H2H Challenge: Home Decor

Hello! Today I'm happy to share my project from the H2H Challenge Blog which is Home Decor this week. I've been looking forward to making a topiary with our new Textiles, and this challenge was the perfect fit for it. Here is how it turned out:

 Isn't that fun?! Plus it's pretty easy to make. I used a 3" round smooth foam ball, a wooden skewer, and a small ceramic pot from Michael's. But the star of the show has to be the awesome Chantilly Textiles, I love them! They are very light and easy to cut and use for all your paper crafts and projects.

I cut out yellow squares approximately 1" and pink squares about 1 1/2" out of the textiles. You'll need a lot of these, but I just cut more as I went on until the ball was completely covered. I used my Inscriblio tool to push the square into the foam since it has a small ball at the tip and didn't push all the way through the fabric.

You could also use an embossing stylus, but I couldn't find mine (lol)! Simply place a square onto the foam ball, and push it into the foam with your stylus!

Continue doing this and space out the larger pink squares into flower clusters and then fill in the space around them with the smaller yellow squares.

Add the wooden skewer to serve as the stem, and wrap a strip of the green fabric around it by using strong double sided tape at the top and the bottom. Tie a strip of the green fabric into a bow on the stem to make the "leaves".

Add foam to the bottom of the pot, and stick the stem into this for stability. Add some candy hearts to make it festive! The final touches include this fun little butterfly at the top.

Now we'll get to use our Cricut by cutting out the butterfly from page 58 of the Artiste booklet. I used the light pink paper from the beautiful new Chantilly Paper Packet and cut it out at 1 1/2".  I got some of my pink craft wire, and cut a piece and twisted it together from the middle but left the ends separated to make the antennae.

On the back side, I used a strong double sided tape to attach the wire which will also be used to attach it to the foam ball.

I embellished the front of the butterfly with some Bitty Pearls. Cute, huh?

The last step is to cut Valentine from page 72 of the Artiste booklet at 1 1/4" and adhere it to the front of the pot. For this, I used the dark pink paper from the same Chantilly Paper Packet.

Once Valentine's Day is over, I can easily remove the candy and Valentine sentiment and replace it with some mini eggs and attach "Spring" or "Happy Easter" to the front! So versatile, and easy, what do you think?

I hope you enjoyed my project and that you're inspired to play along with the H2H Home Decor Challenge! You can shop HERE if you want some of these awesome new textiles to play with.

Happy Crafting!

Fabric Flower Love Card

Hello, I hope you are getting crafty and enjoying your 3-day weekend! It's Rachel here again with a sneak peek at an awesome new product from the brand new CTMH Spring/Summer 2013 Idea Book!

Is that a FABRIC flower you see? YES! That's right, CTMH will debut an awesome new line of textiles that match two of the brand new paper packs: Chantilly and For Always.

For this project, I used the new For Always paper packet and textiles.

I scraplifted the design of this card from the new How-To book, Make It from Your Heart. (For only $7.95, it is a great value and its full of ideas, patterns and cutting instructions!)

Here are the pieces I used to put the card together using page 68 from the CTMH Art Philosophy cartridge:

The base card is White Daisy 4 1/4" x 5 1/2". (The Value Pack is a great deal for 50 cards and envies!) The front of the card is layered with a black mat (4 1/4" x 5 1/2"), red mat (4" x 5 1/4"), and white daisy mat (3 3/4" x 5"). The For Always B&T paper (3 1/2" x 2 1/2") is layered over a black mat (3 3/4" x 2 3/4").

The banner is made by cutting the black mat base at 3 3/4", then layer the white mat and red layer which are both cut at 3 1/2".  The stamp is from the upcoming February Stamp of The Month: Home Sweet Home. I stamped "Love" with Ruby Pigment ink, and then heat embossed with Clear powder to give it some shine (hard to see it in this pic, though)!

I'm entering this card into the Color My Heart: Color Dare #26, which is Black and White with a "pop" of one other color. In this case, it's Ruby!

The banner is applied with 3-D Foam Tape for some extra dimension. This tape works great, I love it!

I also added a fun and easy to make no-sew fabric flower. I cut out 4 fabric and black tulle circles at 1 1/2" each. Layer one piece of fabric with one piece of tulle and fold in half then fold in half again to form a triangle shape. Then place two of the triangles together over one half of a 1" circle and staple (I used the Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher).

Repeat with the other two pieces on the second half of the circle.

Add liquid glass to the middle to make sure it stays put, plus it will hold any piece you want to use for the center of the flower. In this case, I used a couple of the new products, a clear acrylic flower and a pink glitter gem (make sure to look for these in the new Spring/Summer 2013 Idea Book)! I inked the edges of the fabric flower with some ruby ink using a sponge dauber, then added it to my card with more 3-D Foam tape.

It really is easy to make these....I had to make 13 of them for a team swap!

Please let me know if my project has inspired you in any way, I'd love to hear from you!!

Happy Crafting!