Dear Mermaid - a special Christmas Tree

Last Monday, my neighbor and I put up a Christmas tree at the Concord Museum.  Each year there is an exhibit called "Family Trees" showcasing about 35-40 trees.  Each tree is decorated with a children's book as inspiration.  Families tour the museum to see both the historical exhibits and the trees.  Some of the authors and illustrators come for a special event in the middle of December.  The exhibit will stay up until just after the New Year. 

This year our book was Dear Mermaid.  The book has beautiful illustrations in lovely glowing pastels and we took these colors, along with the images of beach and sea life, as the inspiration for our tree.

We made about six dozen ornaments, using the Life is a Beach Cricut cartridge with the charm feature.

The solid back of each ornament was cut from Core'dinations Core Couture glitter cardstock. The top design layers were cut from various shades of  Core'dinations gemstone cardstock.

For each image, we made ornaments at 2 1/2, 3 and 3 1/2 inches.  There were six of each shape with a few extras in additional shapes (treasure chest and seaweed) to make the backgrounds and the tops come out even!

All of the ornament charms were threaded with ribbon in a variety of colors similar to those in the book.

In the story, a little girl finds a purse on the beach.  She thinks it might belong to a mermaid - and it does!  She writes notes to the mermaid who replies by leaving notes and little gifts in the purse.  The mermaid is searching for a small gold key that she secretly took to open her mother's jewel chest.  Her mother will need the key to open up the jewel box before the Mer Festival so she can wear the shell tiara and other gems for the festival.  We made the shell purse by adding a shell from the Disney cartridge, Dreams Come True, to a purse from the Tags Bags Boxes and More cartridge.

The key is finally found inside a shell that the little girl was saving.  She gets it back to the mermaid just in time and the festival goes off without a hitch!

We had a lot of fun choosing the elements to  cut for the ornaments.  This little sand castle is very cute!

There is a lot of fabric cut in strips and woven through the tree.  We started with purple at the bottom and then blue and finally pink at the top.

Isn't this little whale with the hearts coming out the spout just adorable?  I usually am not into "cutesy" but this makes me smile!

This tree sits in a small room between two larger chambers.  We put it up on a box wrapped in fabric to represent the sand and the waves.  This will help to keep it a little safer from tiny hands (but there is very little on this tree that could be damaged by over-enthusiastic visitors).

When I have a chance, I'll try to post some photos of other trees I have decorated for this event.  Every year the books are different and the decorators have a lot of fun planning and creating the ornaments and putting their trees together.  If you live in the Boston area, you might want to take a trip out to Concord to the Concord Museum to see this exhibit.

While you are at the museum, you can also see the famous "one, if by land, and two, if by sea" lantern, that you may remember from Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

(I am on a trip to see our son and daughter-in-law in Spain this week.  I wanted those of you on the email subscription to have something arrive each morning as usual, so I am sharing photos and short updates.  If I have internet access and time I will try to add some new photos from Spain when possible.  I have lots of crafty projects lined up to tackle when we get back, so stay tuned!).

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Flowers from the Bouquet - Step by Step

Thanks to all of you who have sent me messages about trying out the Cricut Circle.  I wish I had unlimited flowers and 3 month codes to give out but unfortunately I can't give one to everyone who would like one.  What I can do is show you how I made a flower similar to the flowers that were in the bouquet I received.  So, at least, you will be able to create a bouquet for yourself or to share. 

This is a very photo heavy post because I wanted to make it easy for anyone to do this.  Mother's Day is only a couple of days away and I didn't want anyone to be frustrated if they wanted to make some flowers.  They are fun to make and go together quickly so I hope you can try to make some.

The basic concept is simple and you can create all sorts of variations.  The flowers can be made with many different cartridges  - they will just have a slightly different look depending on the choices you make. 

You need a flower with a fair number of petals to get a fluffy look - I chose a 12 petal flower from the Paisley cartridge.  

There are many cartridges with suitable flower shapes.  If you don't have one that you like you can even create a simple flower using George or Plantin Schoolbook and the free version of the Design Studio software.  You need to weld six ovals together, rotating each oval 30 degrees as shown in the screen shot above.

Once you have selected your flower shape, cut five at 4 inches, and one each at 3 inches, two inches and one inch.  You need double sided cardstock that is medium to light weight - text weight paper will probably be too thin to hold a nice shape.  The paper I chose is from a Martha Stewart stack.

I set up the cuts with the Gypsy to maximize the use of space.  I couldn't resist sticking in a few extra one inch flowers to fill in some empty spots - they will be handy for another project.

There are many possibilities for a leaf to add to the stem of the flower.  I chose this one from Life is a Beach - it probably is botanically inaccurate but I like the shape!  There were two leaves on this image key so I used hide contour to delete the one I didn't need.

Here are all of the pieces of my flower ready to assemble. 

First take four of the large flowers and fold them in half.

Then fold them in half again to form a quarter flower.

These four folded sections are the main part of the flower.  I arranged them in a circle so each fold was next to an open edge of the next section.

Next you need to adhere these sections to the fifth flower shape, which forms the base of the final flower. Turn the petals so they are offset from the petals in the base, this makes the flower look fuller.  I placed the opposite side of the cardstock facing up when I adhered the folded petals.

You can put the adhesive on the flower center and then settle each folded flower into position on the base.

Here is the main flower grouping.  I noticed on the flowers I received that the tops of the folded sections had been pushed a bit to the side and adhered to the lower sections with a glue dot.  I preferred to leave them loose and a little bit "fluffier."  The flowers in the bouquet I received were ten petal flowers - when these are folded you get a little more dramatic shape because one of the petals is creased in the folding (10 does not divide evenly by 4).

The next step is to add the leaf and the stem.

Adhere the stem to the back of the flower so it will show below the petals.

Then turn it over and use a sharp tool to poke a hole through the center of the flower.

You need to have a hole sized for the stem wire to fit through comfortably.  I did not have a thick floral wire on hand so I used some gold wire.  The flower will be sturdier with a heavier wire and you might want to wrap it with green floral tape to look more like a stem.

Thread the wire through the hole from the back to the front and try to have it tuck under the leaf.

On the front, twist the wire in a loop to secure it.

Adhere the three inch flower to the back to cover the wire so the flower has a finished back (important for a bouquet).

Stack the one inch flower on the two inch flower and poke a hole in the center.

Insert a decorative brad and flatten the prongs on the back of the two inch flower.  I originally thought you could put the brad through the entire flower but the prongs might not be long enough to hold properly.

I used a gem brad from Creative Charms because I like the bit of sparkle.  You could use a button or another fastener that suits the look you want for your flower.

Place a large glue dot on the center of the flower, making sure to cover the looped wire.  One was enough for this flower - if your wire is heavy you might even use two glue dots.  These are super sticky so place and commit!

Then just pop your small flower center on top of the glue dot and you have a pretty flower.  The paper you choose will make a big difference in the look of the flower.  For variety, you could use some solid and some print cardstock and you could also use more patterns as long as they coordinate nicely - just play around with the variations.

You can fluff the flower a bit with your fingers to spread the layers apart - if the paper is medium weight it should hold the shape.  As I mentioned earlier, you can also turn the groups of petals a bit to offset them and hold the petals into position with small glue dots.

You could add glitter or ink the flower edges - just have fun trying lot of variations!

I am contacting people privately about the Cricut Circle invitations - I won't be posting a list here.  I hope to finish by the end of the weekend.  Once again, I wish I could offer everyone the chance to try the Circle and I thank you for understanding that it isn't possible to do that.

I had a few adventures in rummage sale shopping and I look forward to some "show and tell" with my finds.  This is a great time of year for church sales and there is always a lot of craft potential if you just look carefully.

Remember, inspiration is everywhere (I hope some of you are working on the take out box challenge HERE....)

link to discussion Day #3 - Time to Craft

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Vacation at the Beach

Today is the first of July - Happy Canada Day to all of our neighbors to the North.   I hope to have a few special files ready for you soon.

Today is also another Sweet Treat Thursday over on the Cuttlebug Challenge Blogspot.  The theme was "vacation" this week.  Please be sure to visit the Cuttlebug Challenge blog to see all of the Design Team projects.

I made a decorated gift bag that would be great to fill with special beach treats for some friends.

The bag is cut from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge (there are lots of nice extras on this font cartridge that normally comes bundled with the Expression).  I cut it at 11 inches using the 12 x 24 mat and the Provo Craft 12 x 24 textured cardstock.

The wave, bikini border and the words are from the Life is a Beach cartridge.

I thought there were too many bikinis after I cut the word art, so...

I trimmed the bikini from the words.  The bikini border is cut from DCWV glitter cardstock from the Spring Stack that came out last year.

I set up all of the decorative cuts on one mat and then could simply choose the papers in the right sizes to get perfect cuts for the bags.  When you do this it is important to pay attention to the grid and position your cuts so that Design Studio will cut them centered in the proper paper locations.

 This inexpensive pencil case (I think it was $1 at Staples) is decorated with some vinyl cuts.  These were left from my water bottle project (here is a LINK) and I believe the flowers are from the Give a Hoot cartridge.  The word "sweet" is from Paisley  cartridge.  The plastic will keep the contents dry though it is not watertight.  Sunglasses should fit in the box nicely.

I added a bit of bling to the bikini tops and the dots of the "i"s.  They add some personality to the images.

 The flower gems I used came from this assortment from Creative Charms - they are from the Spring Medley in pink.  Today is also the day that a new Deal of the Month starts at Creative Charms.  I'll be back with more details about that soon.
 
So...how teeny would the bikini have to be to fit in the bag?  The bag measures 6 x 7 x 2 inches - 84 cubic inches.  I think it would need to be a bikini for a small child (or a very daring adult)!



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