Three 3D projects using the Boho Indigo Product Medley Refill Kit

I’m back with some more Boho Indigo projects. Did you know, the Boho Indigo Product Medley was the top-selling kit in the UK last week? And the Boho Indigo Product Medley Refill took the second slot! That’s no April Fool and neither is the fact that these amazing kits are only available while supplies last!

I am not surprised they are so popular as they are absolutely beautiful and I can only hope they have not sold out by the time you read this.

As part of our Zoom class on Saturday, we made several cards which you can see here and some 3D projects.

 

We began with the covered wooden heart ornament, which would make a lovely home décor item or gift tag. How about using it as a bottle tag?

It’s pretty simple; you just draw around the heart on the back of your chosen Designer Series Paper, cut it out with scissors, apply adhesive all over and stick to the heart. Trim off any excess paper with scissors then sand/file the edges so the paper sits smoothly and neatly.

We decorated it with paper flowers, using three different methods to create them. 

 

One is simply cut from the Designer Series Paper three times then layered up, offsetting each layer slightly to create the appearance of more petals. 

The second is punched using the Small Bloom Punch, which is currently reduced to £7.20 and only available while supplies last. We punched three flowers from Very Vanilla, then a fourth from Misty Moonlight. This blue one was snipped using scissors to create a fringe effect and scrunched up before adding it to the stack. Once they are stuck together you can snip the ends of the blue petals a little more if they appear too large, then top off with a Basic Rhinestone or other embellishment. 

 

The third flower is create from a roll of Designer Series Paper. These can be made from a square of any size, but we found about 6.5cm (just bigger than 2.5in) was about right. 

 

1. From the square of Designer Series Paper, cut a spiral leaving a disc at the centre about the size of a 5p coin.

2. Freehand cut a wavy line close to the outside edge until you get to the centre. Discard the smaller, narrower piece.

3. Starting from the pointy end, roll the paper to create your flower, using the centre disc as the base. Seal with wet glue or a hot glue gun. If using wet clue, you do have to sit and hold it for quite a while but I still find that easier than hot glue for such a small item. 

We made a few flowers at this point and held one back for this lovely Acetate box to hold our cards. These C6 Acetate Card Boxes are carrying over to the new Annual Catalogue, I'm delighted to say.

The box is decorated using two strips of embossed cardstock, joined together to make one long enough to go round the width of the acetate box. There is one join at the back and the other is at the front, but covered by the tall leaf and other embellishments.

 

The third 3D project is this really simple pouch which again can be made from any size square. It’s really easy to make and Dawn Olchefske has an excellent picture tutorial here.

In my class everyone received half of a refill kit and were impressed at just how much there was in it. A full refill kit, or the full medley, will enable you make dozens of beautiful projects.

I honestly cannot recommend these products highly enough. I don’t usually do the “hard sell” because I personally find it off-putting and also appreciate that everyone has different tastes, but these are truly beautiful products and right now the The Boho Indigo Product Medley is reduced to £39, making it a fabulous bargain. For this price you receive stamps, dies, ribbons, papers, label/image sheets and embellishments. 

 

For just the consumable items, The Boho Indigo Product Medley Refill Kit remains at its original price of £21. This is still excellent value for just the papers, label/image sheets and embellishments... but when you can get the stamps and dies for an extra £18, I know I wouldn't be able to resist.

If you are in the UK and would like to order this fabulous product medley, refill kit or indeed anything else, please visit my store and, if you use the April host code TRPKSXWR, I’ll send you a thank you gift in May!

To make it easy for you, please shop using this link

Does your wish list come to more than £99? Please get in touch and I will help you get more for your money and unlock discounts all year round.  

 

Please message me via my website 

 

Winter Woods sparkling bauble

Here’s another project created at Friday’s Hygge Night. This is a sparkly black and white bauble stamped with Winter Woods. Actually, you stamp onto tissue paper first and then apply it ... full details will be in a tutorial posting on Facebook later this evening.

Meanwhile, you can see all three projects in this video. Enjoy!

Sprig Punch wreath ornament

Friday night was my monthly Hygge Night, where we made three Christmas ornaments... all very different. This was my take on the Sprig Punch wreath which you can see in the Autumn/Winter catalogue.  Mine isn't as scrunched up because I chickened out!

The whole thing is spritzed with a mix of isopropyl alcohol and Champagne Mist Shimmer paint - you can mix it with water, but it tends to clump, and also doesn't dry so quickly so can warp your cardstock.

Read the tutorial here

Winter Woods log slice ornament

I can’t stop using the Winter Woods stamp set but was trying to find something completely different for the Crafty Friday ladies this month.

Eventually I returned to that old favourite, the log slice ornament, which proved so popular last year.  We stamped our pine trees, and stamped off for a paler image, in Mossy Meadow, directly onto the slices of wood (eBay, since you ask).

It’s decorated with a Merry Merlot greeting, on a strip of copper foil, and embellished with some stamped pine cones and sprigs, along with die-cut snowflakes and some copper rhinestones.

Yes, I said copper rhinestones.

“But...”

Yes I know we don’t sell copper rhinestones. But you can make them REALLY easily simply by colouring in our normal rhinestones with a Calypso Coral Stampin’ Blend. Magic, eh?

Oh and finally... much, much later for some of the ladies, we added some embossing paste to create snowy branches. This has to be done later as if the ink isn’t fully dry, it is absorbed into the paste, creating a muddy mess of yellow snow. And there ain’t nobody who likes yellow snow.  An alternative is to seal the ink before applying the paste. That worked, too.

Deck the Halls with this tiny woodland dome

What do you think of this? Something a bit different?

This is an early prototype of one of the projects from my upcoming Deck the Halls event, where we will make festive decorations to adorn our Christmas trees. There’s a bit of work required to make this a little easier to create, but we’ll get there.

Sneak Peek: Tropical Thinlits mini house plants tutorial

Time for another Sneak Peek! This was one of the projects I made for my display at OnStage Telford at the beginning of the month and it was probably the one I was most proud of... mainly because it’s so far out of my comfort zone.

I was sent a pack of Tropical Thinlits – some fabulous new tropical leaf dies from the upcoming catalogue. However, I was not sent the co-ordinating stamps (not complaining, I received LOADS of products!) so was left wondering about how to use them. It’s actually interesting trying to work without the catalogue as you have NO pre-conceived ideas about using the set and I got it into my head that they were intended to make a 3D plant. Now of course I have the catalogue... and it features precisely zero 3D projects made with these dies!

I was confused by a die that I haven’t used here, but it turned out that it works with a flower stamp which I fully intend to order when I can!

Anyway, lots of people were asking how I made these, so here’s how. Sorry there are no images but seriously I can NEVER make these again!

1. Die-cut LOADS of leaves in various shades of green cardstock

2. Sponge those leaves in same or slightly darker ink

3. Curl using bone folder

4. Cut very narrow strips (5mm, ish) of green cardstock for stems, then break down the fibres using a bone folder. Eventually, the cardstock will split into two layers which can be separated. This makes it thinner and easier to work with.

5. Wrap these thin layers of cardstock around some florists’ wire, spiral-fashion, and secure with Tombow or similar wet glue. I think I actually applied PVA with a paintbrush. Allow to dry then assemble the leaves.

Make the boxes. These are simple 5cm square boxes, at different heights. If you cut and score first, then emboss, you can line up one of the edges to the edge of the embossing folder so you can get it all done. Does that make sense?

There’s a narrow strip of cardstock around the top edge of each planter, and the edges are all sponged in Crumb Cake.

Ok, the science bit... getting the plants to stand up in the planters.

1. Make a platform the same size as the box (ie with a 5cm square top) but about 1cm smaller in height. This will look like a simple drawing of a stool or table. So that would be a piece of cardstock measuring about 5cm x 13cm, scored at 4cm from either end.

2. Punch holes in the top of the platform - ie the centre square, then poke the leaves through, taping underneath. From the side it might look like this...

3. Don’t worry about arranging the leaves just yet as they’ll only move. 

4. When all the leaves are taped in, you can apply glue to the sides of the platform and then slide it into the box.

5. Next I took some Early Espresso cardstock, which I tore into small pieces and rolled into tiny balls. This was very, very boring to do but was really worth it as everyone was asking about them because they did look like soil. 

6. I applied a thick layer of Tombow onto the top of the platform, in between the leaf stems, and filled it with the balls of cardstock. 

Finally, it’s time to arrange the leaves to look nice. A lot of effort but was it worth it? I think so, yes. Would I do it again? Definitely not!

Handmade Christmas tree decorations

No Mix It Up Monday this week as I've been too busy to craft this weekend. Friday was spent decking the halls so that the house would be nice and festive in time for my first Hygge Night of the season, where we made the log slice ornaments shown in this post.


So today I’m sharing some of the pictures of my woodland-themed Christmas tree, which I decorated with some existing ornaments, some new ones and lots of hand-made decorations, many using Stampin’ Up!® products, old and new.

These are little leaves cut from air-drying clay, embossed with copper embossing powder and strung onto some baker's twine.

Non-SU bark reindeer with a little bell from last year’s Autumn/Winter catalogue and some more baker's twine.

Non-SU bark trees embellished with sequins, and a small log slice stamped with the Hearts Come Home stamp set. I painted the snow with acrylic paint - I could have used Craft Whisper White ink but I wanted it to dry this side of Christmas!

All topped off with the bird rosette I showed you the other day. 

As much as I love my woodland tree, I don’t really buy into the co-ordinated Christmas tree look and this is a little bit too “tasteful” for my liking, so rest assured I have another tree in the living room, with decorations of all colours, ages and designs - the more the merrier.

As for Hygge Night, you can see highlights from the evening in this video, which I posted to Facebook over the weekend. These Hygge Night decorations went on the tree after the above photos were taken, as I needed them as samples for the evening. 

Merry Music rosette Christmas tree ornament

I spent Saturday really getting into the Christmas spirit, crafting with some of my stamping friends... all but one of whom I met through Stampin’ Up!®. Our brief was to bring a simple project for everyone to make so, to speed things up, I did a lot of prep for this Christmas tree ornament before I went. 

For instance, at home I used some rubbing alcohol with several drops of Crumb Cake reinker in it to spray the Merry Music Designer Series Paper and give it a softer, “aged look. I did the same to the silver glimmer paper, to tone it down a little. 

I also die-cut all the pieces, including the birds... well, I confess I opened my Best Birds stamp set and discovered a pile of stamped and die-cut birds in there. I knew they’d come in handy eventually!  

If you didn’t want to hang this on your Christmas tree, you could use it as a gift tag on a special present.

Link to diagram (in German) and instructions (in English)

Please note the instructions are in centimetres but they do not convert to inches.

If you need instructions in inches, I suggest you search “Stampin’ Up! rosette tutorial” and work from there. 

Pretty Pines candle holder

This was my last-minute Christmas make – a couple of candle holders from recycled coffee jars. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to use the frosted berries I had leftover from last year’s wreath project and I didn’t have quite as much fake snow as I thought I had... which made it tricky to insert the lighted candle. But they did look very festive on our Christmas table...

Festive llama banner

You know when you have a million and one things to do and should be crossing something off your list not adding to it? Isn’t this always the moment you have an “amazing” idea that you simply must carry out? That’s what happened this week.

Inspired by a beautiful pop-up llama/alpaca Christmas card, I just had to make a festive llama banner to send back in return.

And this is the result. A string of behatted llamas with some festive bling in between. I wanted to make pompoms but didn’ t have the time or resources, so compromised with some punched shapes instead.

The llamas are backed with a plain die-cut to sandwich the Baker’s Twine, and the stamped circles are backed with another one the same, just in case they flip around. The pompoms on the hats are carefully trimmed from the Whisper White pompom trim. Some of them are a bit ropey but needs must!

Ok, I’m off to hand it over, reluctantly... (wish I’d made two!)

Chicken picture with Sweet Dreams DSP

We certainly tried lots of different projects on our homemade crafty retreat. This had us all way out of our comfort zones as we had to hand-draw and hand-cut the elements to make three chickens. Even now, as I look at it, the beaks get on my nerves. I might buy another canvas (it’s A4 and was only 99p from Home Bargains) and have another go.

Still, check out the supplies list... minimal, eh?

137782

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com

Mixed Media Project Life pansy plaque

This is a product-heavy creation, but I really enjoyed creating it, sitting in my own little world, stamping away. The beauty of mixed media projects like this is that it’s very difficult to go wrong. If you do something you don’t like, you just cover it up with something else!

Here’s how I created this project:

1. The MDF plaque had been painted with Annie Sloan chalk paint - you can just see glimpses of this through the yellow at the top.
2. If I remember correctly, I may have painted some white acrylic over the top and then, while it was still wet, painted it with reinkers. I found that the water lifted the white paint off in certain places, so went with the flow and allowed this to become part of the project.
3. Once the background was fully dry, I stamped over it with Cherry Cobbler ink using bubble wrap as my stamp. I love this effect.
4. Next I stamped in black with various Project Life stamp sets. I chose happy words, like “Saturday” and “summer”, as well as elements such as brackets, dots and arrows.
5. On top of this, I stencilled with homemade texture paste through the chevron stencil from the Build a Banner Kit. I deliberately kept this rough and ready.
6. I stamped the stems and leaves with the Build a Bouquet stamp set in Garden Green.
7. I created the petals with the Pansy Punch, cutting each out one individually and piecing them together on the plaque. Same for the smaller flower, but using the Petite Petals punch.
8. The centre of the flower was cut out from one I’d previously stamped onto Typeset DSP, and topped with a rhinestone.
9. Finally, I gave the whole lot a coat of Mod Podge to seal it all in. This is completely optional.

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com