Poinsettias, nerines and ...

... a surprise! Jane Gill's Floral Punch Craft workshop at the Glitterpot on Saturday.

Poinsettias
We made 3. A large one and 2 smaller ones. It's amazing what you can do with the most unlikely punches. Punches used to make the poinsettias were the Christmas tree, small daisy and the stamen.

The base card is an A5, hammered, cream card blank. The card front was covered with a border of cream Bazzill and remaining card covered with cream based Christmas text (in this instance Plum Pudding Marzipan by Crafts House) and join trimmed with a strip of gold card. The poinsettias and holly leaves were then arranged to suit. The card was finished with a gold organza ribbon bow. I just love this card and it is definitely one that looks better in the 'flesh' than in a photo!

A full tutorial on how to make the poinsettia's can be found here.

Nerines ... Well, they didn't do it for me. I didn't like the colouring detail. Far too harsh in my opinion but also I felt the base colour was too pale. The punch used was the Giant Lillium Feather. There are 2 sizes of this punch. It was the largest of them that was used here. Full details of how to make this flower can be found in Leone Em's Floral Punch Craft VIII (Camellia's, Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Tulips and more).



We had a bonus to this class .... the Surprise!!
Again, it was using the Giant Lillium Feather but with this the smaller version of the punch could be used just as well and even in conjunction with - lol!! We made .......... Christmas trees! Really quick and easy to do and very effective! There are many ways of making a tree with this punch so it's a case of punch the shapes, cut, shape and just play with the putting together! The picture here shows trees made with a 6,5,4,3,2 combination but I've since played with others to great effect. These trees, believe it or not, are made from the same sheet of paper ..... BasicGrey Fruitcake, Berry Branch/Maraschino Cherry. Unfortunately it is last years design and no longer made but, any double-sided paper (if you're going to do severe shaping) will do. The shapes were punched and then the edges inked. I decided to alternate the layers on one and inked all outer edges in green. With the other I decided to keep the front the same for each layer and I inked that one with a rusty colour. In both instances I tried to pick out one of the shades in the paper. A large ball tool was used, in a circular motion, on the full part of each shape above the 'branches' to give a bit of definition. The 'branches' were then curled, each to a differing degree. Blobs (technical term!) of PVA were put at the top of each shape, with the exception of the top one (2 branches) and then each piece was stuck to the other in descending order. The trunk was cut freehand from brown Bazzill and stuck on the back.

I thought these were really great and can see me making a good few more - lol!


Enjoy!!