All flowers....no weeds!

In my first post, I promised to work up the nerve to share something that I made. Today's the day. Hope you enjoy.

So, I love flowers but I don't love weeding. Paper flowers are the perfect solution, as they don't bring along their pesky friends. Consequently, I did an imaginary back flip (a literal back flip is an impossibility) when I first saw the Sizzix line of dies designed by Susan Tierney Cockburn. I own one of her books that explains how to make paper flowers from punches for quite awhile. As much as I love that book, I often found that I was lacking at least one punch needed to execute the design. These dies eliminated that frustration entirely. I was able to quickly create enough flowers to fill a wheelbarrow with no frustrating roadblocks. Love these dies! And, I'm excited because I recently read that she will be introducing some additional flowers to this series of Sizzix products. Woo-hoo!

I first constructed the wheelbarrow using this Bigz XL die. I used cardboard harvested from the back of tablets that I saved while I was still working. (Co-workers aided and abetted my hoarding habit by sending me cardboard in yellow swiss cheese envelopes via interoffice mail!) I cut each piece twice...first in cardboard and then in card stock which I later glued to the cardboard pieces...my home made version of mat board.

 

Then, I "built" the lily, daffodil, pansy and daisies.



 

The "seeds" for my flowers were found in my Iris cart where I keep scraps of paper salvaged from previous projects. I die cut all the pieces needed to create each flower and then applied color using Pan Pastels and Copic markers. I used a Viva  Décor Sunny Yellow Pearl Pen to add the center to the daisies and the pansy. 

 

Here's a quick view of the supplies I used:

 

 



Well, that's about all I have for today. Hope you come back for another visit.

Craftapalooza

Splish Splash...that's the sound of me jumping into my very first blog post.

In May, my sister and a bunch of our gal pals planned a week of crafting and friendship that we dubbed Craftapalooza 2013. We rented a charming little house in a beautiful neighborhood in Angola, NY on the shore of Lake Erie. It was chilly the entire week we were there, but that didn't matter so much since we were there to enjoy the Glue, Paper and Scissors.



We had a seven days of fun...paper crafting, snacking, cooking, and laughing. Some of us made cards, some of us scrapped, and some of us did both. The living room was the perfect size and configuration to set up our worktables and there were plenty of windows, letting in beautiful sunlight during the day.



My sister and I own three little doggies who went along to keep us company.


  
Here's a pic of Pip, Squeak and Buddy enjoying the bright spring day.




Almost every evening we were treated to this view.


When the week was over, we bid farewell to Craftapalooza and packed it all back up to head back home.



The next time I post, I hope that I've worked up the nerve to share something that I've made.

It was a pleasure meeting you. Hello...anyone out there?