Today is the last day of a week-long blog hop hosted by the Craft & Hobby Association to promote the Paper Arts+ Show in July in Chicago. I'm so happy to be part of the hop!
CHA designers teamed up with craft product manufacturers who will be exhibiting at the show to highlight some of the exciting new products coming out this year. Be sure to check out the prize drawing details at the end of this post.
I'm working with KaiserCraft's new holiday line called Silver Bells - romantic, floral Christmas papers (two-sided) in muted shades of teal and rose.
The teal reminded me of eucalyptus, which is native to Australia where KaiserCraft is based. So I decided to make a wreath of paper eucalyptus leaves. I found this tutorial online to learn how to make the teardrop paper ornament that hangs in the center. Instead of stringing floss through the top to hang, I inserted a wire with beads and a dangle up through the middle of the ornament and twisted the top into a loop.
After trimming the teal papers down to 1"x4" pieces, I cut a narrow leaf from each piece with scissors. It went a bit faster by cutting through 3 pieces together at the same time. Then I wrapped the end of each leaf around a sturdy wire and hot-glued in groups of three, alternating paper shades. To keep the clusters looking random, I glued some leaves directly on top of others. After working my way down the wire until I ran out of leaves, I gently curved it into a circle, overlapping one end a bit. I used pliers to curl one end of the wire around the other to hold the circle shape.
I brushed a little rose ink on the petals of the mini paper roses - one of the embellishments from Kaisercraft - and poked a few into the wreath, taping the wires to the backs of leaves. Lastly, I added a bit of bling to the tips of some of the leaves and wired in the ornament.
My wreath will be in a display case at the Paper Arts+ show, along with the other designer projects in this hop. So I used more of the Silver Bells papers to decorate a 5" painted Smoothfoam cube to use as a display base, so the wreath can be free-standing.
The price/barcode strips at the bottom of each sheet of paper are printed with holiday messages on the back (genius!), which I added to a couple sides of the cube. I pushed a large painted skewer down into the center of the block and wrapped the top with a coiled loop of wire to hang the wreath. Now this wreath will look cute on the door or the table!
Tweet for your chance to win!
If you have been following the this blog hop all week, you may have seen a special secret word at the end of each designer's blog post. At the end of the hop, put all the words together in the right order to form a phrase. And my secret word is ... IN. Good luck!
The first two people to tweet the correct phrase to @Craftandhobby will win:
- 1st: $500 toward travel to the Paper Arts+ Show (for the trade only)
- 2nd: $25 American Express gift card
If you work in the craft industry, registration is now open for the Paper Arts+ Show, where you’ll learn about awesome craft products for everything from paper to jewelry to mixed media and more. Check it out!