I'm whispering - Christmas is sort of under way here.

Yup, unable to settle to much in the way of card production yesterday, I decided to make some embellishments to have stored away ready for making Christmas Cards. Given the mess I make with sparkles everywhere - plus it's seems such a fag lot of extra work to make one embellishment (can that please be today's big word?) at a time - this is what I had a quick play with:

Sparkly Poinsettias

I'd seen the seven minute tutorial for making these pretties on Bev Rochester's Blog here but thought it was such a lot of work I'd give it a miss. However, when I already had everything to hand, apart from some moonstone brads which I swiftly obtained, it seemed daft not to at least try what seemed in advance a bit like peeing grapes............oh dear, I'm going to leave that typo there, of course I meant peeLing grapes:).

Bev's tutorial is worth a watch if you feel like following suit - and I have to say it was great fun making these and they're not as tricky or time consuming as I'd imagined. They sparkle beautifully in real life too! I don't work fast but they truly were very quick and easy to make. I need to make a few more of these, plus some red ones - quite therapeutic too :)

I'd forgotten to add the spacers behind the brads when I took the photo above, so flushed with success was I, but late last night I carefully removed the brads and added them.

The one thing I did differently to Bev was that I took the top off my bottle of Anita's glaze and used a smallish paintbrush to coat the petals before dipping them into the Diamond Dust. That was much easier and more controllable than holding a layer of petals in one hand and trying to manipulate a squeezy bottle in the other, Also, I tipped some of the Diamond Dust into one of those tray thingies with a little stopper on one end, making it easy to replace the leftovers back into the jar - and I was surprised how little I used too. A prolific card maker like Bev has a whole plastic food container full of the stuff of course :( What I'd do for a basket and ten minutes in her craft room to collect a bit of this and a bit of that!


The Boss is out today - 'playing with bows and arrows' as I call it - but, he said to mention just how delicious the Paupers Pie was that we had last night. We felt more like Royalty - it was sooo yummy! Thanks so much for the recipe Elizabeth - do go here if you fancy seeing what it's all about. As suggested, we had it with fresh crusty bread and tomato salad - def. one for the favourites list :))

Thanks for calling by!

Di 
x