flat.
I cut a couple dozen leaves off of the Stitched Leaf Ribbon-Silver and glued them on around the bottom edge of the crown.
I added some Pear-Shaped Pearl Stick Pins-Pearl and Pear-Shaped Pearl Stick Pins-Gold to the top of the crown (I love the drama!) and glued in some more silver leaves for extra pizazz. A few dots of Stickles here and there look a bit like frost to finish it up.
A pretty frosty crown for a chilly fall evening.
Now, what handbag should I use..................
For links to all the supplies from Alpha Stamps, click HERE.

Supplies
Chipboard Snowflake Shape Set
Golden Night Wired Leaves
Mixed Size Ivory Flat-Back Pearls
Vintage French Ads Collage Sheet
Crown Template
State Chic Cream Scrapbook Paper
Pear Shaped Pearl Stick Pins-White
Pear Shaped Pearl Stick ins-Gold
Tinsel Gold
Tiny White Snowflake Buttons
Stitched Leaf Ribbon-Silver
Stickles: Gold Gilded, Diamond
Ivory 7/8 Inch Satin Ribbon (substitution)
White Glittered Snowflake Embellishments
Twinklets Diamond Dust

Surprise! It's Christmas Ornaments!

For a lot of us, at some time in our lives, we've made Christmas ornaments. Whether you were five and you made them from pipe cleaners or you're 55 (well, okay 56) and you're making them from a host of fancy bits and pieces, it's always fun. Here are a couple I made for the amazing Alpha Stamps folks.

They're bright and cheerful and they have snow in them. Gotta love 'em.

For this tutorial, I began with the Ornament Frame Set-Star.

It has three star pieces, two are the same size and one is slightly larger.

All three stars got paper on one side and the larger one also got a coat of black paint on the other side. I inked the edges of each one with a combination of Brilliance Galaxy Gold ink and Ranger Distress ink in Vintage Photo.

I glued the smaller, solid star (no hole in the middle) to the black painted side of the larger star. I like the contrast of the black with the green and cream stripe.

I used the green stripe paper to fill in the center hole of (what will be) the front star.

And that is now the background for my cute little collage image of this little girl I embellished with little stars and glitter.

Then I added some snow carefully in the center. Not too much or the little plastic window the kit comes with will not stay down and you will block out too much of your image with what looks like a white-out blizzard!

Using a small amount of glue around the flat edge of the window, I stuck it in place, making sure it was centered over the image. I added some pretty black and white twine to the edge and embellished it with lots of sparkle.

I glued this star on to the paper side of the large star and added even more sparkle. Ah, I do love glitter!

I added layers of bows and some pine cones and berries to the top. Pretty!
I used the same techniques with the Santa ornament, just changed the papers slightly but still kept to the same color theme.

Each ornament has a cute phrase appropriate to the image on the front and were also embellished with glitter.

Great as a tag for a gift, a beautiful gift for someone's tree or make a bunch and hang them as a garland!
For a link to all the awesome supplies, click HERE.

SUPPLIES LIST
Ornament Frame Set-Star (Clear plastic dome sold separately)
Ornament Frame Set- Bauble (Clear plastic dome sold separately)
2.5 mm Multicolor Start Sequins
2017 Christmas Ornaments Ribbon Set
Christmastime Evergreen Scrapbook Paper
Papers from the Vintage Christmas 6x6 Paper Pad
Miniature Pinecone Picks
Bakers Twine-Black
Bakers Twine Red
Stickles-Diamond Black, Christmas Red, Lime Green and Gilded Gold
Retro Christmas Collage Sheet
Sweet Christmas Collage Sheet
Fluffy Winter Snow
Clear Plastic Round Domes
Mixed Matte Red, White & Burgundy Berry Sprigs 

Thank you you for dropping in!

French Country Tool Caddy

Hola! Here I am with another fun project for Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts! I love this Tool Caddy. This is the third one I've made, but the first I've done a blog post on. It's so practical and the perfect size for just about any tool you want to have on hand and use frequently.

I take the very first one I made to the Make and Take classes I teach. It has all the basic things things I need to use as I'm doing a demo or workshop. Kind of a 'go bag' for me.
It has a Halloween theme, so I decided I'd make another one that was less holiday oriented in papers that I loved to look at.
And some of my favorite G45 papers of all time are probably the French Country papers. I really like working with red, black, cream and gold this line has those is abundance - they are warm and rich and have some beautiful images.

Plus, sunflowers!

I started off with the Tool Caddy Kit.

I painted the inside of the side walls black and cut paper for the two interior walls and for each side of the handle piece. (incidentally, the paper I used for the handle is the flip side of Olde Curiosity Shoppe's Optical Oddities)

Glued the papers on......

I dry-fitted the interior pieces to make sure they fit well, and then glued them together.

After everything dried, I gave the handle, interior striped walls and the black painted inside walls a coat of varnish. I'm going to be using this frequently and I wanted to make sure that it would hold up to lots of handling.
I used Liquitex Matte Varnish.

 When the varnish was completely dry, I glued the four wall in place and tied some twine around the pieces to keep them tight and give the glue time to set. Big rubber bands work too, I just had twine within easy grabbing distance.

After the caddy dried, I cut paper to fit the outside walls and glued it in place. Then I used both a gold ink and a brown ink in layers around all the edges and corners. I like the mellow look it gives to the piece.

Then collaging happens!
I cut the pieces out that I wanted to use on the front and back of my caddy and played around with the arrangements until I thought they looked right.

I knew I wanted to incorporate the striped paper into the main images to bring cohesion to the piece, so I settled on a small strip to use at the base in front of the girl picking poppies, but behind the sunflowers to make them feel more in the foreground.

The sunflowers went on.....

They look pretty!
Thank you for stopping by!

Thanksgiving Stagger Tags

Hello all! Lora here with some fun Thanksgiving tags from the fabulous Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts folks. I love fall colors and that's what inspired these cute tags. They are called Stagger Tags (small) and the set is three cute tags ranging from 2.5 x 4.5 (largest) to 2.5x3.5 (smallest). Great tags to put on a package, tie to a napkin ring or even use as a place tag on the table or attached to the back of a chair.

The fall-colored napkins are so pretty this year, I decided to use them instead of cardstock for the background of my tags.

 The first thing I did was give the tags a rough coat of white gesso. (you can use white paint as well) Since you are going to peel the napkins apart and they are transparent, it's good to have a white background as the colors will really pop.

After the gesso dried, I peeled the napkin apart, making sure that I got all three ply separated. Nearly all napkins are 3-ply. Make sure you have got the backing (the two separate ply of white layers) away from the 'picture' part of the napkin. If you leave a ply underneath the printed picture, the picture will not adhere properly and will eventually peel off.
And that would be sad.
After I separated all three ply (I always save the plain white to use for clean and etc...) I put of coat of matte medium on the tag (I used Liquitex Matte Medium) and gently laid the napkin over the tag, making sure there were no air bubbles. Folds are okay, but air bubbles will tear and you don't want that!

After placing the picture, I gave the piece a top coat of matte medium, making sure the whole surface is covered then set it aside to dry and worked on the other two. Do not try to tear the edges off at this point...let it all dry or you can tear the napkin right off of the tag.
Also sad.
Because here is what you do and it is so much easier and looks so much better!

After the tag has dried completely, use a fine grit sanding block or an emery board and sand off the extra bits of napkin. It looks so much tidier than tearing and you then have a nice edge to ink on. Easy, fast and purdy.
And now you have a beautiful surface to embellish that was simple and fun. I like the idea of having other options to use as a background surface and some of the designs on napkins these days are so nice.
One note: Make sure you get a quality product. I test all my napkins beforehand by applying a little matte medium to the surface to make sure they don't bleed or run. It does sometimes happen. I usually always buy the napkins on sale but have learned that some manufacturers do not use a stable dye. I can imagine what would happen if you wiped something really wet off of your face.....what a mess.
My favorite companies are Michel Design Works and Caspari, but there are others that are equally good.

Another fun thing I did paint the Miniature Book Plates Shape Set pieces I used on the tags to look a little like wood.

I just painted the bookplates with a mixture of orange and red, let them dry and then dry-brushed some sap green lightly across the top. The red underneath makes the sap green appear brown and simulate (loosely) wood grain.
Add ribbons, metal findings and erudite (not really) sayings and there you have it.  Thanksgiving tags.
Now go make fun stuff!

Thank you for stopping by!

SUPPLIES
Stagger Tags (small)
Miniature Book Plates Shape Set


Additional supplies
Napkins
Matte Medium
Ribbon
Beads
Metal findings
Stickles Glitter Glue