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.