Paper Trees for Your Holiday Mantle

Hi everyone! Practical Scrapper Alison here with a project that has been in my "to do basket" for 2 years now. Do you have any of those? A scrappy friend of mine refers to them as UFO's - Unfinished Objects! I'm sure I have more UFO's than FO's!!
Anyway, this was the year to realize my vision for these ...

Three Styrofoam cones and a pack of battery powered lights.

I've seen many examples of paper trees on blogs and Pinterest over the years so I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to do, my only conundrum was how to work the lights in.

Thank goodness for washi tape! I used it to tack down the lighting wires until I could wrap the paper strips around it. The other two cones got covered in some patterned paper first and then paper strips.

I wasn't sure how to cut my paper to the correct shape at first and then it rolled around my desk and gave me the idea to trace it's path. Below is a close up of tracing line. 

I cut out the curved shape and then glued it to the cone with hot glue.

By placing a line of hot glue along one edge and slightly around the upper corner, I was able to place the cone on it and just roll it up, gluing as I went. No hot glue burns for once!

Here's what the the cones looked like before I started adding all the paper strips to them. In hind sight I wish I had wrapped the larger cone in paper before attaching the lights ... live and learn!

And now a word about my paper. I wanted to use multiple shades of green but as I was looking through all my green papers (yes, I arrange my papers by colour!) I realized that I needed BOTH sides of the paper to be green which most patterned papers are not. What to do? My stash to the rescue once more! Stampin' Up makes these great paper stacks of tone on tone patterned papers in each of their colour stories. As a former Demonstrator I have all these colour stacks so went through them and pulled out all the green papers. Then I started cutting them into strips of varying widths.

Once my strips were cut I created a fringe on one edge (fringe scissors would have been very helpful for this step!), added double sided tape to the non-fringed edge and wrapped it around my cone. Each strip was layered above the other by approximately 1/4 to 1/2 inches. These created a nice waterfall effect. To create the curls I simply used my bone folder and swiped it down each little strip of paper - just like you do when you're curling a ribbon with scissors for a parcel.

A topper made from a paper rosette and a bit of Gold Lame Color Shine spray finished things off and now they are ready to hang out on my mantel this Holiday Season. You can't really see the lights in this photo but the larger cone does have lights. It looks pretty cool too! I was trying to place my paper strips in a careful manner making sure each light would peak out but eventually just gave up and I found that as I was curling all the paper, the lights appeared! Love it when stuff like that happens!

So there you have it. One UFO finally complete. 1,930,298 to go! 

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Sparkly Joy Altered Letters

Good morning, Scrappin' Friends! I'm Wendy Coffman from Stamping Rules, and I'm here to share this glittery holiday display today. I got these cool paper mache letters which I painted with layers of grey and silver acylic paint. The front of the letters I coated with lots of silver glitter, just some standard chunky kid glitter. Then I got to work with the Mod Podge, pasting on hexagons I cut with my Cricut machine. After all the hexagons were attached and trimmed around the letters I did a final coat of Mod Podge and coated the letters with a clear chunky plastic glitter. 

Here you can see the final coating of what I always call kid glitter because it's uber chunky. It adds a lot of sparkle but still let's your paper shine through! I topped off each letter with a snowflake embellishment I built out of glitter paper cricut cuts and some rhinestone brads that I've been hoarding for just this kind of special project. I finished off my bling with a sparkle flourish for each letter. I adhered the flourishes with lots of Liquid Glass, which dried clear so it didn't interfere with the sparkle of the letters. For the parts of the flourish that were not actually attached to the letters I just flipped the whole thing over and coated the sticky part of the flourish with more Liquid Glass so it wouldn't attract hair or dust. I can't wait to add these letters to my holiday mantel!

If you'd like to see more pics of this project, and links to my craft sources, please visit me over at Stamping Rules. Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Canvas

Hi everyone!  It's Practical Scrapper Leslii Wagner here today to share a Christmas wall hanging I recently made to use as a decoration in my own home.

I had seen a sign on Pinterest that I loved using words to form a Christmas Tree and wanted to do this same sign, but with my own touches.

I started with a 12x12 canvas and then Mod Podged a 12x12 paper directly on to the canvas.  I tend to use Mod Podge quite often when making altered projects and I continue to get good results.

My next step was to cut out the words. I chose a red glitter paper and  I used my Cricut Expression and Type Candy Font cartridge.  With the Cricut set to 1 3/4", I cut the words using all capital letters.  The words then had to be placed on the canvas.  Unfortunately, due to the back of the glitter paper having such a smooth, non-absorbant back side, I couldn't use Mod Podge.  I chose to turn the letters into stickers instead using my Zyron sticker maker.  I found the center of my canvas, started with the word Christmas, and then worked my way up from there.

I wanted to do something a little special for the star so I cut another star 1/4" larger in a light gold glitter paper and then layered the red star on top.  I used the same gold paper to make a border.  I then finished my canvas by randomly adding green gems to the "tree".

I hope I am helping to get you into the Christmas spirit!

Practical Scrapper Leslii

Christmas in a Box

Here is a Tim Holtz Configuration Box that I decorated using some of my favorite things.
I love altered art, Tim Holtz, and Melissa Frances.  I call this my Christmas in a Box.

 I usually cover the configuration boxes with paper or Tim's tape, this time I painted one all one color.  I used Melissa Frances paper, cards, trees, tinsel, lock, key, and glitter.  I used Tim Holtz for the mini star, snowflake, bottle, #25, clock, light, stickers, metal embellishments, and I use glossy accents to hold it all together.  The taller dark green tree is a misc. tree from the craft dept. along w/ the one star outside of the box.  Have you ever decorated a configuration box?  This is also the first time where I actually removed several of the boxes.  I plan to do another one for craft room.. just need the time.  I hope you enjoyed my Christmas in a Box.  Both of my girls still BELIEVE in SANTA, so I made this for them.  

Practical Scrapper, Kimberly Congdon (Scrap It Girl)  

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