Saturday Step by Step

Hello there. It’s Rebecca and it’s my turn for a Saturday Step X Step at Frilly and Funkie. Since I haven’t shown you how I made my cracker from this post, I thought you might like to take a look just in case you want to include these in some of your holiday plans. Before we get to the ‘how’ I want to share some other designs I’ve played around with…

This one is made from some metallic gold wrapping paper and the ‘Festive Greenery’ die from Alterations. The dots of glossy accents added over the card stock berries haven’t finished drying..but you get the idea…

This one is made from some burlap printed wrapping paper! I used some white paper lace doily, a strip of jute ribbon, a card stock pine cone and fir sprig that were die cut from the ‘Tattered Pinecone’ Alterations die and treated to some faux snow made with Wendy Vecchi’s Embossing Paste. There are three small, rusted jingle bells tied on with linen thread, just for fun…

This cracker has a very different ‘feel’ to it. The wrapping paper has hollographic stars on it and the embellishment is a ‘Snowflake Rosette’ made with another Alterations die. The rosette is topped with a metal filagree snowflake that was heat embossed with holographic embossing powder and topped with a colored rhinestone. Now for the ‘how’. Once you make one, the process becomes clear…

Begin with a piece of paper that is 12″ wide and 6″ high. Score the paper at 2-1/4″, 2-3/4″ and 3-1/4″ from each end. Fold the 3 score lines so that they look like this...

The diagram is shown with the ‘right’ side up. In other words, think of the side with measurements as the right side of your cracker…

Now fold the edge so that the middle score line is the only fold and the ‘right sides of the end of the cracker are facing each other. This will allow you to cut a series of V shapes across the entire length. Make certain that you leave small, uncut points. It is these small points of attachment that will break apart when someone pulls the ends apart. Cut the other end the same way...

This is what you should have now. Along the bottom (or top) edge, apply double sided tape as shown. It isn’t necessary to continue the tape over the cut areas. Leave the protective strip in place for now…

Now turn your cracker over so the wrong side is facing you. If you want your crackers to make an authentic ‘Snap’, then you will need to order some. I googled ‘Christmas Snaps’ and found a US company that shipped quickly and cheaply. Now, it is time to attach ONE end only of the snap, recessed just a bit from the edge. I used a small glue dot, pressing it firmly in place. It is important that the center of the snap not be attached. The unattached end will be secured later…

Now it’s time to decorate. I either punched a design at each end or in the case of the ‘faux burlap’ cracker, I used a pair of decorative scissors to scallop the ends. For this one, I adhered two strips of the paper doily strips followed by a piece of jute ribbon. The dimensional embellishments can be adhered after the cracker is finished. The next step is to peel off the backing paper of the double stick tape for the center section only and carefully rolling the cracker, attach one long end to the other. Then do the same to each short section…

Once you have turned it into a three part tube, it’s time to tie ONE end only. I used a variety..ribbon, linen thread, cord, etc. Tie it as tightly as the fold allows. If you pull too hard, you may break the points of attachment. A really fun part is next. You get to fill the center compartment with whatever goodies and little gifts you choose. Once filled, you will tie the other cut band closed…

Now it’s time to attach the second end of the snap, just below the other edge. It was necessary for me to trim mine. The center portion of the ‘snap’ is free floating in the cracker.

I hope you have fun with this idea. It would be a wonderful project to enlist some children in and the possibilities are tremendous! Now, I have to decide what design I’m going to use! I’ve begun to collect all sorts of little gifts…nail polish, keychain flashlights, a tiny fresh pepper grinder…whatever you think would be enjoyed and that will fit into the cracker!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend~

((hugs)) and blessings,

Rebecca

Sizzix Alterations Decorative Strip Tim Holtz Snowflake Rosette Die	Sizzix Alterations Tim Holtz Tattered Pinecones Die	Sizzix Alterations Decorative Strip Tim Holtz Festive Greenery Die	Snowflake Filigree Metals	Paper Lace Doily
Natural Woven Jute Ribbon - 5/8"	Ranger Inkssentials Wonder Tape - 1/4"	Studio 490 Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste - White

Friday Focus - Perfect Pearls

Hello there~ So glad you could stop by!  It’s Rebecca here for Frilly and Funkie and it’s my turn to share a Friday Focus project with you. I've been working with Ranger’s Perfect Pearls range and would like to share what I've found with you. The blue panel is the focal point of my project and it’s layered with Perfect Pearls, using a variety of techniques…

I began by misting some watered-down, white acrylic paint mixed with a pinch of ‘Confetti White’ Perfect Pearls onto a panel of cornflower blue card stock. To set it in place I misted it with a very fine, very light mist of water. I dried mine with a heat gun, but you can also let yours air dry if you’re more patient. Once Perfect Pearls comes in contact with water and then dries, it is set…

The next step was to stamp snowflakes of different sizes on top of the white paint and pearls combo. Using Versamark watermark ink I stamped on top of the misted areas and the exposed card stock. Using a small, inexpensive paint brush I dipped the tip of a dry brush into the dry Perfect Pearls and then ‘painted’ it onto the stamped areas. Once I had applied all the Perfect Pearls I used my secret weapon to clean up the remaining and extra powder…

This ratty, dusty, shaggy thing is a Swiffer duster. I keep one on hand all the time! It picks up Perfect Pearls dust…perfectly! I also push my brush into the middle to clean it off when using Perfect Pearls powders. It will remove the ‘halo’ of remaining Perfect Pearls from your card stock if you wipe the paper with the thin blue fibers underneath the white strips…

When I was thinking about how to use Perfect Pearls for this post, the one thing I hadn't considered in my enthusiasm was the difficulty of capturing the magical effect of Perfect Pearls in photos! As beautiful and ethereal as the effect Perfect Pearls creates, is as illusive as it is as well. The areas that appear grey in the first and second photos are actually shimmering, iridescent white. I added some small stars from my stash. They are cut from iridescent white sequin material and measure about 3/16″. I've been having fun going ‘over the top’ lately! I'm beginning to think that May West was right, ‘Too much of a good thing is wonderful’. While I have no desire to emulate her life, I think she’s right when it comes to paper crafting…at least some of the time

I randomly dabbed liquid glue around the edges of the panel (with a heavier application at the lower corners) and dipped the wet edges into a pile of Clear Rock Candy Distress Glitter…heavenly and once again, my photos don’t do it justice. Below this panel are die cut snowflakes, cut from glitter paper…

I've found that I love using metal embellishments… when they’re painted! They need to be sealed with a coat of Glue-N-Seal first, so they don’t develop rust spots as the paint dries! After the Glue-N-Seal coat I used Picket Fence Distress Stain and then some more Clear Rock Candy Glitter. The sentiment comes from Tim Holtz’s ‘Old Fashioned Christmas’ stamp set. I love the font!! along with the rest of the images in this set.

If you haven’t played with Perfect Pearls before, you’re in for a treat! Experiment, play, go a bit mad..with your duster at hand, it’s very manageable, even for those of us who don’t particularly like ‘messes’! And as ever, with the Friday Focus spotlight falling on them, you will find the Perfect Pearls range has special 15% discount this week over at The Funkie Junkie Boutique. What a fantastic time to stock up on your supplies.

((hugs)) and blessings,
Rebecca

Ranger Perfect Pearls Pigment Powder - Confetti White	Ranger Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabber - Snow Cap White	Tim Holtz Distress Glitter Clear Rock Candy	Ranger Ink - Inkssentials - Glue N Seal - Matte - 4 Ounces	Ranger Embossing Powder - Enamelware
Snowflake Filigree Metals	Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Rubber Stamps - Old Fashioned Christmas

Christmas preparations!

Welcome back to the second week of our Christmas preparations challenge. Thanks so much to all of you who have shared your inspired creations with us. If you haven't played along so far, we hope you will. There is still one more week for you to link up your entry. Remember, we want to see a project that will be on your Christmas table or Christmas tree! This could be a bauble, table decoration, napkins, table cloth or even crackers! And don't forget to mention our challenge in your post and link back to it here.

To provide even more inspiration, our Funkie team has their terrific takes on this challenge theme.

Terry - Cards & Creativity

Sue Carrington - Stamping Sue Style 

Linda Coughlin - The Funkie Junkie

Jenny - Pushing The Right Buttons

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WEEK ONE

Hello, it's Sue here and it's my turn to host the challenge for the next 2 weeks. I love Christmas, especially the build up to it and now is the time that everyone starts to turn their thoughts to the big day. So, for this challenge we want to see a project that will be on your Christmas table or Christmas tree! This could be a bauble, table decoration, napkins, table cloth or even crackers!

Create your new project, link it below and you could be chosen as our winner and the next Guest Designer here at Frilly and Funkie. There is also the chance to win a $25 shopping spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique for one winner chosen at random! Remember the new rule going forward, you can now combine our challenge with up to 10 challenges in total (including this one) to qualify.

Here is some fabulous inspiration from the Frilly side of the DT to get you started!

Cec Wintonyk - CW Card Creations

Linda Coughlin - The Funkie Junkie

Rebecca Deeprose ~ PaperPrimrose

Whether you are a Frilly or a Funkie crafter we hope you will join us for this challenge and you too can be in with a chance to win one of our prizes. You may upload your project at any time. If you are using a public forum, please use keyword F&F. Don't forget to provide a link back to our challenge in your post and please, please, please be sure to turn off your Word Verification so our design team can leave comments on your blogs.

Challenge winners - Thanksgiving

Welcome to the Frilly and Funkie challenge blog for the start of a new week, and the day has arrived to announce the winners of the 'Thanksgiving' challenge. We would like to thank you all of those who took the time to enter. There were some stunningly beautiful entries and you have no idea how close the voting was this week. In the end the Design Team voted for this wonderful entry by #8 Cindy Pointe.

We loved colours, textures and design of this card. Congratulations Cindy on being our favourite for the 'Thanksgiving' challenge and winning the opportunity to be a Guest Designer here at Frilly and Funkie for a future challenge.

And Random.org has chosen a winner for our $25 gift certificate to The Funkie Junkie Boutique. Our congratulations go to #13 Claudine Criner.

A huge thanks from the Frilly and Funkie team to everyone who took part in this challenge and congratulations again to our winners. Please email Linda at thefunkiejunkie@gmail.com for the codes for the winner's badge and to give us your email address for the Guest Designer details (Cindy) and for the gift certificate details (Claudine).

Our current challenge, 'Christmas preparations', runs through Tuesday, November 26th. We hope to see you entering this time around so that you too can be in with a chance to win. And remember, you can now enter up to 10 challenges including ours, and a maximum of 3 entries per person to our challenge. Please remember to link back to our challenge in your entry and mention in your post that you are entering this Frilly and Funkie challenge.

Have a great week!

Step by Step - Takin' it large...

Hi everyone and welcome to another Saturday Step by Step here at Frilly and Funkie. Jenny here with an idea for making slightly lighter work of making backgrounds for all those Christmas cards you need at this time of year. And this time you're getting the 'warts and all' version so I can explain what works, and what doesn't!!!

Let's start with a piece of heavyweight card, a stencil and some of my current obsession, Wendy Vecchi white embossing paste. It stays wet for quite some time so there's no waste, and if you add Distress Paint (in this case Antique Bronze) to it the colour stays true and vibrant. Note; the shine from the paint will disappear in this mix so if you want it to remain use the translucent paste instead. It does have a longer drying time though. In this case it was the colour I was after primarily. Use a heat gun to dry the surface (very quick) so you can move on and stencil the whole way across the page.

Now to get inky. I'm batch making cards for an upcoming Christmas Fair so there is a basic colour scheme going on which includes Iced Spruce. I made up a mist using Reinker and spritzed the centre of the card. A little water helped it run from side to side (although not as much as I wanted - still on the search for my 'holy grail' of plain uncoated card). The good thing about adding the Metallic Paint to the paste is that it really resists inks well.

More colour needed, this time Sailboat Blue which I dripped in spots onto random areas with the intention of spritzing it with water and letting it run. Trouble is by the time I took this photo it had already soaked into the card more than expected.

I've learned. Don't panic. Don't bin it and start again. Keep going. I blended inks onto the rest of the card which really dulled down the whole effect. Hmm.

Actually I quite liked those spots of deeper colour, so after applying a quick overall mist of Dylusions White Linen I dripped some more of it and the Sailboat Blue onto the card. Now we've got a background!

I'm making A6 cards so the next step was to chop up my background into eight equal parts (first across the centre and then into four sections for each half). Now distress the edges and give the embossing paste a light rub with the ink to reinvigorate it's colour after the White Linen layer.

And here's one of the finished cards. I only needed to add a mini blueprint Christmas image onto watercolour paper (painted with Distress Inks), a sentiment and some festive die cuts to complete it. The kraft glassine holly leaves were covered in Copper Alcohol Ink to match the stencilled embossing paste.

Hope that gives you an idea or two for creating a batch of stencilled backgrounds of your own, and if you haven't played with embossing paste before I'd thoroughly recommend it. Thanks for dropping by. Hope you have a great weekend. Jenny xxx

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Layering Stencils - Honeycomb	Studio 490 Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste - White	PRE-ORDER Tim Holtz Ranger Metallic Distress Paint - Antique Bronze	Ranger Tim Holtz Seasonal Distress Ink Reinker - Iced Spruce	Adirondack Color Wash Dye 2 Ounce Spray - Sailboat Blue
Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Iced Spruce	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Weathered Wood	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Bundled Sage	Dyan Reaveley′s Dylusions Ink Spray - White Linen	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Vintage Photo
Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Rubber Stamps - Mini Blueprints 5	Ranger Archival Ink - Coffee	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Fired Brick	Sizzix Alterations Decorative Strip Tim Holtz Festive Greenery Die	Tim Holtz Idea-ology Kraft Glassine Paper Stash
Ranger Adirondack Alcohol Ink - Copper Mixative	Tim Holtz Distress Glitter Festive Berries	Ranger Inkssentials Glossy Accents	Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Rubber Stamps - Simple Sayings	Ranger Archival Ink - Vermillion
Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink - Watering Can