Cooking With Cricut Challenge: Holiday Florals

Welcome to Day 21 of the 25 Days of Christmas Crafting Showcase and challenge day at Cooking With Cricut!  Today we are decorating with flowers -- paper flowers, of course!  Melin challenged the Design Team to include our favorite holiday florals in this week's projects.

My seven year old daughter was the inspiration for my project today.  She created this cute little candle holder at school and has lit it each night to decorate our dinner table.  It is so colorful and just a little bit wild -- just like her! 

So Momma decided to make an adult version of this little candle holder!   

Here is what you need:

• A glass cylinder vase (mine is from the local Dollar Tree store)
• Tissue paper (I used Christmas tissue paper)
• Mod Podge (mine is matte finish)
• A paint brush
• Flowers (see the list of ingredients for these below)
• Glue Dots

Here's how you make it:

1. Wash your vase with warm soapy water and dry thoroughly.
2. Tear your tissue paper into small pieces (mine averaged about a 1 1/2" square).
3. Using your paint brush, brush Mod Podge onto the vase in an even coat.  Don't do too much at once or it will dry out.
4. Add a piece of tissue.  Brush Mod Podge on top of the tissue to to seal it.  Make sure your brush has plenty of Mod Podge on it or you'll tear your tissue paper.
5. Keep adding Mod Podge, tissue and more Mod Podge until your vase is covered.
6. Let it dry overnight.

 

All finished.  Time to dry.

The ingredients!

Start at the bottom &
work your way
around & up.

To create the poinsettias I used the Cricut Joys of the Season Cartridge and Cricut Design Studio.  I used the base cut in black-out mode and then cut three of the flowers -- they are 2 1/2" tall.  I hid the flower centers and did not cut them.

Here is what you need to create the flowers:

• Card stock for your flowers
• Pearl-Ex powder
• Soft paint brush
• Adhesive
• Metallic gold seed beads
• Thin gold beading wire
• Thin awl or tiny hole punch
• Small glue dots

Here is the step-by-step on how I created the flowers:

1. Base cut in black-out mode -- leafy green Bazzill card stock (I'm not sure of the name -- this came out of my scrap stash.)
2. Three poinsettia flowers (only) cut out of a cream colored linen paper (left over from some wedding invitations I made for a client).
3. Brushed two of the poinsettias with a soft paint brush and Brilliant Gold Pearl-Ex powder by Jacquard.
4. Glued the plain poinsettia to the green base.
5. Then I stacked the gilded poinsettias on top of the base -- gluing the centers only.
6. I strung five gold seed beads onto a 28 gauge gold beading wire.  To form the circle of beads I strung the wire back thru the beads from each end and pulled it tight.
7. Using my handy-dandy pointy poker tool, I punch two small holes thru the center of the stacked poinsettia and threaded the two ends thru the holes.
8. I then turned my flower over and secured my wires by twisting them and clipped the excess wire off.
9. Using the same poker tool, I curled the poinsettia petals to give them some dimension.
10. Added a few glue dots to the center of the flowers (back side) and stuck them on the bottom of the vase.  My vase took five flowers to go completely around.

All the ingredients for paper poinsettias!

Step 3:  Brush with Pearl-Ex

Step 4:  Glue plain poinsettia
to the green base.

Step 5:  Glue gilded poinsettias --
centers only.

Step 6: String the beads and send
the ends of the wires back thru
the beads to form a circle.

Step 6 continued:  Pull tight to
"gather" beads.

  

Steps 7 & 8:  Punch holes and thread
wires thru to the back.  Twist to
secure and snip excess wire.

This was a really easy project . . . it took longer to cut out all the flowers than it did to assemble them!  And you really can't tell in these pictures, but the Pearl-Ex gives them such a nice golden lustre.  The powder gets into all the detail cuts and gives it depth and dimension.

I have to tell you -- I was pretty pleased with the way this turned out and called my daughter to come and see what I made.  Boy, did she burst my bubble!  I was informed by the second grade "expert" that I had done it ALL wrong.  There was NO glitter and my paper choice was B-O-R-I-N-G!  LOL!

After I picked up the pieces of my shattered ego, I asked her to tell me how she would have done it.  And so . . . a second candle holder was created with the "expert" telling me how to complete each step.

It was declared "perfect!" and "so much better than that other boring one, Momma!"  Ahh . . . I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.  As you can see, we used red and green tissue paper and LOTS of glitter.  (All secured with Mod Podge.)  (Note:  She did ask me later if I would get in "trouble" for this one because I didn't use my Cricut.  LOL!)

Now it's your turn!  Link up your favorite holiday florals project at Cooking With Cricut and you could be this week's Top Chef.  Make sure to become a follower over at CWC and leave a comment to be eligible for one of this week's prizes and one of the 25 Days "grand" prizes!

The 25 Days showcase is winding to a close.  There have been some truly extraordinary projects created by the amazing CookingWithCricut.com and PaperCraftingWorld.com Design Teams!  These ladies are so talented and have created many wonderful projects over the last 21 days.  We've had some amazing sponsors, too.  They've been so generous with prizes and discounts -- I hope  you'll check them out.  And Melin has outdone herself with some beautiful cutting files and digi stamps -- and those vintage printables have been amazing, too -- and she's given them all away for free as a thank you for stopping by Cooking With Cricut!  So make sure you stop by thru Christmas to download your freebies each day -- they truly are wonderful.

Sending you hugs and best wishes for a very Merry Christmas!

~ Jen