WOYWW #152- Shapeabilities Spiral Blossoms

  This is whats on my desk today- actually for the last few days as I have tried to get to grips with the blasted things,lol. For the life of me I could not figure out HOW I was going to get something that looked like a flower out of this:

After much trial and error, mainly error, I might add, someone pointed me to a You Tube vid,which gave me the answer. I had already tried there, but didn’t get a lot from what I could find. I am really surprised that there is nothing on the Spellbinders site as to exactly how you do these. Maybe its just me being dumb? I could find plenty on the usual Die-cut flowers, but not these Spiral ones. Anyway, I found one showing these dies, and discovered that A) you start rolling from the thinnest end( I had tried both), and B) it won’t look anything like a flower till its completely finished!
The dies, by the way, are Spiral Blossom 1 on the right, and Spiral Blossom 3 on the left.


                                                                    So you start rolling them really tightly….   keep rolling….
                     I’m not left handed, by the way, I had the camera in my right hand     ……. 
keeping it tightly rolled till you get to the end…











Now you let the flower go…… and it unfolds a little….Add some glue( I used a hot glue gun) to the large end piece, which is actually the base the flower sits on……..and hold it together for a few seconds.

Your flowers can be adjusted for how tight they are before you press it into the glue.








This is Spiral Blossom 1,( on the left) which is quite Rose-like.I think  Number 3 (the black one) looks more like a Water lily.
You can ink the edges of the petals first, and fold them a little for a pretty effect.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I will say these are VERY dimensional,( about 1”, or 2.5cm high) so you would need to make a presentation box for a card. 
So thats it for me. Pop over to the Amazing Julia Dunnits, at The Stamping Ground, for this weeks Worldwide Workdesk Wander- let us all come see what you’ve been up to.
I don’t know how this post is going to look to everyone, so if its not appearing very well, please let me know in your comments. I’ve been having loads of trouble with Blogger- it just won’t let me add any images to my posts. I’m pretty sure its a Firefox update thats caused it, but for now I am trying Livewriter, from Microsofts Essentials, so it will be interesting to see if this works. I can post in Internet Explorer, but I don’t like having to use that!

A Perfect Day Silhouette

This is a really simple little card, the background is brayered using Latte Adirondack at the bottom, and Sandal at the top. All the images are stamped using Archival Jet Black. The Oak Branch at the top is Stampscapes, from Nature Sheet No 8, u/m. Along the bottom, from the left, are Willow, assorted grasses, Black cat and  Butterfly, all from Inkylicious.  The grasses came from' Create a Collage'-Meadow set & Essential Grasses.  Willow Twigs & Playful Cats  ( also includes the butterfly, two other butterflies and a sitting cat).  After trimming to size, I matted it onto black, then a similar coloured brayered sheet and mounted to the front of a square black base card. The sentiment is a clear stamp from a Penny Black set.

Craft a Scene Silhouettes

The challenge at Craft A Scene this month was Silhouettes, with the images provided by Carolines,who designs her own range of  Rubber Stamps, as well as the digital images she kindly gave us to work with. She has some beautiful images and backgrounds, and speaking as someone who has not worked with digi stamps before, they are really easy to manipulate and combine in whatever Photo/Image editing software you use. I chose to use them to make coasters- after combining backgrounds, frames and images, I printed them out, then simply laminated them to make them a little more durable. You could  cover them in adhesive film if you do not have a laminator, or Xyron do a laminating cartridge if you have a Xyron machine.
 Each coaster is made by choosing a background, then a frame, then I picked an inner background, finally adding various elemnts to create the picture. All the component parts are fully adjustable for size and scale- the only limit is your imagination!

 These are the type of images I worked with, you can see how you can combine them to create whatever scene you like.

Winter Moon Post-it note Holder

 This months challenge was all about Silhouettes, and for my second piece, I used a stamp from Non Sequiteur, from the plate 71c, Winter Solstice.









First I stamped  in Distress Black Soot onto a piece of White Pearlescent card. I then stamped the image onto  a couple of joined together post-it notes, and cut out the moon to use as a mask while I sponged on the colour.I used Sailboat Blue, Stream & Denim, then added some Eggplant round the edges. I also masked off the lower half of the image while I did this, again using post-its.

Now I switched over the post-its, and sponged the bottom of the image with Sunshine Yellow, Sunset Orange, Butterscotch and Rust.

This is the finished image with all the post-its removed. Using a white pearl card as a base gives the Moon a nice sheen.

Trimmed down to size, and ready for mounting,which I did onto dark blue card.I cut a base card to the same size as the mounted image, and folded it Easel style.On the bottom I added a strip of the dark blue card that I ran through my 'bug in a Lattice folder, then mounted a pad of Post-it notes with DST.

A really useful and quick to make pressie for someones desk, and you could swap the stamped image for a photo- or a little frame so the photo could be changed.

WOYWW # 149, Paper Flowers

Back at the Weekly Workdesk Wander, courtesy of our most excellent hostess, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground. 
   These were the Tim Dies I bought recently, having admired what people were doing with them. So I've spent a few days cutting out loads of flowers in different papers.

I've have been putting some together for a couple of Wedding cards in Black and White that I have to make.I used black and white pearlescent paper, along with some glittered vellum for a bit of sparkle.


Here I've layered them all up, and also added some seed beads in Black or White to the centres. So that's my desk this week.

                   Roof Update:
 We now have a roof over our bedroom, lol, just in time for the glorious (!) Bank Holiday weather we had,and we have someone coming into plaster the room next weekend. The kitchen roof is coming off now, as well as taking down the chimney stack at the end of the kitchen. We have an old Victorian house with the galley- style kitchen:

According to the guy you can see taking it down, the only thing keeping it there was gravity!!!
 Hope you all had a lovely Easter, and have a great Wednesday.