Yee hah!

Hello there

That's it, I've done it. It's finished! and it's 13.13 on January 16th 2012. After going to the Flower Shoppe cartridge workshop yesterday and not finishing the wreath, I've now spent the morning finishing it. Well, ok and a small bit of the afternoon. In all fairness to me though I didn't get started until 10.30.

The colours are not quite what I would've chosen but that's my own fault as Mel did give us the chance to choose different papers but since it was my first one, I thought it best to go with what she gave us, so that I could make sure I was doing the right thing with the right paper. It is quite a long process, especially doing it the first time. These can clearly be done in whatever colour mix you like to alter the effect. This looks a bit twee for me.

The main difficulty people had yesterday was point 7 in the instructions, which is cutting 4 of 'HEART1' (the centre of the pink flowers). It is a very intricate cut and many of the ladies' machines were chewing up the paper. Mel suggested to use pressure 4 and blade depth 4 and she always has top speed on. We were using a mixture between coredinations paper and Bazzill. I had a new mat which I think aided me too, as Pam did the correct settings on hers and it still didn't work, so I cut them out for her and all was fine.

Rolling the spiral pieces to make the centres is quite fiddly. The main thing I learnt from that was that I put the glue on the base of the wound up paper, rather than on the tab; which is at the end of the spiral- I found it easier to keep it all in place that way. It's just something you need to get into the swing of and then it could be done with much better efficiency.

To finish it off, I sprayed it with Crafter's Companion 'Spray and Sparkle' and put some gems/brads to the centre of some of the flowers. Mel had also embossed some of the pink base flower but for my first attempt, I just wanted to learn the basic skills/techniques rather than go overboard on small detail.

That's one thing ticked off my 'Crafty Plan'. I'm so chuffed that I knuckled down and finished this today. I remained focused and therefore achieve my goal in the time frame I wanted.

I'm rather pleased with myself, so now off to ground myself with housework and dog walks although it's very sunny yet also very cold here, so the walk will be fine.

Take care out there