My First Tutorial--A Felt Rose Pin

Hello there! Thanks for visiting my blog today. We had an awesome snowstorm last night. This is the 5 foot fence around our pasture and vegetable garden. Looks like I'm going to need a new deer fence this year.

Well, after spending a couple hours shoveling and jumping off the garage roof (boy, THAT was fun!) I plan on spending the rest of the day in my nice, cozy house working on some craft projects. I thought I would start off my crafting extravaganza by putting together a little tutorial for you.

I first saw these on my friend, Georgia's website. She is my Stampin' Up! upline and is always sharing these great ideas with us. She was playing with our new Spiral Flower Original die and wondered what it would look like with felt instead of paper. Gorgeous!!! I tweaked her design just a bit and took step-by-step photos of the process for you.

You will need our Spiral Flower Originals Die, the Autumn Accents Die, a Big Shot Die Cut Machine, some felt in your favorite flower colors, a glue gun, tweezers and a pin back.

Cut rough rectangle shaped pieces of felt to fit over the dies. You will need two of each shape and guess what? The Big Shot can cut through two layers of felt at the same time, maybe more, but I only tried two. That makes the process go even faster. Simply stack the felt on the dies, sandwiched them between the cutting mats and run them through the Big Shot. Super fast, super easy. :o)

Then lay the two flower pieces on top of each other and slightly offset them so that the scallops don't line up with each other.

For this next step, you don't have to use tweezers, but it definitely makes it easier. I like these because they have a nice thin tip. Grab the smallest scallops and begin rolling the flower up.

 Just keep rollin', rollin', just keep rollin'. Sorry, couldn't help myself. :o)

Focus on keeping the flat bottom sections lined up with each other. You don't have to worry about the scallop side, the rose just happens--like magic.

Once you get to the end, simply use hot glue to glue down the two base flaps to the bottom.

Now glue on your leaves and a pin back. It's OK if it looks a little messy, and you want some of the glue to ooze between those little holes. It helps secure the pin to the flower.

 You can use scissors to cut a circle from a scrap of the felt to glue over the pin and hide some of the messy glue and it doubly secures the pin on.

After I made this one, my dear daughter decided she'd like one for her hair...in pink, of course. After making the rose, I used some scrap felt to make a loop.

 I glued the loop to the back of the flower. Now she can slide a clip or barrette or even a hairband through the loop and wear it.

Lovely! I think the flower's pretty nice too. ;o)

Well, what do you think? Super quick, gorgeous project. Love the different possibilities with this die. So what projects have you been working on this winter? Hope you're staying warm.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

A Little Office Makeover

Before I get into the make-over just wanted to remind you about Sale-A-Bration. FREE Goodies!!

http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/tammyjapan/promotions

I thought I'd share a little organizing project I took on this past week. Actually, it was already organized, I just made it a little prettier.

This is what I started with. I bought these little baskets at the Y100 store several years ago when we lived in Japan. I'm sure you can find something similar here as well. I originally liked them because they were clear and it was easy to see what was inside them. I dislike them now because they are clear and you can see what's inside them. :o) Does that make any sense? They are organized, but there's just so much visual clutter. Not to mention the markers in the bottom basket were constantly coming through the holes in the front and back. I thought of putting a piece of paper inside to keep the pens in. Of course, I have this huge stash of pretty paper, so why not do all of the baskets. 

Well, this is better, but now I don't know what's inside the baskets, and since these are all above my head, it would be nice to know without having to pull them all off the shelf to look inside.

A quick trip into my craft supplies and I found these awesome label holders. I like that they go on with brads which would make this easy to change out if needed. I made labels, and then just poked the brads through the holes in the baskets and the paper.

Voila! No more escaping pens!

Much better.

 

This was a super quick project that made a TON of difference in this little corner.  It was also a great way to use some of my retired Stampin' Up! paper and labels. I love this paper, it matches my office walls so well. I may just have to go buy some more since it's still available on the clearance rack at 60% off! I also love that this is temporary and I could easily change out the paper with different seasons or when I decide to change the wall color. 

So, tell me any projects you've done using scrapbook paper that wasn't for a scrapbook. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!