Thursday 11 December 2014

The Wacky Watercooler December "Best of..." Blog Hop


What do we mean by "Best of..." is the question you may be asking.  Well, for the Wacky Watercooler gang, this blog hop is all about what we consider the best of three things.  First of all we've each drawn a name of a participant and have checked out all the blog hop posts that person has done and decided what we consider the best of those posts has been.  That is project number one.  The next project is whatever we consider the best of the retired products.  Last of all but certainly not least, is what we consider the best of the current products.  All I can say is that for me, this has been one of the most challenging and fun of all our blog hops.  I hope that once you've checked out everyone's post, you'll agree.

Our blog hops run in a circular manner.  What that means is that as you go from one participant to the next, you will, inevitably, wind up at the point where you began.  I hope you'll find the time to check out all our posts.  Once you've finished, you'll have to ask yourself what you think the "best of..." all these things might be for you.

If you've been moving forward through the blog hop, you'll just have seen the wonderful creations by the very talented Marie Green in Oregon.

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I drew Christine Giuda's name and was excited to hunt through her Wacky Watercooler Blog Hop posts to see what I considered her "best of...".  It came down to a hard choice.  There were a couple of wonderful creations that I would have loved to CASE but I didn't have the products on hand to do that.  I especially loved her mixed media canvas and plan to try my hand at something similar.  But back to what I actually did decide to choose as her "best of...".  I chose the lovely Spring butterfly card that she created for our March 2014 Blog Hop.


Instead of using Spring colours, however, I decided to make my version of Christine's card more of a wedding card and kept it to a simple white and gold palette.   I was especially happy to make this card because it gave me another chance to use one of my favourite retired stamps, the En Francais background stamp.


I had a lot of fun making this card but you'll notice that I couldn't quite get that wonderful fold to the ribbon that Christine managed.  I also entered this card into the Stampin' Royalty Challenge.

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The next "best of..." was just as challenging for me.  There are so many wonderful retired products that I had a lot of trouble getting down to any one "best of...".  I finally decided to make a Christmas card using some of the retired products that I really miss.  For me, they're really the best of the products for this season.  The Core'dinations cardstock was hardly with us before it was gone.  I loved the way it looked after it was put through an embossing folder and lightly sanded.  The Pretty Print embossing folder was one of my favourites and so I used it with Early Espresso Core'dinations and lightly sanded it.  The retired Cannery Set framelit die works well with the retired Holiday Collection framelits for this card as well.  For me, these products are the "best of..." for the holiday season.  I'm glad I had a chance to use them for this card.


The "merry" is cut from Brushed Gold cardstock.  It has a subtle luster that looks simply wonderful.

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My final project is for the "best of..." current products.  I love a lot of products but one that is especially dear to my heart is the set of Stars framelits.  I had wanted a die or framelits just like that for quite a while and had written to Stampin' Up! about it.  If you follow my blog, you'll remember all my calculations when I made those 3-D stars last year.  Well, with the Stars framelits I don't have to use my protactor at all any longer.  I can just cut out a star, use a ruler to score the lines and I can make my 3-D stars.  How sweet is that?

For this project I made three different sized stars using the very glittery Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper.  Two are solid and one is cut with the largest of the Stars framelits and has its centre cut out with the third smallest framelit.   After scoring the stars and folding them into 3-D shapes, I took the largest one with the star shape cut out and attached a little snowman that I had already prepared out of the Simply Pressed Clay.  (That's another product that I really love to use.)  


Then I connected all the stars to a strip of 1/8" Silver Ribbon using Silver Mini Brads and tied the end of the ribbon into a loop.  


This decoration can be hung from the wall or from a hook in the ceiling.  It sparkles beautifully and who can resist that little snowman?

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Well, that's it for my "best of..." projects.  I hope you've enjoyed them.  Your next stop will be with the wonderfully creative Christine Giuda.  You'll remember that she was my "best of...".

If you get a moment, please leave a comment.  I'd love to know what you thought of my creations.






20 comments:

  1. OK will try this again. My first comment didn't post.
    As always I love your creations and my absolute favorite was the one you did of my/our card. The color combo is amazing and your bow looks fine to me. The snowman in the stars is darling and there's so many retired pieces on the Christmas card. Good to know others have trouble letting go as well.

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    1. Thanks so much, Christine. I really loved your card and am so glad I decided on that one of your wonderful creations. Retired items appear to be one area that we all agree: you can't choose just one. If we still have it, we think it's great.

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  2. enter squeal here... Love your little Olaf!! The rest of your projects are awesome too, as your projects always are! Thank you for sharing !!!

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    1. Thanks, Ter. I love using that Simply Pressed Clay and Olaf just seemed to make himself. He was such fun!

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  3. I love your little snowman! I enjoyed all of your projects

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    1. Thank you, Kath. My little snowman makes me smile. I love it when something I create does that to me.

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  4. Such a cute decoration - and I love your monochromatic take on Christine's card.

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    1. Thanks so much, Linda. Christine card was such fun to use as inspiration.

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  5. Oh my gosh Heidi! How could you come up with such stunning projects after the turmoil you have just been through? Aboslutely love that cute little snowman and the glittery star banner. Genius!

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    1. Gail, I don't know. I shouldn't have been able to pull this off since I didn't have one project done yesterday morning (Wednesday) but by 3:30 a.m. I had completed them all. I'm staggering now but love them all. Thank you so much for the lovely compliments. I love the snowman, too.

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  6. Incredible projects, Heidi! You've just proven that you work best under pressure (not sure if that's a good thing! LOL) Your snowman is adorable, and I love all your projects.

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    1. Thanks, Deb. I'm not sure if that's a good thing either. I think the snowman is my favourite.

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  7. OK, Heidi, that wedding card CASE of Christine's is drop-dead gorgeous! Won't someone be awfully lucky to receive that one! Stunning.
    And your snowman is awfully cute too...my grandsons would love him! Super job!

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    1. Thanks so much, Priscilla. I loved using Christine card as my inspiration. I'm looking forward to showing my little snowman off to my grandsons.

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  8. You're a superstar!!!! LOVE everything, but the star decoration with "Olaf" takes the cake! Wow!!!! Great job! I hope you have a fabulous and merry Christmas!

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    1. Thank you, Jeannie. I had such fun making that decoration. I trust that your Christmas will be a wonderfully warm and merry one as well. *hugs*

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  9. Wow! Love your projects, Heidi! Love your take on Christine's card. Love "Olaf!" You can't go wrong with gingerbread men!

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    1. Thank you very much, Marsha. I think we really had our best blog hop ever!

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  10. Beautiful projects and I miss the coordination paper also, I still use it every chance I get!!

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    1. Thanks so much, Kat. I find the Core'dinations makes a great background rather than DSP. And the bonus is that I control the colour. It just didn't have a long enough run.

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