Hat easel card

The project that I am sharing today was made for a group swap and the one thing that I knew it had to include was pearls, which is what this crafty friend of mine always uses.

I have never found it difficult to think of something to make with my Dreamees products and it is so easy to mix and match whatever you have throughout their ranges as it all goes together so well.  I think sometimes we can worry too much on what to put together rather than how you want your project to look.

To make the hat for my easel card I used their Templates and More CD.  I have had this cd for many years but cds like this are invaluable and I find that I always find my way back to them, no matter how trends move on.

In the past, I have cut these templates out by hand but as I have a set of nested circle dies, once I printed off the template, I found I got a more precise and clean cut with the dies. I did this with 300gsm white cardstock for the hat template and the pretty peach backing papers also by the Dreamees. The peach kisses paper pad comes in an 8 x 8-inch loose leaf double sided paper pack is one of a lovely colourway collection.

https://www.dreamees.org.uk/

I made a circle easel card to attach my hat to, using the peach striped backing paper to complement the floral peach kisses papers and to decorate the white hat template.

The only hard decision I had to make when buying a paper pad, was which one, as they are all lovely and at £8.99 good value for money.

I chose the peach kisses because peach is one colour that I don't see a lot in cards and being a pink/lilac person its also a colour that I don't often lean towards for no real reason. It was when I purchased a Hobby House collection that had a mix of  pink and peach melba ribbons in my bundle that I thought, this is lush and was disapointed when I used all the peach card from my kit up.

The peach ribbon is from that Hobby House collection but the pearls are Dreamees and I had to make sure that there were plenty for Paula.

For my sprig of flowers on the topper of the easel card I have used a flower stamp that I use a lot,something stitchy with its adorable button centre that has been stamped onto a rich peachy orange Dreamees backing paper.

Decorated with some of their white pollen stamens and a "friends" sentiment from their beautiful baby sun stamp and die set.

I also like to decorate mdf and after seeing a picture on Paula's Facebook celebrating her Anniversary, I thought, what a lovely picture wouldn't it look lovely in a frame...... so after a rummage through my box of mdf (mostly Dreamees mdf) I found a set of mdf hearts that I had forgotten about.  This trio of heart mdf was from a collection called Sensational Flowers (stamps, cd and mdf). 

I printed the picture onto glossy paper and stuck it to the solid heart. I did cover the top heart aperture and the back of the solid hear the peach kisses backing paper.

I used string pearls and hot glue all around the heart to give it a prettier edge and a piece of amber ribbon to hang the heart from.

For the flowers on the heart, I chose the Dreamees pom pom flower stamps and stamped onto one of the peach kisses backing papers using smokey gray VersaFine pigment ink. Again I used some of the Dreamees white pollen stamens for the centres of the flowers. I added a good few layers to plump up my flower, gently curling the tips of the petals for a more rounded shape.

For a bit of structured foliage, I used a small piece of green vellum to stamp my leaves but this time with a stazon ink pad. Stazon is good to use with non-porous materials like vellum, glossy paper, plastic etc. Using a quilling tool (tweezers would work just as well) I curled the edges of the leaves to give them a little more shape before glueing the flowers and leaves down with a hot glue gun.

So there are my two projects. I made a box for the easel hat box to sit in and for the plaque, I had some yellow tissue paper to wrap it in.

One thing I like to do with tissue paper (unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of what I did) is get my stamps and decorate it. In this case, I used one of the babysun stamps and the friends sentiment stamp.

I have combined 3 stamp sets, mainly using one paper pad with the exception of a backing paper from another Dreamees cd (Pretty Pets) and I like the way you can mix the older collections with the new so easily.

Why not get involved in a craft swap. They are great fun and a great source of inspiration. You can find lots of craft groups on Facebook and blogs that offer them too.

Happy Crafting

Michelle

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