WOYWW 458 Flower Factory

Here is my desk this week. Yes, it’s posed, but not for WOYWW!

Last night I laid out all these little flowers and added centres with Stickles, and left them overnight to dry.

I am now at the final stage in my mystery project – the Flower Factory! Last night’s work was the completion. I need to make some leaves now. Here are all the flowers I’ve done this week.

From my Heartfelt Creations “Botanical Wings” die:

Penny Duncan Rose Design (total of 48):

Single layer flowers:

The larger flowers still require centres, and I’ll probably use a combination of brads and gems, and whatever other embellishments I have in my stash.

I now have a deadline to complete the mystery project – next Monday, so I’m pulling out all the stops to get it done. This time next week the wraps should be well and truly off, and your patience with me will be rewarded!

I am feeling very chuffed with myself this week, because, project-driven, I’ve taken the proverbial dust-covers off Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, after goodness knows how long. Somehow life kept intervening and I just wasn’t using her, and had started to lose confidence which put me off even more, but I had to cut all the rose pieces (5 for each flower) and the single layer flowers, and there was no way I was going to fussy cut that lot! As it happened, after I’d upgraded my Signcut licence, everything went like a dream and I’m right back on track with it again, and looking forward to cutting loads more projects. Silly me for leaving it for so long.

I’m enjoying this little oasis before I go into hospital for my operation. Since my hubby started driving again life has really got back to normal. After next Monday and the mystery project is complete, I can concentrate on final preparations before I’m out of action again, and catch up with everything I’ve neglected these past few weeks.

No kitten photos this week, I’m afraid. I’ve been looking back at some of the early videos of them and I can’t believe how much they have grown. My hubby says we’ve never had such beefy kitties before – they are really feisty and vigorous, and Ruby especially is very hefty and solid! Lily is more floppy and soft – it’s as if Ruby is more firmly stuffed than her sister. They both have really round fat tummies. Ruby continues to behave like a naughty teenager and is most unwilling to be picked up and cuddled by me – if I do manage to catch her, she pushes away and refuses to purr, so unlike her babyhood when she came running to me. My hubby says she will settle down once she gets through the awful adolescent phase, and will probably be a really loving and affectionate lap cat – I do hope so!

Are You an Artist?

Today I viewed the latest Youtube video by one of my favourite artists, Jennibellie. You may remember I featured another of her videos recently, on the subject of comparing oneself with others, and this latest one is another of what she describes as her “pep talks”!

Again, it made a huge impression on me, as she was speaking right into my situation, or my situation as it was last year.

She made this video while visiting York, and staying in what she described as a haunted house! It all looked very charming to me.

Anyway, back to the pep talk. For some time I had been feeling less comfortable with the description “crafter” for what I do – this is no slight on those who do consider themselves to be crafters and are happy with that, but I felt I was moving more into an area where I was creating a lot more from scratch, rather than assembling ready-made materials, and as I pushed the boundaries, needed to start calling myself an artist.

However, for some time I felt very uncomfortable using this word to people because I thought they might think it pretentious of me, and the worst stumbling block was that I don’t get paid for what I do – my feeling was that most people who describe themselves as artists are “serious” artists who make money from what they do! Jennibellie points out that if you do art, then you are an artist! Why do we have no problem with the doing of art, but the personal description “artist” causes us such problems?

I think I am over this hump now. I am finding it easier all the time to describe myself as an artist. It doesn’t matter anyway what other people think, and if they assume that I am a professional artist, that doesn’t matter either. To be exact, I suppose I could always describe myself as an “amateur artist” but that rather implies that I just mess about and am not serious about what I do, or that I am not very good.

I am not as good as I would like to be, but then I doubt if you’d meet many artists who think that they are as good as they should be!

The name I give to my studio is my ARTHaven, a name I borrowed from Penny Duncan. It is indeed a haven where I do art, and the capital letters imply how important this art is to me. I get quite uncomfortable and a bit annoyed when I hear my hubby describe it as my “craft room.” My beautiful room in our new house, all fitted out to my own specification and design, is definitely my studio, the place where I make ART.

This whole issue is another facet of the issue Jennibellie addressed before, that of lacking confidence in ourselves which manifests itself in the comparing of ourselves with others. I don’t know if it’s a particularly British characteristic to be self-effacing and modest, and not to trumpet ourselves lest we appear brash and boastful, but false modesty is nobody’s friend in the end! It’s time to step up to the mark and say it as it is!

Are you an artist? If you are creative with your materials and produce work that is unique to you, and which expresses something of the inner you, then you are. Don’t be afraid to say it!

Birthday Card for Gisele

Today is my friend Gisele’s birthday, and rather than choosing one of the (so far very few!) cards from the Card Factory, which she may well have seen as she follows my blog, I made her a card today from scratch.

I used a couple of die-cuts from the marvellous pack that I recently received from Judy in Australia. I added a little distressing to both circles, and hand-embossed around the edge of the smaller one which has some music on it.

The pink flower was made from some die-cut pieces which I also hand-embossed, and assembled with Pinflair gel glue, and decorated with Flowersoft and Stickles, and the leaves were some ready-made rose leaves from my stash.

I cut the swirls and the sentiment using Sheba, my Black Cat cutter (see my sidebar for details of this machine). The swirls were from a cut file of Penny Duncan, and the sentiment was my own design using Edwardian Script font. (This file is on my SkyDrive, available for free download.) The sentiments were cut from a shade of green which echoed the leaves. All these items were cut from American Crafts cardstock which cuts beautifully on my machine. The swirls were darkened with Vintage Photo Distress Ink before being stuck down onto the die-cuts, and the flower added on top.

The decorative paper was part of a stack I bought when I first started, from Ebay. I haven’t used a great deal of it because as time has gone on, I haven’t liked it much. This particular sheet had been toned down with Picket Fence Distress Stain some time ago when I was working on another project, and seemed to be right for this pink-themed card.

The card base was plain heavy white cardstock that I’d bought at a craft fair some time ago, distressed around the edges with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink.

Inside I distressed the edges with Spun Sugar Distress Ink and added a music background stamp using Old Paper Distress Ink, and a Happy Birthday sentiment using Festive Berries Distress Ink. We both signed the card using a pink glitter gel pen.

All very pink and girly!!

Off to a party tonight to celebrate her birthday.

Flower Swap with Judy–and an Update

In case anyone has been wondering why it’s been so long since I’ve blogged, my dad has been really poorly, and has been in and out of hospital, and is now in a residential home, although he is now quite a bit better and may even be well enough to return home, with an appropriate care package. Mum has been on her own and my poor hubby has been rushing around like a fly with the proverbial blue rear end, trying to sort them out as well as continuing to work, and looking after me, and he’s got pretty exhausted with it all. I’ve been very stressed out with all that’s been going on, and especially being concerned that my hubby wasn’t going to burn himself out, and it all took a bit of a toll on my health and I have had quite a bad dip recently, which meant I could do even less than the small amount I could have done to help my hubby. We are also in the throes of trying to sell my parents’ house, and we’ve been house hunting, and it’s all taking a lot of time.

Anyway, I am starting to feel a bit better now, and may even manage to return to my ARTHaven and do some creative stuff soon. I simply haven’t felt up to it lately – what small amount of energy I have had has had to be used for the aforementioned activities, and I haven’t felt inspired creatively at all for weeks!

Now for the main reason for this post – to share with you something really special. My friend Judy in Australia (do visit her wonderful blog – it’s amazing!) is a highly creative lady, and also has a heart of gold, is great fun, and I feel as if I’ve known her for years!! When we had the recent ATC swap with the WOYWW blog hop (What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, where we share a photo of our work desk every week to satisfy all our nosey cravings and have a good snoop around each other’s creative spaces, and where I originally “met” Judy) – it was the 3rd anniversary of WOYWW and we all had a wonderful time swapping all the gorgeous ATCs. (I will do a post about mine soon!) Anyway, Judy said she’d rather swap flowers, so we agreed to do this. I’m afraid with everything that’s been going on, I haven’t been very quick about this, but Judy had sent me hers and they are GORGEOUS!!! They are so scrumptious and soft and squidgy and decorated with dangly beads and things, and I keep getting them out of the poly wallet I’ve put them in, just to mess around with them and enjoy them! I can’t think what to put them on, yet, but I know inspiration will strike eventually!

Here’s the whole collection. I’ve arranged them to look like a bouquet. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Now for some closer-up shots to show the detail.

These ones have got lots of beads on them, some of which are looped, and some are dangly. I adore the bottom left one with its dangly beady bits and all the multi-coloured layers!

These next ones are slightly more subtle (!) lol! but so pretty! Again, the bottom left one is particularly lovely, but I love them all.

It’s really hard to choose, but I think these last ones have to be my favourites. The bottom one has gorgeous dangly ribbons and beads, and the rest are fairly flat, with circles of yarn machined down, and quite a bit of shiny lurex material which doesn’t show up very well on the photo, lots of textured yarns, and again lots of beads! I love Judy’s use of buttons, too.

Every single one is different. Aren’t they joyous?

Now for the flowers I have sent Judy. All mine are paper. Here’s a photo of the growing collection in the making.

This is the completed collection. They are all quite a bit smaller than Judy’s ones. I have tried to do as many different kinds of flowers as possible. I had hoped to be able to make up some from my inked kitchen paper but time is going on, and I wanted her to have what I’d done!

Again, here are some closer shots for the detail.

These first ones are what I call my “freeform” flowers. I had some narrow offcuts of Core’dination papers from other projects, so I ran them through the Cuttlebug and then sanded them to expose the darker core.

For the pink one, I roughly drew petal shapes onto the paper and cut them out by hand. I hand-embossed them from behind, using a ball-ended embossing tool onto a piece of fun foam and then painted some Perfect Pearls onto the ends of the petals from the palette I made up recently, and stuck the petals together with hot glue. For the other two, I cut some whole flower shapes out by hand, and hand embossed them and painted them with Perfect Pearls as before, and layered them up with hot glue. In all cases the centres were made from tiny flower shapes cut with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine and found in with all my other flower pieces, and topped off with a gem or some Stickles. (I love Stickles – glitter glue – for flower centres – so easy, and it gives a nice bit of bling.) These freeform flowers worked better than I could have expected – it was a bit experimental!

The next batch are all roses. They are all from Penny Duncan’s rose cutting files -the larger ones are her grungey rose pattern with the more indented petals, and the smaller ones are her original rose design. All the coloured ones were sprayed with my Dylusions inks before making them up, and the two dark navy and silver ones were left over from a project I made last year.

Here is a picture of the roses being made up.

All of the next batch are hibiscus flowers in different sizes, all cut using another of Penny Duncan’s files. The stamens were bought in the wedding cake department of our local kitchen shop. Some of these were sprayed with Dylusions inks before making up, and others were coloured with Distress Stains.

The final batch is a bit of a mixed bunch. Working clockwise from the top, the poinsettias are again Penny Duncan’s design, but with yellow Stickles for the centres. I made quite a lot of these just before Christmas last year for my bag skirts project (another Penny Duncan idea!) and these flowers were from my stash.

Below those you can see two black and gold flowers. Again, these were left over from another project – originally they were rose pieces and had quite large holes in the centres, so I have put co-ordinating brads in the centres to finish them. Each one was cut from black card using my old Cricut machine (before I got Sheba) and then I hand-embossed them and drew on them with an embossing pen, and heat-embossed them in gold.  Below these is a collection of small flowers that I made for a project I had intended to do and then never completed – one day I may come back to it and cut some more flowers. Most of these were cut from some very good quality card that I bought when I first started, but the colours were simply awful – it was duplex (double-sided) card with colours like lime green on one side and bright orange on the other, or garish turquoise – adding some colour of my own, I completely transformed them and really liked the result! I did a blog post ages ago about this card, and some experiments I did with it at the time. I learnt at that time that even when you’ve made a huge mistake, buying something you absolutely loathe, you don’t need to throw it away but can alter it and make something good come out of it!!

The pink flowers (also a Penny Duncan design) were in my stash as well, from a project I did, making a whole series of thank-you cards. I loved how these flowers turned out! They are sprayed with glimmer mist, and again have Stickles centres.

The last ones I made quite recently when I was experimenting with my Dylusions inks, and used them as masks while spraying.

I painted on some coppery Perfect Pearls and loved how they came out. These also have a tiny flower shape and some stickles in the centre. This flower shape (another Penny Duncan one) is very versatile because it can be layered if you want, but it’s lovely as a single layer too.

I wrapped them all in some tissue paper that I’d sprayed with my Dylusions inks and some Crafter’s Companion glitter spray (I’m afraid I forgot to photograph them parcelled up but I’ve still got some of the tissue so I’ll show you that another time).

Flower making is such fun, because you can mix and match so many shapes and build up layers, and colour them differently, and add bling, embossing, Perfect Pearls, etc. etc. to your heart’s content! With the cutting machine I can also make them whatever size I want, and I always make more than I need for any given project so that I’ve got spares for other things, or to give away as in this case.

Thank you for swapping flowers with me, Judy, and I hope you enjoy the ones I’ve sent you as much as I love the ones you’ve sent me! What fun this has been. While collecting them together and making them up, I’ve been thinking about Judy and giving thanks for our friendship!

Bag Skirts–Part 2

The second bag skirt design is based on one of Penny Duncan’s “scallop” designs, with the slits cut for ribbon to be woven through. This one is using cutting only, and no drawing, on the machine. I took my colour scheme and design from Tim Holtz’s Christmas Tag No. 1 for this year – I love the subtle background of this one. I haven’t got any snowflake stamps or dies, but I used a swirl stamp all over to give a bit of texture.
I started by putting quite a bit of Picket Fence Distress Stain onto the centre of my non-stick craft sheet, and then added some Faded Jeans (more) and Chipped Sapphire (less) around the outside, so as not to contaminate the sponge dauber of the Picket Fence one with other colours. After spritzing the cardstock well with water, I smooshed it in this mixture till I was happy with the mottled, blended background. (That Picket Fence Distress Stain is awesome stuff! It will lighten any colour, and give a gorgeous faded chalky effect.)
After drying the inked paper with my heat gun, I proceeded to ink up my swirl stamp with Picket Fence Distress Stain and stamp all over the sheet, randomly. This distress stain tends to disappear, but not completely – the pattern is very subtle, as you can see from this picture (I do love to be able to stamp in white!):

After this, I spritzed a bit of water into my hand and flicked it all over the sheet, and then dried it again with the heat gun. this gives nice mottly spots as the water droplets wet the ink on the surface of the card and draw it into themselves.
I did another one I wasn’t quite so happy with:

- it was a bit too dark, with not enough Chipped Sapphire. I made another which was better, which I used to make the second bag skirt, and decided to reserve this one to make the tags for these bags, and for other purposes.
At this stage I had to iron the sheets because they’d gone a bit ripply and I didn’t think Jiminy Cricut would appreciate that. (He’s not behaving very well at the moment – he can see Sheba’s box across the room and he knows his days are numbered!!!) Even so, they were still a bit wrinkled, so I taped them down onto Jiminy’s mat with some masking tape just to make sure.
Here’s the first front piece I cut – I distressed the edges with my lovely new Distress Ink in the seasonal set – it’s Iced Spruce (what a gorgeous name!) – the colour is fabulous, really subtle. Unfortunately it doesn’t show up very well in the photo, but in reality there’s a lovely soft green around the edges.

I’m really annoyed with Jiminy. He is sooo inaccurate! My second piece didn’t cut right – the mat loaded further to the right than on my original piece, so that he cut off all the scallops along the bottom of the piece!!

I have cut around each shape with scissors, and I think it looks more or less OK, as long as you don’t look too closely, and as long as it isn’t up against the first piece!!

Also, if you look closely, the holes along the edge are slightly skewed off centre – they are NOT like this in my drawing! (Can’t WAIT to get Sheba up and running…)

In my drawing, all the holes are perfectly symmetrical:

Because it’s very hard to get two identical backgrounds made by the smooshing method, I decided to make the backs of these bag skirts from plain blue cardstock distressed with Iced Spruce Distress Ink –  it’s quite acceptable to have the backs plain, I think. Penny makes her bag skirts all in one piece – it’s not clear from her pictures how big they are, but to make one for a 12 inch-width bag, you can’t cut a big enough piece of card (at least, I can’t – I’ve only got 12 x 12 and a 12 inch cutter). I have redrawn the piece so that there is a front and a back piece, with an overlap on the back. Because I didn’t have any 12 x 12 white card, I used A4 for the front, which is only just big enough, hence the critical placing of the mat to ensure the whole thing is cut properly. (Why isn’t anything ever straightforward?)
Here are the two bag skirt pieces completed, waiting for their embellishments.

You can see the slit for the bag handles. The Iced Spruce Distress Ink around the edges doesn’t show up very well in this photo, and the lower one is actually darker in colour and less white-looking, but the swirls on the top one show up very nicely!
I drew some foliage pieces and pine cone spiral shapes (adapted from flower spirals) based on Tim Holtz’s shapes, and as a dummy run, cut them in plain white card. I wanted to practise making the pine cones as I had not done this before – on his video, Tim shows how to do this with hot glue around a cocktail stick. My first attempt was a disaster and went straight in the bin, but then I thought you might like a good laugh so I rescued it and photographed it.

Horrible, isn’t it.
However, with a bit of practice, I got it right. I’m very pleased with the pine cones. If you do them in any colour not brown, they start to look like flowers (like other spiral-constructed flowers). Here’s the mock-up with the pine cones and all the foliage pieces cut in white card.

It shows up a lot better with different shades of green and brown, and also when the leaf pieces are manipulated a bit to make them more three-dimensional.
As a little aside, in the past, when I was well enough to cook, I have made spiral “roses” out of the skin of tomatoes peeled off in a continuous spiral with a very sharp paring knife, and then rolling them, as a garnish – they always got a very positive reaction! This technique works so well!

Note also the little fish on the smoked salmon timbale, cut from slices of cucumber, each with an eye created from a tiny piece of ground black peppercorn! I used the same spiral technique for the gold ribbon rose on the napkin design – I pulled up the wire along one edge which ruched the ribbon, and then rolled it up to form the rose.
However, I digress… (my friends tell me I’m good at that!!)
I designed a sentiment in Serif DrawPlus, “With Love” on a curving swirl, using Wedding Text font, which I am quite pleased with. I cut this in white card and then added a nice thick spreading of PVA glue and some glitter. I’ve uploaded this cut file to my SkyDrive (link in my sidebar – all free downloads). After it was dry, some of the glitter did come off; PVA may not be the best glue. Could someone who uses glitter a lot please tell me the correct glue for glitter?

I had originally intended simply scaling the whole bag skirt in this design down to fit smaller bags, but Jiminy Cricut struggles to do intricate cuts, so until I’ve got Sheba up and running, I’ve decided to do them all the same size, and simply cut down the sides to fit.
This the ribbon I used to thread through the bag skirt –  just a few scrap lengths I’ve had in my box for ages. It’s got wired edges.

These are the  the swirls and pine cones cut from the Kraft-Core paper (No. 21, a nice rich dark brown).

Here are the completed pine cones before I cut the cocktail sticks off.

Inking them with a bit of Vintage Photo Distress Ink to make a bit of shadow, and then adding some Snow Cap Acrylic Dabber, the white paint immediately went yellow! So much for snow. It did get a bit whiter when it dried, though. I think the answer would be to seal the surface first with a spray varnish before adding the white paint. I also added some Rock Candy Distress Stickles for a bit of “frost.” I love these pine cones! They even make the right sound when you handle them – that sort of hollow crisp rustling that real ones make! I almost expected them to shed seeds all over my work surface!
Here is one of the bag skirts with the swirls and sentiment added. These were stuck down with Crafter’s Companion Stick & Stay – I like spray adhesives for sticking down intricate shapes as it saves a lot of hassle, you get good adhesion and no mess. I have pretty well finished my spray photo-mount and prefer the Stick & Stay as it doesn’t have that awful smell. When it was dry, however, I did find that the pieces were starting to lift – I think I need to spray it on more thickly than my original photo-mount spray adhesive.

Next step was to cut the foliage. In his instructions, Tim advises sanding the pieces before removing them from the die, so after I had cut my pieces (I did the same for the swirls and pine cones) I sanded them before removing them from the Cricut mat – this made it much easier to distress the intricate pieces as they were supported, and also, you get a tiny raised edge where the cut has been made, and this sands really nicely, giving the pieces added definition. Here they are after I had hand embossed them onto a piece of fun foam.

For the two different kinds of coniferous leaves and the holly, I used three different shades of Kraft-Core: Nos. 10 and 12 for the coniferous leaves and No. 11 for the holly. I darkened the latter with some Forest Moss Distress Ink and picked out the veins with a marker pen. Some variegation was added when I sanded the pieces, and I’ve also added some Snow Cap Paint Dabber on the the coniferous leaves. The leaves were manipulated a bit to give them a little dimension and make them look more realistic.

Arranging the various bits and pieces over the swirls, I attached them using hot glue. I hope I’ve achieved a nice wintery effect with this bag skirt! The brown of the swirls and pine cones echoes the colour of the bag.

Here are some detail photos of the various elements on the completed bag skirt.


(This photo unfortunately shows up all the hot glue strings that I failed to remove from the pine cones!!)


This final photo shows the back of the bag skirt, complete with its tag cut from the background sheet that I created and wasn’t so pleased with; I wrote the names with a glitter gel pen on the Cricut using Wedding Text font, and then cut the tag on the Cricut, as I did for the drawing and text on the poinsettias bag skirts.

This is the video I have made about the bag skirts

Final notes on the bag skirts:
I chose the plain brown bags for my bag skirts because I thought the colours I was using would co-ordinate well with them; I decided to leave them plain, but they could be decorated with rubber stamping, Distress Inks blended with Ink Dusters or foam pads, or even sprayed with paint or glitter spray, with or without stencils or masks. You could also cut out different shapes and glue them on – any embellishment would do, as long as it didn’t compete too much with your bag skirt.
I felt that the plain white bags were too stark, and would definitely need some treatment to tone them down a bit.
On somebody’s blog (if you are reading this, I apologise that I can’t remember who you are!!) she had wrapped the handles of a bag with 2 contrasting shades of ribbon which looked very effective. Any colour that co-ordinated with your bag skirt would do.
I’m very grateful to Penny Duncan for her lovely designs and free cut files – OK, I’ve redrawn them for my purposes, but the original design is hers. I’m grateful too to Tim Holtz for the inspiration to draw and cut the winter foliage, pine cones and swirls, and for his instructions for making the pine cones. I have not uploaded these cut files to my SkyDrive as they are too close to Penny and Tim’s originals and I would not claim them as my own.
I hope everyone is now fully enlightened as to what bag skirts are, and that you have enjoyed walking through this project with me!
The bags all packed up with Christmas presents and ready to go.

Bag Skirts Part 1

So – I’m finally putting you all out of your misery and revealing the answer to the question that so many of you have been asking, “What on earth’s a bag skirt??” It’s an idea I got from Penny Duncan – you can see her mouthwateringly gorgeous bag skirts on her skydrive here.

A bag skirt is basically a rectangle of card folded in half, with a slit in the fold which fits over the handles of a paper carrier bag. It holds the top of the bag closed, and the edges can be cut to whatever shape you like, and of course you can embellish it however you want.

Many of us take several presents with us when we visit family or friends over Christmas, and what better way to present them than in a pretty bag that you have decorated yourself? Gone are the days when I turn up with a grotty cardboard box or a Tesco bag!! If you don’t put the person’s name on it, they can keep it and recycle it next year.

These are the plain brown bags I used:

I got them from Unipack-Worldwide on Ebay, which supplies all sorts of cool packaging stuff, and is post free too! Unfortunately they didn’t come in time for me to use one for the presents for my aunt and cousins which I took up with me to the funeral – I did have one in my stash though, which did well enough, although it wasn’t quite as strong as these. This supplier also does them in plain white, and (I think) one or two other colours like pink, and stripes. You could decorate the bag as well, if you wanted, with some rubber stamping or distress inks. I have decided to leave mine plain, and have chosen colours for my bag skirts which will co-ordinate nicely.

In this “Part 1” post I am dealing with the first ones I did, based on Penny’s “baroque” design – I took her holly border design and amended it to fit what I wanted to do. I think Penny’s designs may be for quite small bags - she has designed the cut file all in one piece. I didn’t have any paper large enough to cut on the cutting machine for this, so I redrew her shapes to make a front and a back piece with an overlap for gluing, and created three different sizes of each one, to fit the different sizes of bag that I’ve got.

The first one is the bag I made for my aunt, and then (since we got back from the funeral) I have made two more – another large one and a medium one. This is my aunt’s one:

You can see that the handles aren’t quite so nice on this bag, and the paper is a lot thinner, too.

Penny’s design comes complete with poinsettias in the cut file, so I’ve used those, although I prefer her other poinsettia design (she’s done two). This bag skirt uses a combination of drawing and cutting on the cutting machine.

On my aunt’s (Version 1) I drew the design of the holly border using the Cricut pens in the pen holder instead of the blade; I filled the design in quite heavily with marker pens afterwards; here’s a detailed photo.

The holly leaves are actually green, and the berries red, although they look black on the photo. I also added some clear embossing powder to the leaves and berries, which I did not do on Version 2 of the bag skirt.

Here’s a detail of the front panel.

On this photo you can see the detail of the background paper I used for the text frame. This was a background I created from some scans of the ancient parish records from our church which you can read about here and here.

The main paper is some 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper I’ve got in my stash. I’ve inked all the edges of the papers with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

This is the back of the bag skirt. In this case I’ve redrawn Penny’s holly motif to form a rectangular border to fit my bag skirt, and repeated the framed text, slightly smaller, and without the poinsettias.

You can see the overlap where I joined the two pieces together. On subsequent bag skirts, I’ve overlapped the back piece on top of the flap of the front piece so that the join doesn’t show as much. On this photo you can see the metallic gel pens I used to colour in the design of the border, catching the light.

These are the poinsettias that I made for these bag skirts:

They are very simple and quick to make, and are stuck together and to the bag skirt with hot glue. The centres are yellow Stickles – Penny has created an element in her cut file for the flower centres but I don’t get on very well with these – possibly because the Cricut doesn’t cut them very well. I think the Stickles work really well!

Here’s Version 2 of this bag skirt, complete with one of the new bags.

As you can see, the handles are a lot nicer than the bag I used for Version 1, and I have also used different papers this time. The holly border is different, too – less heavily coloured in, which I prefer. I did the outline drawing on the Cricut with a gold metallic gel pen and then just added the red and green with marker pens afterwards.

Again, the papers are inked around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

This is the back of Version 2.

You can see I’ve made a matching tag. I punched a small hole in the back piece through the slit for the handles – I’d originally thought of simply tying the tag onto the handles, but then I thought it would be difficult to remove the bag skirt; this way, the tag and bag skirt come off together, and the tag can be easily removed if the recipient wants to recycle the bag skirt next year.

Here’s a detail of the holly border on Version 2. I think you’ll agree it’s better than Version 1.

Perhaps it would have had more impact with some clear embossing on the leaves and berries as before, but I forgot to do it, and then thought it looked OK without.

Finally, here is a detail of the text on the front of Version 2.

I did the outline with the Cricut, using a black glitter glue pen (this doesn’t show up as metallic or glittery on the photo – just black!) and then filled it in with a red marker pen. If you look closely, you can see a distinct “wiggle” in the drawn line – I think Jiminy Cricut must have Parkinson’s Disease! Apparently the Cougar doesn’t have this problem and will draw nice clean lines. From a distance it’s not too bad, though.

See Part 2 for the other design, and the video.