Tattered Florals Challenge

Hello there!  I haven't posted in a long time, but Tim Holtz has a new challenge up on his blog that I couldn't resist participating in!  The details of the Tattered Floral Challenge are posted on Tim's blog at http://timholtz.com/tattered-floral-challenge/.

The gist of it is this:  Use the Tattered Florals die to create something!  Well, this just happens to be my very favorite die of all time and certainly my most used die, so I thought I'd whip something up for the challenge and share another great project that I did with the die last year.

For the challenge, I made a matching diaper cover and headband with removable flowers.  My baby boy is due in TWO DAYS, so I've been in baby crafting mode for the last few months.  I taught myself how to sew and have made some amazing things for my little boy.  This project is NOT for him--haha!--I couldn't think of anything boyish enough to make using the Tatttered Florals die!  I'm going to send it to my niece, Elleny, who is just a month old, for Easter.

I used Katrina's Soaker pattern, available at http://katrinassqs.blogspot.com/2007/10/free-soaker-pattern.html, to make the diaper cover.  The cover that I made is not intended to be used for anything other than cuteness over top of a disposable diaper!  It is not waterproof or particularly absorbent, so it doesn't fall into the cloth diaper category.  I used a soft fleece for the leg and waist bands and a random pink polyester scrap for the cover part. Then I just sewed it up on my sewing machine according to the instructions.  I used the same pink polyester and a piece of elastic to sew up a basic headband.

I used a bunch of pink, white and yellow pieces from my giant basket (okay, multiple giant baskets...) of fabric scraps and the Tattered Florals die and my Sizzix Big Shot to cut a bunch of flowers for decorations.  Then I layered them up and cut a hole through the center using my Crop-a-dile big bite, fed a plastic snap cap through the hole with a stud on the back of the flower and secured it using my snap pliers.  I used KAM snaps, available at http://kamsnaps.com/.  I am crazy about their snaps!  I've been putting them on everything!  Some tips:  If you try this project, make sure that you don't put so many layers of flowers that it gets too thick to properly set the snap.  Also, just forget about trying to use the thin petaled flower on the die on any fabric that has stretch to it.  The petals just pull right off.

Then I laid out the completed flowers around the top of the diaper cover, just below the waistband, and marked where to set the snap sockets and did the same with the headband.  I used my snap pliers to get all the sockets set in place.

And that's it!  Done!  Then I got to play around--putting all the different flowers into each of the different snap positions and see which ones look the cutest.

Here is the completed project:

Diaper Cover & Headband with floral decorations detatched-  very useful for cleaning the cover or customizing the design of the flowers.

Diaper Cover & Headband with floral decorations snapped on!

Now, back to the project from last year that I said I would share. It's pretty similar to this one, but in bulk! One of my very best friends, Rebekah, had her second beautiful daughter last year and we held a little baby shower for her to celebrate.  At the shower, we all made tons and tons of flower hair clips for her girls using flowers that I'd pre-cut out of a ton of different scraps of fabric with the Tattered Florals die and a bunch of small pieces of ribbons.  This was back before my plastic snap discovery, so we used decorative brads to hold the flowers together (once again, using the Crop-a-dile to punch a hole through the center before adding the brad) and then hot glued them onto store bought hair clips.  They can be used alone as hair clips or attached to any baby headband.  This was a great project for a girl baby shower and everyone had a lot of fun creating pretty and exciting flowers with the different combinations of flower sizes from the dies and patterns and colors from the fabric scraps.  There was even a 6 year old at the party who was very enthusiastic about being able to help with this project for her little cousins!

Here are the flower hair clips we created at Rebekah's baby shower!

So that's that!  The Tattered Florals die is my absolute favorite way to make the most of those small fabric scraps that you might otherwise just toss in the trash and convert them into beautiful embellishments for clothing and accessories.

Completed Display & Craft Room Pics

Hello again!  I'm now officially a Creative Chemistry Graduate!  I'm sad that the class is over, but so glad that I was able to participate!  It sure was a fun-filled two weeks.  Now I can get back to a normal (okay, normal for me...) sleep schedule since I won't be waiting up until midnight to start the new lessons.

Tim taught me so many helpful things and beautiful techniques.  Many of the techniques were things that I'd seen before in one form or another, but it was the detail that he went into and the explanations behind why things work the way they do, that I will most take with me in the future.  I feel like I am much more knowledgeable about Ranger products and inks and stamping in general. 

I got my degree in Studio Art just about 3 years ago.  I loved studying art full-time, but I know that I can never go back to that time in my life.  This experience has helped me relive that a little and to realize once again that we NEVER stop learning.  I hope that Tim will teach many more of these types of classes (after he recovers from this one!) because I can't wait to do this again!

Below are pictures of my completed butterfly display & some pictures of my craft room.  I'll do a better tour sometime soon:

All 25 Techniques that we learned in class are represented and labeled in this display, so I'll just be able to look up above my work space and get inspiration!

I added a little hook on the wall to hang my tags so that I can just reach up and grab them whenever I feel like it.  I figured if I put them in a drawer they might get damaged and used less often.

 

Creative Chemistry Day 10!

Tonight we got received our very last technique from Tim Holtz for Creative Chemistry 101.  The lesson was all about adhesives, sealers & dimensionals.  The technique taught us a little bit about Distress Stickles.  I have to admit.  Even though I have about 9 different Distress Stickles colors from a big lot of stuff I bought on eBay, I've never used them before...  or rather...  never known how to use them correctly before.  I tried to use them like regular stickles once and didn't like how it turned out, so I never tried them again.  Now I know...  you need to spread them out in a thin layer and they look beautiful!

Here are my last tag and square:

y) Distress Stickles Technique

This has been such an amazing journey!  I'll be finishing up my butterfly display with all the squares over the weekend (hopefully...  it's Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, so I'm swamped with work this weekend) and will post pictures soon!

Creative Chemistry Day 9

Today we learned about Perfect Pearls. 

I had a LOT of difficulty with my homework, specifically with the Perfect Distress Technique.  I've seen Tim do this technique before and not gotten it right.  For whatever reason, when I mist the water over top of the distress ink and pearls, the pearls just spread out and the distress ink doesn't wick right.  I'm going to have to keep working on it.

That being said, I really love the way all my mists combined.  It's so cool to see the glimmer that you can get with perfect pearls.  Right now I have only the metallic set, but I just ordered two new sets and I can't wait for them to arrive.

I wish that my pictures did a better job of showing off the pearlescence of the tags!  They're really beautiful in person.

v) Perfect Distress Mist, w) Perfect Distress, x) Perfect Splatter Distress

See you tomorrow for the LAST DAY of new lessons from Creative Chemistry 101.  I don't know what I'll do...  I'm going to miss this!

Creative Chemistry Day 8

Well, today is Day 8 of Creative Chemistry.  Only 2 lessons left.  :-(  Our lesson today was about paint.  We learned the properties of Studio Paint, Paint Dabbers & Crackle Paint.  I think this may have been one of my very favorite lessons so far.

Here are my tags & display squares:

s) Dabber Resist, t) Crackle Paint Resist, u) Shattered Stains

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Creative Chemistry Day 7

Welcome to Day 7!  Today we learned a little something about heat embossing.  This was definitely a helpful lesson for me and I was immediately able to identify a few things I've been doing wrong for a long time (flicking the back of tags to get excess powder off, and trying to use UTEE to emboss images).

Here are my tags:

p) Nostalgic Batik, q) Rusted Enamel, r) Distress Powder Resist

 I really had a lot of fun with all of these techniques and was pleased with my color pallet today.   I wish the vibrant colors showed up better in the pictures.  I already ordered 2 new colors of Distress Powder and I can't wait to use them with the last technique.

Hope all my classmates had fun today, too!  See you tomorrow!

Creative Chemistry Day 6

 Creative Chemistry Day 6: Distress Markers.

Today we learned about the newest addition to the Distress Line...  Distress Markers!  As soon as I heard about them from watching the CHA 2012 new releases on paperclipping.com, I knew that I HAD to have them.  I've got a few sets of permanent markers already (no copics, though), but no water based markers.  I also felt like it was a good opportunity to get the entire set without buying all the ink pads (even though I hope to collect all the ink pads eventually).  I ordered my set on Ebay and got them about a month ago.  It seems that they are rather hard to get right now and I got very lucky to get them so quickly.

Here are my creations:

 

m) Watercolor with markers, n) Stamping with Markers, o) Blending with Markers

 Here is my O-ring with all the tags I've created since starting this class!  It's starting to be quite the collection and I'm very excited about it: