Just Us Girls #62

Hi all!  It's finally the weekend and Just Us Girls are here to challenge you and your creativity ;]  Alicia is our sweet hostess and she came up with a fun sketch!  Check it out:

I immediately thought of my friend, Laura's little flag die when I saw the pennant banner in the sketch!  It was perfect for what I was creating in my mind.  This is what I came up with:

I printed my Dotted Stripes - Collection 1 artichoke dots and blushing stripes paper, double sided and scaled to 3"x5".  Scaling the pattern helps to really show it off when I die cut the little flags :]  I curled the flags around a wire curling tool I use for making jewelry (but you can use something you have on hand like a thin pen or paintbrush stick), and then stamped my "ho" sentiment on each one.  I knew I wanted to use jingle bells as spacers on my banner, but I only had silver, gold, green and red on hand.  I definitely wanted pink or ivory!  Sooooo...I painted them with light pink acrylic paint!  I love how they turned out!!  My recommendation if you paint jingle bells are to dry them quickly by using a heat gun and DON'T pick them up until you give them a chance to cool off.  Ask me how I know...  If you find spots that you missed, just add more paint and heat set again.  That's the beauty of acrylic paint...you can layer until your heart's content and it still looks good :]

Moving on to my snowflakes...these are cut files I originally made for MTME, but I wasn't satisfied with the quality when I scaled them to an inch, so I didn't submit them to Lauren for release in the store.  I DO however like them when they are cut at a larger size, so I plan to add them to a separate page on my blog FREE to any of you who are interested :]  I'll publish a quick post when I do and direct you to the appropriate page...I'm sure there will be other "throwbacks" that I'll add later.  The ones I used here are about 2 inches in diameter.  I cut them from the same paper I printed for my flags plus one in the river color from the same collection.  I separated them with dimensionals, added some organdy ribbon and another pink jingle bell and I had my cluster of snowflakes!

I used the same organdy ribbon to string my pennants and jingle bells.  I pinned my pennants (err...flags from Lil Inker) with some vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware from SU! and adhered to my card with dimensionals.  Can you see how the ribbon looks "crinkly"?  Kind of like the new fad with seam binding that's going around?  Well, my crinkly organdy ribbon was super easy to do (thanks for the tip, Lauren)!  I basically tied my bows and heated the bows with a heat gun until they crinkled up.  Don't go overboard or it will melt holes in your ribbon while it scrunches it up. 

Last but not least, notice the main, striped panel of paper?  Well, this is from one of my MTME October packs, called Down to Earth (one of my all time faves).  This is a good example of how different packs complement each other.  I try to keep my packs of paper diverse, yet versatile in that they coordinate with other packs from the store.    My base card layer was embossed using my new Sizzix Basic Grey Snowflakes #6 folder. 

Okay, I THINK, that's it... ;]  Be sure to check out the rest of the teams' AMAZING projects!  They are over the top this weekend!!  Links are in my left sidebar, but don't forget to stop by our December Guest Designer's blog...Ms. Elise Durenberger!  She's so fun ♥  Welcome, Elise!!

Hope to see everyone who played along last week, back again this week!  Have fun with the sketch and then post a direct link to your project over at JUGS and use keyword JUGS62 in any online galleries.  Have an awesome weekend, my friends ♥