Southern Creations: October 2011

We llamas are celebrating the holidays with a fun Holiday Blog Hop! I'm sure by now you have gotten several fabulous ideas. Did you enjoy what Martha showcased? These gals are amazing, aren't they?!

My projects for this hop are 2 luminaries using the Fancy Favor die, a Christmas card and a Christmas tree. Yes, a tree. ;) The luminaries are pretty simple, cut your Fancy Favor using your preferred cardstock. Choose any punch that fits the front of the favor. I used the 1 3/4" Scallop Circle punch and the Decorative Label punch. Yes, I know, you can not tell I used the scallop circle. I punched the hole before I knew what I wanted to do to decorate the front. I covered the punched opening with a piece of our paper vellum. Be sure you cut the vellum a tad bigger than your opening so you have room for adhesive. I punched the wreath from Warmest Wishes twice. I inked over the image very lightly with Soft Suede using a sponge. I then cut both wreaths out. The bottom wreath is cut apart to spread the leaves out more. I glued that over the scallop circle whole. I used just the "Be Thankful" phrase from the turkey stamp in the Gift Givers set. I cut that like a banner and glued it to the top.

The Christmas tree luminary is stamped using Holiday Happiness. I stamped the tree using Staz On since I was stamping on vellum. I stamped after I glued the vellum on and before I folded the Fancy Favor. I cut out the ornaments and attached them to the tree using our Tombow Multipurpose Liquid Glue. LOVE that stuff!
I found battery operated LED flameless tea lights at Sam's Club. They were in a pack of 24 for around $12. What a great price!

Now the tree. You've probably seen this done before. I just wanted to do one featuring SU's gorgeous printed papers! This beauty took me a few days. My muse seemed to keep wandering off. I started with a styrofoam tree. I cut Paisley Petals Designer Series Paper (DSP) into 1 1/2" strips. I ended up using 1 1/2 sheets of 12x12 paper. I inked the edges of each strip, front and back. I then cut each piece about every 1/4" to make fringe. Next, I curled the edges up over a chopstick. Yes, a chopstick. A marker was way too big, a pencil a tad to big but the chopstick was just right. Next was the tedious part. I hot glued each strip to the tree. You have to manipulate the paper to get it to go around the tree. It takes a bit of patience. Yes, I did burn my fingers a few times. That's what I get for only having a high temp hot glue gun around. I know I have a low temp somewhere. For some reason, it didn't get packed with my craft goodies. That's another reason to finish unpacking after our big move. lol I'm not one for exact measurements. I just kept gluing the strips around the tree. I put the next layer on top of the previous one wherever it looked good. Once I got to the top, I covered the top of the tree with a square of paper. I slit the edges so they would glue down flat. (I might do another blog post with step by step instructions for this tree later.) The topper is made with 15 scallop circles. Punch them out, fold them in half, glue together but only at the top half of each circle. I stretched that over the top of the cone and glued it down with hot glue. I then decorated the entire tree with glitter glue. Did you know you can make your own colored Dazzling Details? If you are a llama follower than you knew this already! Our gals showed previously how to use reinkers to add color to your DD.