Make It Monday

   Good Morning, everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend, and stayed warm/safe with the crazy weather and cold temps going around the states right now.

   I have been meaning to post a couple projects I did in December, but with the holidays I never had a chance to get them posted. Well today is your lucky day to see them! So consider today a Make It Monday/Throw Back Thursday combo-type of post! hehe

   I made these two projects as prizes for my husband's work Christmas party. They were a ton of fun to make, but, also, I had to throw them together quite quickly with all the other things on my December to-do list! 

   This first project was inspired by a fellow consultant, Donna Cosgrove, and her tree project she posted on Instagram! I purchased 3 paper mache trees from Hobby Lobby, spray painted them white, and decorated them using Oh Deer papers and papers from an old DCWV Collection called Winter in the Woods.

I forgot to take decent pictures of these at home, and had to snap this shot with my cell phone right before the party.

   Each double-sided strip is 1/2"x 6", and is hot glued to the tree. I started gluing along the bottom and worked my way to the top. The exception to this was the smallest tree. The top row's strips are only 1/2"x 3" because of the spacing.

   Next I embellished each tree. To do this I used Thin Cuts-Stars set from CTMH, and the Stars thin waver dies from Heidi Swapp to make the toppers for each tree. I die-cut these from CTMH gold glitter paper using a mirror image technique. To do this technique first die-cut with the glitter paper facing up. To get the "mirror image", die-cut the same image, but with the glitter paper facing down. This way you can glue the two pieces back-to-back without any white backing showing (this works best with non-symmetrical images such as these stars). 

   I then embellished around the tree using the different sized circles from the Gold Glitter Fundamental stickers that CTMH had in the last Annual Inspirations Idea Book. I love these sticker sheets, and bought a ton of extras so I had plenty to spare while decorating these trees! You can never have enough gold glitter!

   The next project I did was a paper mache word made from marquee letters. I purchased these letters from Hobby Lobby as well, spray painted them white, and decorated them with the same paper from DCWV, and some silver glitter snowflakes! This was a super cute and easy project to whip up, but still looks amazing and elegant as a display!

   I traced each letter by hand onto the paper I wanted to use. I cut these out, ink distressed the edges (in this case with CTMH Desert Sand ink), and glued the paper to the letter. I then used the Thin Cuts-Snowflakes set from CTMH to cut out the two different sized snowflakes to decorate each letter. This die set sold out early (which I know was a bummer for most people), but wowzers! LOVE LOVE LOVE how this simple added die-cut made the whole project stand out! 

   So there you have it! What did you work on in December? Have you started any projects in the New Year? I would love to hear what you're working on! I hope you get time to get crafty this week, and until next time:

Here's to life, love, and creativity!