Flower Power

Good Morning,

I finally finished the project I was working on over the last few weeks, so ... Phew ... and Yayyy ... but can't say more ... Shhhh. That means through Christmas I can relax and enjoy being with just family and do lots of paper cutting ... A new hobby I am obsessed with. My sister, brother-in-law and nephews are coming over from the States for a week so that will be excellent ... Lots of giggles and happy faces.

Today. on Hochanda at 11, 2, and 5, Paul Church is demo-ing new Groovi plates which are really lovely ... just my type of designs I love ... very tangled/doodley sort of design and very cute. I forgot to take photos as I went along because I was so excited to create with them, but just as well because there would have been a few too many photographs. I love the versatility the Groovi system gives us to so easily mix the plates to create beautiful art work. I created this with the new plates and some of the previous plates.

Groovi Plates Used:-

Border Plates: - Straight Border Pattern Piercing Grid 1, Cake Decorations

A5 Square Plates - Basic Straight Grid, Nested Squares, Nested Hearts, Nested Panel Boxes, Happy Birthday, Floral Circle, Friends are Like Flowers, Leafy Frame, Texture

Baby Plates - Vases

1.) The embossed line art goes as follows:

a.) Emboss the 3rd and 4th square from the outside of the nested square plate on regular parchment.

b.) On the inside of the square, in the corners, emboss part of the 4th heart from the inside of the nested heart plate.

c.) In the middle, emboss the 6th from the inside panel box of the nested panel boxes plate.

d.) On one side of the panel box, emboss the pot from the baby vases plate and decorate it using the textures plate.

e.) Emboss flowers from the floral circle plate growing out of the pot.

f.) Outside the pot and flowers, emboss the 5th from the inside panel box of the nested panel boxes plate so it creates a double outlines frame.

g.) Emboss the greeting 'Enjoy' from the happy birthday plate of the other side of the panel box.

h.) In the corner hearts, emboss the floral design from the floral circle plate.

i.) Above the panel box, emboss leaves from the leafy frame plate between the heart corners.

2.) At this point I was not sure what I wanted to do in the double outlined frames so, on the back, I will coloured the art work using distress markers while I thought about what I wanted to do in them ... should I use the border pattern plates, or more emboss line work or keep it simple and just colour?

By the time I finished colouring I decided to put some more line art in the double outlined frames for which I used the cake decoration border plate and then coloured the hearts. I didn't need to emboss the circles between the hearts as I later decided to perforate between these sections instead of colouring them. Why make life simple when we can complicate it, right?

3.) For the border around the card, I choose the 3rd pattern border on the straight border pattern piercing grid 1. Start with perforating the pattern from the front.

4.) Turn the piece over on the back, align the perforations on the basic straight grid and emboss the dots inside the border. Ignore the messy colouring as this is the back. The front is fine (I hope).

5.) On the front, using the 2-needle perforating tool, perforate between all the tiny hearts in the double outlined frames and between the corner hearts around the leaves.

6.) Cut between the perforations using the parchment scissors or Perga Cutters. A bit of madness? Yes! But well worth it.

7.) To finish, I mounted the parchment on purple parchment (13.5x13.5cm) and brown card (14x14cm) using brads and stuck this onto a folded white card (14.5x14.5cm).

Hope everyone gets a chance to catch the shows and watch amazing live demo-s by Paul and get tons of inspiration from the design teams stunning art work they created with the Groovi plates. Every time I see their art work I am completely star struck by their designs and talent. So much to learn ...

All the Groovi plates, tools, parchment is available from www.claritystamp.co.uk or www.claritystamp.com. Enjoy.

Love and laughter

Tina

Wintery Scene

Good Evening.

Jayne Nestorenko's winter scene drawings/designs are exquisite. On their own they are amazingly beautiful but when you see all the great art work created by the fabulous design team using the stamps and Groovi plates, they are absolutely out of this world and am sure most of you will fall in love with them. Barbara and Paul will be showcasing them with all the great art work from the design team and lots of inspiration on Hochanda as a 1-Day special, tonight at 8.00 and then tomorrow at 9.00, 12.00, 4.00 and 7.00.

This is what I created today and will go through the steps for those who may wish to recreate something similar. The plates I used are:-

A4 Square: Jayne's Winter Scenes and Alphabet Picture Frame

A5 Square: Nested squares and Jayne's Poinsettia Name

Border: Diagonal Border Pattern Piercing Grid 1

1.) Emboss the design on regular parchment and green parchment. I started with the nested squares plate and used the 4th and 5th squares from the outside as a guide for the size of my card.

2.) Colour on the back. I used Distress Markers.

3.) On the snowman layer, between the double square border, perforate pattern no. 4 from the Diagonal border pattern piercing grid 1.

4.) On the green parchment border layer, emboss and perforate the pattern no. 5 from the Diagonal border pattern piercing grid 1.

5.) On the last bottom, poinsettia layer, between the double square border, perforate pattern no. 4 from the Diagonal border pattern piercing grid 1.

6.) Cut between all the perforations on all the layers.

7.) Cut all the pieces to size ad mount them on green parchment and black card using brads. I have used more brads then I needed to because I wanted to use them as an embellishment too. Stick this whole piece on white scallop edge folded card. To finish off, add a bit of sparkle using the Sakura Clear Star gel pen.

 All the Groovi plates, stamps, parchment paper, are available from www.claritystamp.co.uk or www.claritystamp.com.

Enjoy.

Love and laughter

Tina