How to make a rosette from small ribbon pieces

I groan if I see Christmas products at the shops before November and here I am in sunny September making Christmas cards! But I have to be one skip and a jump ahead of you all. Apparently now is a good time to start planning! So without further ado, here are 3 cards I made from one technique and that is rosette making! 

By the way, you can adapt this to suit a non-Christmas theme. No doubt you guessed that already. Maybe I'll even make a dent in my ribbon stash!!!

Rosettes are pretty easy to make! You need a cardboard circle from a cereal box (about 3.5cm diameter and it can be wonky) and mark out the quarters and eighths.

 Fold 1m of ribbon in half, then in half again, then again and again (4 times) so you have 16 pieces, all the same length. Cut them. They should be around 6.5cm long.

Fold each one in half and glue the ends together. I used Helmar 450 glue, you can do it with a heat gun, if you prefer.

Start at the top mark of your circle and glue on one ribbon loop at the time. The loops point outward and the glued-together ends sit on the centre spot. 4 ribbon loops in each quarter. 

Continue all the way around and tuck the last one under the first one.

Now it's time to embellish! Gather your bits and pieces and get creative. I have added a list with links to the things I used.

 As you can see, there are many ways to decorate the centres of your rosettes. I really like the filigrees to decorate as they look very vintage.  

  

This border filigree is especially nice tugged under. I have cut mine in half (a big pair of scissors work just fine).

  

And here is the finished card:

What I used for this card:

- square card in white

- December Documented paper in black by Simple Stories

- Bingo card by Simple Stories

- metal filigree border

- 1m satin ribbon with gold presents

- round filigree

- white paper flower

- microbeads (find lots of colours here)

- golden flower from a flower chain

- 2 silver stars

If the antique golden colour of the filigrees doesn't suit your project, you can rub Inka Gold over them. Inka Gold is available in many colours here, under mediums (pg 4-6). No, it's not always golden! It not only changes the filigree's colour, but keeps the classy shine and even adds some depth to the design. 

Here is what it looks like with Platinum Inka Gold:

 What I used for this card:

- square card in white

- December documented paper in blue by Simple Stories (with some light stamping around the edges)

- Bingo card by Simple Stories

- metal filigree border coloured silver with Inka Gold in Platinum

- 1m satin ribbon with silver stars

- round filigree

- blue bow

- blue aluminium flower

- holly charm

And if you're feeling lazy and just want to put something ready-made into the middle, use the I ♥ family embellishments (available in lots of colours and themes in the Charming Words section here)

 What I used for this card:

- square card in white (stamped lightly around the edges)

- 2 Bingo cards by Simple Stories

- metal filigree border coloured silver with Inka Gold in Platinum

- 1m satin ribbon with red presents

- I ♥ family embellishment

- letter stickers

So, even though it's a bit early, maybe I have given you some inspiration for your Christmas cards this year!

14- something for the boys

My Joel is 14 and here is a layout to celebrate. 

Because it's school holidays next week we're doing a nice and quick page in class. 

(The heart & circles border was inspired by a layout by Jess Mutty I saw on Pinterest)

You can adapt it to any theme, just pick the right papers. I used "Take Note" papers by Kaisercraft:

Noteworthy

Memo and 

Memento

Frills for a boy's page?! I say why not!

So I've decided to scrap dangerously. See if there's an outcry from my teenage son when he spies the frills on a layout with his photo on it. 

 It all depends on the kind of frills, I guess. They are made out of cupcake cups (inspired by this post, but they used coffee filters instead). I painted mine quite muted and didn't ruffle them too much and so far I've gotten no complaints from Joel. Maybe putting frills on a boy's layout is not as revolutionary as I'd thought. 

 We'll make this page in class next week. If then men in your life hate frills more than my son does, just use a girl's photo. Needless to say, you choose your colours. Apart from the frills there are a few other fun details:

1. Of course, the cool type writer stamp. There are quite a few different sayings you can stamp on the paper.

 2. We'll make the background from a plain piece of cardstock. There's inking, stamping, masking, you name it!

3. I'll show you how you can die cut and emboss a circle in one go! This is super handy to know for creating tags and cards.

4. Some ribbon threading using the Sew Ribbon tool.

As you can see, there are lots of mini techniques on this page, which should keep us busy and out of trouble for a while. I really hope you can come along and have a go at them!

If you have never been to one of my classes, here are a few points:

♥ Beginners are always welcome. Nothing I teach is beyond you.

♥ You bring your own papers and control your material cost. In general you'll only need basic materials for a class. Papers, ribbon, brads...that sort of thing. I don't sell anything apart from cardstock, but I'm happy to give advise where to buy cheapest or do a combined order when I see a great deal.

♥ Feel free to change things or skip steps. It's your layout and I want you to like it.

♥ Almost any project can be made to suit boys too.

♥ Class projects are normally not very busy or full of embellishments. That is because we create most of them from scratch or do a certain technique. If you like to add more embellishments, feel free to bring them along.

♥ Older children are welcome with a parent.

♥ Classes are fun and there is lots of chatting, a cuppa and laughs. Come along if you're tired of scrapping alone!

♥ Find more class info in the top right corner of this blog and leave a comment if you'd like to come!

A perfectly imperfect photo

Who says you can only scrap perfect photos? I love this photo, even though most of the people are cut off! 

 This layout is inspired by a technique project in Scrapbooking Memories by Janice Nicholls (volume 15 No 11, pg 65). Her layout is simply divine and she agreed to let me base my class on it. 

 As it happens, in the end mine looked quite different from hers, apart from the crackled hearts: 

Moments

There are those special moments in life that need to be celebrated. This one is a romantic moment from my dear friend's wedding.

 Come along to class next week and create a beautiful layout, complete with a "Moments" seal, made from scrap. 

 We will also make the background from a simple patterned piece of paper (click here to see the original paper) and use Twinkling H2Os in a new way to create these flowers. They are pretty and shiny.

Happy boys

I just love the new grungy embellishments at my2angels. 

Let me show you how easy it is to make a simple boy's layout look great.

Use a 5x7" photo and cut a 5x12" mat from patterned paper. Add some punched strips and both sides and adhere to the background.on the mat. Glue the photo on. Tuck some printed acetate under (or stamp some grungy designs) in the top left and near the bottom right corner.

Choose one of the Grunge Charming Dates (there are 5 to choose from and they all look awesome) and glue it in the top left corner. Add the date. 

Cut and fold a star shaped rosette (I used a die for that) and glue a Grunge Love You to Infinity Key in the middle. The hard work is all done for you - there are little cogs, hearts and a key and other small bits and pieces!

Glue the chain with the "Love you to infinity" in place. 

Now, all you have left to do is a title (I used ready-made chipboard flags strung on some baker's twine) and you are already done!

Super quick scrapping at it's best.

Cheer

Hi everyone, it's Geli. I'm back! 

My Hannah is passionate about cheerleading and her team won the latest competition. I'm so proud of her! Here is a layout to celebrate her latest victory:

Do you hoard pretty paper? I do. This one (by Heidi Swapp) has been in my stash way too long. There were a few pink bits, which I painted white with gesso, cause they wouldn't match the black and yellow colour scheme. The shield shape was outlined with a black rhinestone chain. That was easy, I just glued it down 10cm at the time. Still, the paper looked a bit bland, so the middle got a bit of a black wash. (simply outline the position of the photo and go crazy with paint and water):

It didn't look that great at this point, but once the photo went on top and one side of a black felt frame was attached, things were starting to look pretty cool. 

Have you seen the new framed sentiments? I wanted to write on the banner and while digging through my letter stickers I discovered some old rub-ons from prehistory. I managed to almost find enough letters for "cheer", but had to fake the "h" with a "q". 

At this point I realised that I could either give the archeologist of 3013 something to dig up or use those letters up! (I have other cool ideas for grave goods to puzzle future generations) In other words, using them to frame the photo seemed like a good way to put them to use.

This pretty yellow frame comes with a pin too and there are lots of colours! Find them all here.

Have you taken adventage of the 5c sale at my2angels yet? Spend $5 and get something like this black felt ribbon for 5c! 

I cut some stars off and painted the inside with Ferro metal effect textured paint. This stuff is really cool, it has a gritty texture but keeps its metallic shine.

Then I added a crown charm (after all, they won!)...

...a cheerleader charm...

...and a yellow star flower 

The cheerleader's pom poms and the star flower are also painted with the same metal effect paint. Pretty cool that it sticks to metal!

Hannah loves her page and I hope I have given you some inspiration!

3 sisters and how to match colours

My sisters and I had some professional photos taken. We had none of the three of us since.... hm, forever.

Matching coloured papers to this one was amazingly difficult. If I picked the blues and purple tones from the photo, we looked like Smurfs and if I went with the brown and olive tones of the meadow we looked washed out. So instead I took a contrasting background colour (choc brown) and picked papers with a similar hue and saturation. Like the colours in the photo, these are bright colors, but not primaries. Then I offset it with skyblue to brighten it all up. Note that none of the papers match an exact colour in the photo, but rather compliment them and bring them out. 

Don't be afraid to pick colours to suit the "mood" in your photo, rather than the colours!

Add a bunch of butterflies and a few small scatterings of embellies and you're done!

♥♥♥

Cheers, Geli

Flower Vintage

In next week's class we'll dig out the good ol' embossing folder and create this middle panel using a fun new technique we haven't done before. You choose your own colour combo, of course.

We're painting with Twinkling H2Os and if you haven't used them before, you'll see how easy it is. You might have seen me demonstrate them at the expo. 

They have a real shine and lustre to them that can't be captured in a photo. This one is my best attempt: 

 There is a lovely rosette as well and no, you don't have to hand cut it! I'll throw one in for free. Yeah. If you're not at class you'll have to get your own, they are available from the lovely Art Stamps Australia.

I won the title of Design Diva! It's the design team of the Australian magazine Scrapbook Creations. I'm absolutely thrilled about that!

Here are the other super-talented ladies who are on the Design Diva team with me:

Michelle Logan at ML Design

Jasmine Shea at Jasmine's Scrapvine

Amanda Reddicliffe at The Embellished Blog

Kayla MacAulay  at Kayla Renee

and Angella Peardon at 4ft9inch creator

Hooray - a birthday layout

If you have never been to one of my classes, here are a few points:

♥ Beginners are always welcome. Nothing I teach is beyond you.

♥ You bring your own papers and control your material cost. In general you'll only need basic materials for a class. Papers, ribbon, brads...that sort of thing. I don't sell anything apart from cardstock, but I'm happy to give advise where to buy cheapest or do a combined order when I see a great deal.

♥ Feel free to change things or skip steps. It's your layout and I want you to like it.

♥ Almost any project can be made to suit boys too.

♥ Class projects are normally not very busy or full of embellishments. That is because we create most of them from scratch or do a certain technique. If you like to add more embellishments, feel free to bring them along.

♥ Older children are welcome with a parent.

♥ Classes are fun and there is lots of chatting, a cuppa and laughs. Come along if you're tired of scrapping alone!

♥ Find more class info in the top right corner of this blog and leave a comment if you'd like to come!

Everyone has birthday photos and next week will be your chance to scrap them in class! We are making the big rosette from scraps and create a shiny dragon fly. It's really pretty, all rainbow colours.

Here it is a bit bigger:

Poppy field

I can't think of anything more beautiful than a sunny wheat field with poppies and a medieval castle in the background. I just had to scrap that for class next week. 

 I hoard too many paper flowers, here's a good excuse to use a whole heap of them! 

And we'll use these sweet dies I bought at the Papercraft Hub:

Castle Eltz - scrap many photos on one double layout!

Hi everone, 

I am back from my trip to Germany and I'll be scrapping lots of travel photos in the weeks to come. 

Surely we all have been guilty of pressing that shutter button a few too many times and ending up with oodles of photos from just one occasion. So, what do you do with so many photos? Scrap them as minis of course. In next week's class we'll do just that. Include as many or as few minis as you want and create a double layout that will capture all your memories without filling an entire album. 

♥♥♥

I have a few new dies that help us create some different rosettes:

And if you didn't visit a medieval castle? Guess what- this will suit any occasion. 

  

             Cheers, Geli

             ♣♣♣