The stockpile I did have, went to the store that sells my cards and other cool stuff, The Mistress of Spice. Or else were bundled into packs and given away as Christmas gifts to teachers, etc. As for the MDS cards I had designed - well, I STILL don't have a card-worthy photo of my 4 Things together. I haven't even had a Santa Photo taken yet this year - which is something I would normally have done weeks ago. Sigh.
At least I have spent my time productively this week - I've done my Christmas shopping and wrapped all the gifts. And I spent a good day or two making a new wreath for my front door.
I must say I'm fairly pleased with it. It wasn't difficult, and I certainly could have done it quicker if I'd made up my mind how it would look before I started instead of designing as I went. Sigh.
Want to know how I made it?
1. I took a styrofoam wreath from a craft store, and wrapped it in recycled brown paper (Stampin' Up! packs their boxes with recycled paper, so I'm recycling recycled paper! Or is that up cycling?) which I tore into strips and glued with a simple glue stick (I used the Stampin' Up! Gluestick).
2. Then after dithering for ages, I decided on a Real Red and Gold colour scheme and set to work stamping the large snowflakes in Real Red ink on Crumb Cake card stock, middle sized snowflakes on Real Red Cardstock in Gold Ink which I heat embossed with Gold Stampin' Embossing Powder, and the small ones I stamped on Brushed Gold card stock in Real Red ink.
3. I die cut my snowflakes with their matching Framelit dies and the Big Shot.
4. I decided we needed more gold, so I die cut the bow and the other snowflakes (retired die from last year's Holiday Mini, sadly) for good measure.
5. I decided on a banner for the inside of the wreath and die cut the little pennants with the Big shot, then stamped them and heat embossed them with white embossing powder.
6. Assembly. First, I stapled white cotton ribbon to act as a loop to hang the wreath with my staple gun. Then I attached my banner to some twine with my glue gun. Then I took it apart and did it again, because I glued the letters backwards the first time. That's why the "e" in "Merry" is a little wonky. Uh, I mean charming and homespun. I then hot glued the twine to the wreath and started randomly applying the snowflakes until my heat gun stopped working (@#$&*).
7. I attached the bow using Stampin' Dimensionals because the (@#$%) heat gun stopped working.
Here is everything I used to make this wreath - the only things not Stampin' Up! was the polystyrene wreath base, the staple gun and the @#$%&* glue gun.
Of course, you could just cut a circle from cardboard if you can't be bothered going to the shops to find a wreath. I've done that before using the backing cardboard from DSP packs.
Happy crafting!
