Scrap N Grow

Posts Tagged ‘McGill Paper Punch’

Good morning.  Today, I have a sympathy card to share with you that I created yesterday afternoon after learning that a co worker’s mom recently passed away while I was on vacation.

"With Sympathy" Card

I have to admit that this card is my first sympathy card I have made. I began by first embossing a piece of peacock Ten Seconds Studio Metal using Tim Holtz’s new Book Covers embossing folder and afterwards hand cut the center opening out.  I then used a manila tag and applied a generous coat of Mod Podge and adhered a piece of Music Tissue Roll Wrap from Tim Holtz to the manila tag and set aside to dry.  Once dry, I applied a thin coat of Claudine Hellmuth’s Sable Brown paint to help tone down the stark color of the tissue wrap.  After the paint had dried, I adhered the two layers together using pop dots to create a shadowbox effect.

I chose to use one of my recently made McGill Blossom Punch peonies as the card’s focal image.  I adhered the peony with Inkessentials Glossy Accents to the card front and added a bird accouterment attached to a Memo pin.  I adhered the pin using pop dots placed on the backside of the bird. Next, for the card front’s sentiment, I used an Ideaology Word Band.  I highlighted the word band with Pink Sherbet Ranger paint dabber and chose to accent the word band by attaching a couple of pearl baubles to each side with jump rings.  I then adhered the word band to the card front with a few pop dots to enable the baubles to dangle.

Lastly, I completed final assembly of the card’s layers and stamped a sentiment inside the card. Overall, I am pleased with the card and will present my card to my co-worker later today.

Thank you for stopping by.  I hope that you come back again soon.  Have a great day!

Michelle

Happy Memorial Day. I would first like to thank those of you who are currently serving our beautiful country. I would also like to take a moment to remember those who have fallen in the line of duty.  Words can not merely express my gratitude and thanks for all servicemen and women who are currently serving or have served our country.

Next, I would like to apologize for my absenteeism this past weekend as I had fully intended to post throughout the weekend.  I did enjoy our one nice day on Friday before heavy storms and monsoon like rains drenched our area throughout the entire weekend. Several times our power flickered and internet was intermittent at times.  Storms + complex project + not enough hours in each day = no blog post over the past weekend.  I sincerely apologize and will try and play catch up this week for you.

This afternoon I finally completed my envisioned bouquet of peonies minus the stem’s leaves.  This project was definitely a never ending whirlwind!!! It consumed nearly every free non stormy moment throughout the long holiday weekend. My original vision for this project was to create a bouquet of life like peonies.  Earlier this spring I had purchased several of the McGill paper blossom punches and thought that I would use them to make some peonies.

I started by printing off the peony instructions from McGill’s website.  I then proceeded to select paper and punch the desired number of required shapes.  As I was punching the shapes, I thought to myself that the shapes seem pretty small, but I proceeded anyway and completed the assembly for 7 peonies.  They turned out fine but are indeed very small and lacked a life like sized blossom. I am going to save these for later use on a scrapbook layout, card, or home decor type project.  The completed McGill peonies are pictured below.

Peonies Created Using McGill Paper Blossom Punches

The McGill peonies while nice were not what I had originally envisioned, for I desired big, luscious, full blooms like their live counterparts.  So I instead decided to use my Cricut and the Giant Flowers Cricut Cartridge. A Cricut die cutting machine allows a user to cut my desired shape(s) at any specified size. My luscious, full sized blooms are pictured below.

I elected to cut my flower parts at 3 inches.  The book recommends much larger but with having previous experience using this cartridge, I knew I could successfully cut my shapes much smaller.  I followed the book’s instructions and cut desired shapes in white card stock to assemble a test flower.  I do this typically to figure out the quirks of assembly and for determination of size before using my quality card stock. I am so glad I did as I was very disappointed in the test flower.  In my opinion, the flower was sparse and had a hug hole in the center.  Perhaps, if someone were to use this as a centerpiece or even to place a candle in the center then this would be sufficient but not for a luscious life like blossom that I envisioned. I now knew that I needed to cut mass quantities of each flower part in order to potentially achieve my desired flower.  To do this I  used my Gypsy and placed mass quanities onto a 12X24 mat and cut out shapes once more.

I listed my cuts below:

4 Peony centers (not the recommended 2)

8 peony leaf 1 (not the recommended 6)

8 peony leaf 2 (not the recommended 4)

12 of peony leaf 4 (not the recommended 4).

I also cut 2 of peony layer 4 in lieu of the recommended 1. These are for the center stamens.

I chose 2 different colors of pink card stock  and cut enough parts so that I would be able to make 5 of one color and 4 of the other color. Odd numbers are more visually pleasing to the eye. I will warn you that if you decide to make these yourself, please purchase enough card stock.  After all parts were cut, I used Worn Lipstick Distress ink and my blending tool and inked the edges on both sides of each flower part.  Afterwards, I used my McGill molding mat and accompanying tools to mold the flower parts.  I then used Inkessentials Glossy Accents to glue each flower part prior to the final assembly. This step was labor intensive and downright tedious, but makes a huge difference in the final flower.

Regarding the final assembly, I rolled and offset glued consecutively all 4 peony centers ensuring that I did leave a large enough central opening for my stamens to fit. If you need too, glue these together first, I just estimated.  Next, I adhered 8 peony leaf 1 parts and again offset these with each layer. I adhered these at the height of the score marks on the peony centers.  I continued to adhere the remaining leaf parts offset for each row while I held the flower firmly in my hand upside down the entire time to ensure that the adhesive and flower stayed firmly together.

I would also like to share with you and hope to save you the frustration that I encountered using various adhesives. I started out using Crafter’s Ultimate glue and this did work, but I felt took too long to dry before I could proceed to adhere additional flower parts.  I then tried Inkessentials Glossy Accents. This worked better but still required additional time to dry in between each flower part.  I then decided to try hot glue.  While this seemed to work well intially, I became very frustrated as while I was adhering my final petal layers on my flower, I could see that the hot glue previously used cooled clumpy like and that my flower parts were not adhered well. I could see that large clumps of flower parts were barely adhered and were not intact.  At this point I was very frustrated!  So much so that I had to just walk away and take a break.  The next day, I reassembled the flower and the others using Inkessentials Glossy Accents.  I used 2 sets of locking tweezers to adhere 2 parts at a time and let sit to completely dry each time, typically 3-5 minutes.  This was very time consuming!!!!!!! In order to pass time,  I surfed the internet and chatted on message boards. In all, it took me the better part of late Saturday, Sunday, and a few hours this morning to complete the final assembly of these 9 peonies.

For the stems, I had to think outside the box a bit.  These flower heads have some distinct weight to them. I decided to use double thickness floral wire and wrapped the wire with green floral tape.  I used hot glue successfully to adhere the stems to the flower heads. I still need to cut out leave,s but really wanted to post these for you instead of making you wait yet a few more days.  To help conceal the naked stems, I placed the blossoms inside a cute watering can purse I received awhile back for a gift. I then photographed them for you outside in between the bouts of rain.

All in all, I think this project demanded the most time to complete of the projects I have posted thus far. I am pleased with the results and am eager to cut the leaves out.  What do you think about today’s flowers? Which do you prefer?  I would so love for you to leave me a comment telling me your thoughts or ask any questions.

Thank you for stopping by and for taking the time to read this lengthy blog post.  I am in the process of starting to compose my studio gallery organization and will begin to post about that later this week. I also plan to create the poppy next on the Giant Flowers Cricut cartridge as well as complete my Compendium of Curiosities II challenge yet this week.

Thank you again for stopping by.  Have a great night!

Michelle

Good Evening blog readers.  How was your Saturday? It was another steamy one here; heavy storms and hail just passed through our area.  I guess more storms are expected to redevelop around midnight.  My original project for today was to make an iris themed thank you card for a dear friend whom recently gave me a surprise gift. The iris is one of her favorite flowers.

As I was in the process of picking out paper for my card, the doorbell rang.  Our mail carrier had a package for me from Overstock.com. I recently took advantage of a free shipping offer and ordered additional punches for more varieties of paper blossoms.  Overstock’s prices were fabulous and the free shipping was an added incentive since punches cost a lot to ship due to their weight.  Several of my newest punches were used for today’s featured paper blossoms, the iris.

Iris 'Paperie'

These iris were pretty simple to make.  To begin, I gathered all my necessary punches:

Punch A Bunch Mega Lily Petals

Punch A Punch Mega Giant Dahlia Petals

Punch A Bunch Small Sprig Leaves Punch

Punch A Bunch Mega Elongated Leaves Punch

McGill Paper Blossoms Punch: Medium Snowflake Punch

Next, I selected my card stock and then proceeded to punch out the necessary quantity of flower parts. I then used various colors of Tim Holtz Distress Inks and Markers to add depth and features to my flower parts.  Afterwards, I used my McGill Molding Mat and Tools to mold the flower parts and then assembled them using Crafter’s Pick Ultimate Glue and set them aside to dry.

In the meantime, I made the flower stems out of 18 gauge wire double thickness and wrapped with florist tape.  I used a crimping pliers to bend the very tip over slightly to enable me to attach the flower head later to the stem.  By this time, my flowers were dry and ready to be attached to their stems.

I prefer to use a hot glue gun as it holds moments after the glue is placed.  I used my glue gun and attached the flower heads to their stems and did some last and final shaping before I set them into a jar. That’s it! Overall, the Iris were pretty easy and straight forward to make compared to the fussiness of other flowers I have made in the past.

Thank you so much for stopping by and I do hope that you will come back tomorrow as I hope to show you my originally planned iris themed thank you card.  See you again soon.

Michelle

Good Evening everyone and thank you for stopping by.  I finally finished my Compendium of Curiosities II Challenge week 4 entry despite a busy week.  This challenge is  hosted by the lovely Linda Ledbetter over at Studio L3.  This week’s technique challenge is called Faded Layers. Instructions for this technique are on page 43 of Tim’s Compendium of Curiosities II book. Pictured below are the before and after pictures of my tag.

Compendium of Curiosities 2 Challenge Week 4 Technique Tag

Compendium of Curiosities 2 Challenge Week 4 Embellished Tag

So to not distract from the technique of the tag, I thought adding a few roses would be a nice touch.  I made the roses from Tim’s Tattered Pine Cone die.  The leaves are leftovers from a previous project and were originally cut with the Cricut and the Giant Flowers Cricut cartridge while the smaller leaves were punched with the Birch Leaf Mc Gill Paper Blossom Punch.  I used the Mc Gill foam pad and tools to mold the leaves and give added dimension.  Afterwards, I adhered the roses and the leaves with Glossy Accents and added an Adage Ticket onto a Memo Pin.  The tag’s ribbon is Stampin Up Vanilla seam binding ribbon dyed with Postbox Red Dylusions Ink Spray.  For a final touch I added a jump ring to an Ideaology Locket Key and attached this to the ribbon with an Ideaology Trinket Pin.

Thank you so much for stopping by.  I am excited to have the day off tomorrow to catch up on some other pending projects that I will share next week.  Have a great evening and I hope that you will stop back again.

Michelle

Hello Bloggers!  Hooray its Friday!  Today’s featured project is a pot of Allium spring bulbs.

Allium Paper Blossoms

I created these using the Starburst McGill Paper Blossoms Punch.  I chose three variations of purple cardstock for each bulb in order to create depth and added dimension.

Close Up pf Allium Paper Blossom

I followed the directions to create this bulb from a tutorial on the McGill website.  The only variation I made was that I used 500 shapes for each bulb rather than the 112 that the tutorial recommended. Afterwards, I placed them into a vintage pot with styrofoam and covered the foam with a bit of moss.  I love how these turned out, but I do long for a bigger pot with several more bulbs along with different colors.  I will likely use my Cricut to accomplish this next time to help save my poor hands from excessive punching.

Thank you for stopping by and hope to see you again soon.

Michelle