A zingy splash of Spring or even Summer

........so put your sunspecs on:

In this month's Quick Cards Made Easy magazine there's an article about making 'paper pops', which I always thought were called rosettes. Eager to give my new toy of a Hougie board a road test I had a play the other day - and for goodness sakes - HOW did I manage for so long without a decent score board?! I LOVE it to pieces.

I used:

- 6" x 6" square cream card stock

- plain SU 'Summer Starfruit' card for the main backing

- papers from a lovely selection sent to me a while ago by Kay - I tend to check these out first as there's a lovely variety. I used two co-ordinating floral papers plus a plain pink one

- the 'paper pop' was fun to make - I used three 1" wide strips of 6" long paper and scored at 1cm intervals. Then the strips are joined (mountain into valley) with extra sticky tape into a total round and then mounted onto a circle of card by pressing and 'popping' the rosette down. That was almost my undoing, to keep the circle of card still I stuck it onto the glass cutting mat with a removable strip or two of tape runner - set up the glue gun, and then wished I STILL had three hands. It's do-able but you do have to work fast - ha, extra sticky glue might have been better but I did follow the magazine instructions so that as you squeeze the round of scored paper down the outer part flattens and the inner part becomes just a little circle and the 'pop' obeyed in the end. Wahoo, quick run round the room to celebrate - actually it was more like a hobble at that point during the week

- the 'belly band' (that term still tickles me Elizabeth!) was a teeny snippet of SU 'Certainly Celery' card punched using Martha Stewart's 'Daisy Dot' edge punch. Here's a neat trick, born out of the fact that I didn't have enough to go right across the card and was determined to use the little snippet. I split it in half lengthwise and punched two little borders - they don't meet in the middle but that's hidden - and also, by doing that, I could make sure each side ended with a whole daisy

- more 'Summer Starfruit' card was used to cut a doily using Marianne Creatables LR0130 die and also the Whimsy corners

- a quick rummage through the button box, a piece of doubled bakers twin just knotted and hey presto, all done

I have no idea if you managed to follow how the 'pop' is done - I hope so 'cos a hunt online for a decent tutorial was unproductive. You can also punch one edge before scoring the paper, I think that would look good but let's just take one step at a time :)

STOP PRESS: Spike the Hedgehog reappeared on Saturday evening - I caught him raiding a ground level bird feeding station at about 10:30 pm, in the absence of a dish of his hedgie food of choice - which is called 'Spike's Dinner' - I kid you not!

Di
x