If you are looking for the Creative Charms Farewell Blog Hop, please click HERE to go to Friday's post. All of the details about the hop are in that post.
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that my posts can get long. If you are new here, I hope you will find some help and inspiration!
I wanted to try something a little different for my stop on the hop. These cartridges are usually sought after for the layered character images. I didn't buy any of the Disney cartridges when I first got my Cricut because our children are older and we are "just not that into" the animated characters. It seemed that they wouldn't be very useful cartridges to own if you didn't care about the characters. I soon discovered that there is so much more to like on the cartridges - I think they are worth having even if you never make a character!
There are some great frames, nice flower bunches and lots of hats on the Pooh and Friends cartridge, a wonderful teapot and some realistic shells and sea life on Dreams Come True, faceted gems and a needle and thread on Happily Ever After...and so much more.
These "extras" are always fun to discover. I was using Design Studio to look through the various Disney cartridges I own and I found something on the Mickey and Friends cartridge that really caught my eye and made me start thinking.,.
This shape is meant to be used as the top layer to make a swirly lollipop. I realized that it would make nice spirals that I could use to make some rolled flowers.
I set up a mat to cut this image in a variety of sizes. You don't need Design Studio or the Gypsy to make the flowers, however, you can place the images closer together to save paper if you do work through the software instead of cutting directly from the cartridge.
I used double sided paper from K and Company. Cardstock could be too thick to curl nicely and text weight paper might be too fragile. It is important to use double sided paper so there will be color on both sides of the flower.
When you lift the cuts from the mat, there are two pieces. One is already a perfect spiral...
...and the other needs just a short snip with scissors to open up a second spiral.
Then, starting at the outer tip of the spiral, I used the quilling tool from one of my Cuttlebug quilling sets and wound up the strip tightly. You could probably use a chopstick or skewer to wind the spiral if you don't have a quilling tool.
The strip widens a bit at the end and you should keep that area open for adding the glue to assemble the spiral into a flower.
A glue gun will be the best choice for adhering the end of the flower. You do need to work quickly so the glue doesn't set up but you will have a little bit of "play" time before it dries.
Half of the spirals will have this type of an end to form the base of the flower. For the others, you can bend the tip to create a small area to hold the glue.
A pearl in the center gives the flower a much more finished appearance. I used some pink Gradient Pearl Stickers from Creative Charms.
It is difficult to hold on to the flat backed sticky pearl to center it in the flower. This handy tool helped a lot. It is a "QuickStik" from QuickKutz.
There is a low tack adhesive that will lift the pearl but then allow you to place and release it once you have the pearl in the right spot.
I prefer to make nearly flat layouts so this sort of flower has too much dimension for me to use it on a scrapbook page. I decided to decorate a small gift box. I took some of the smaller flowers and placed them on the box, moving them around until I was happy with the arrangement.
The box is a typical plain white jewelry box. I could have covered the entire box with paper but I decided to just cut a backing square from paper in the same K and Company stack to fit the lid.
I also added some ribbon around the rim of the lid. Scor-Tape is the best adhesive I have used for securing ribbon. It sticks tightly and does not show through the way a liquid glue can. I used the 1/8th inch tape on this 3/8 inch ribbon.
It is important to remove only a small part of the paper backing at a time - working around the sides so the sticky ribbon won't get tangled. This ribbon is from American Crafts.
The ribbon adds some more texture and shine to the sides of the box. You could use a paper strip or two cut to the proper size if you don't have ribbon that coordinates.
This little box would be a nice gift card holder.
I cut a variety of sizes of spirals and some of the flowers are quite a bit larger. These three fit nicely on a slightly larger box with just a strip of satin ribbon to dress up the top.
They also look pretty arranged in a row. If you cut several sheets of paper in different coordinating colors you could make a beautiful bouquet on the box top.
The finishing touch is the small white Sparkled Butterfly from Creative Charms.
I hope you didn't mind that I took a different "twist" on the Disney theme. if you are feeling Disney-deprived, you can click on this LINK to see some older posts about the method I use to speed up production of the layered characters (yes, I do sometimes cut them out too!). If you like videos, you can find the video explanation of this process at THIS POST.
Here is the full list of the blogs in the hop in case you get lost along the way.
Your next stop is Susan's Blog - have fun hopping and don't forget to look for the hidden Mickeys so you can have a chance to win the grand prize - a new Gypsy!
I have a token prize to send to one person who leaves a comment on this post. Anonymous comments are fine but please be sure to leave some identifying information so I can contact you if your comment comes up in the random draw (message board name, email with (at) and (dot) typed out to avoid spam, etc.). This is a photo or photo mat storage folder from Creative Memories with 12 journaling mats with Disney characters.
The journaling mats are double sided (one horizontal, one vertical) and are from the Disney Vacation line which is no longer available. They could also be used for an autograph book.
Have a wonderful Sunday - the first of May!
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