Heather Roselli Designs

Lollipop Flower Hybrid

Hi!  SaraL here with a nice, straightforward hybrid idea for you to try.  This mini project would make a small but sweet party treat, teacher gift or even something a little different for Easter.  Take a peek:

…and I made the whole project super simple by using Heather’s DIY Printable Templates – this set to be precise:

I opened the small & medium flower, plus the leaf .psd files in Photoshop, and decorated the templates with pretty Spring coloured papers from Heather’s A Brand New Day kit.  I didn’t worry about the white central hole guides in the templates being visible, as I knew they would be easily hidden by the lollipop. 

After printing & cutting out, I layered a leaf, large flower & small flower for each lollipop flower.  Next I punched a hole through the hole guide of each of these flower sets, ready for the lollipop stick to be pushed through. 

I repackaged the lollipops in clear kitchen wrap (clingfilm), so that the wrappers didn’t detract from my finished flower!

Finally, I assembled my flowers as you can see!  If you are giving them as a mini gift, you could easily tie a tag onto the flower ‘stalk’ with a little ribbon or twine, or even add the tag as another layer of the flower as in the top photo! 

Who could resist such a pretty gift?

Let the fun begin!

Welcome to Heather's Blog Party, we are so glad you are joining the fun! Have you seen Heather's newest kit "Hallotween", the bundle with the add on paper dolls and the fantastic printables for candy wrappers? We all loved it so much that we wanted to create even more using this kit and of course we share with you!

So today I bring you these adorable hybrid lanterns, a very easy project and great to do with the kids on a rainy afternoon. You can download the file here, it includes the instructions as a PDF file also

You will need:

• 2 little glass jars (375 ml/12 oz)
• orange and purple paint( we used acrylic paint which gives you a nice gloomy light but you could also use window colour which will let more light through than with acrylic paint)
• a flat paint brush
• cutting mat
• craft knife
• cutter
• pair of scissors
• glue
• glitter or glitter glue ( you can use any colour you like; In my case we used purple and antique silver)
• 2 pieces of 18 or 20 gauge wire cut to a length of about 60cm (24 inches)
• some ribbon to decorate
• the lantern paper strips printed out

And here is how you do it:

1. First paint one jar orange and the other purple. Let the paint dry completely.

   

2. Meanwhile cut out the paper pieces, use the craft knife to cut out the bats and skulls. This is a Mum job when doing this craft with little kids ;)

   

3. If you use glitter, distribute a fine line of glue around the edges of the cut out bats and skulls and then sprinkle with glitter. Do this over a container to catch remaining glitter to reuse it. Shake off excess glitter and let dry.

   

4. Measure the strip around the jar to see if you have to cut of a little to fit. Evenly distribute glue on the back of the paper strips and stick them around the jars.
5. Take one piece of wire and wrap it around the jar leaving one end around 2.5 inches (4cm). Wrap the shorter end around the longer part a couple of times and snip off the end of the wire with a cutter.

   

6. Loop the long end over the top of the jar to the other end and pull it through the wire loop from underneath as shown on picture on the next page. Make sure you have the wire exactly the opposite so that the lantern hangs straight. 

   

7. Again leave a short end of about 2.5 inches and wrap it up and around the handle tightly, cut of excess wire with cutter.
8. Tie a nice ribbon around the neck of the jar and wire loop and you are finished!

   

   
   

Halloween Paint Can Candy Boo-quet

This weekend I have the cutest (if I do say so myself!) Halloween kit debuting, called Boo Crew. I wasn't really looking forward to doing "another" Halloween kit this year, but once I got started drawing these cute characters I had a difficult time stopping! I had such a great time with this kit that I had to make some extra graphics - so watch the blog next week to pick up that free gift! Also be sure to check out the set of Printable Treats that Aly Hall made to coordinate with Boo Crew - they are adorable and I had such a great time making up the samples. 

In the midst of all this Halloween fun I was inspired by Cindy's star bouquet project that she created with my Freedom Rings kit. I wanted to do something similar for my MIL for Halloween, but I couldn't find any pumpkin or other halloween shaped boxes at the craft store, so I went with a quart size paint can instead to create mine. Here is how mine turned out:

I had a great time making this! It was so much fun and so very easy too! If you can make a chipboard album - this is even easier! Here is how I did it:

Supplies:

Quart size paint can

cylinder shaped floral foam

misc ribbon

misc chipboard for tag

tissue paper

adhesive

hot glue

Three 1/8 inch square balsa wood sticks (or thin dowels)

black paint

sealer

tissue paper

Prepare:

1. Cut balsa wood sticks into 8" lengths with craft knife (dowels are more difficult to cut). Paint with black acrylic paint. Allow to dry. Seal if desired.

2. Create two 6.625inx4.625in "layouts" for can. I made just one and printed it twice on one sheet of paper. Print and cut just barely inside the edges.

3. Create 2.25x3.5in fun size wrappers and 1.5x3in mini size wrappers for candy bars (mine has 4 fun size and 5 mini bars in it - but you could do a few more). Print and cut just barely inside the edges.

4. Print strips of patterened papers for "curls". I printed 4 different pieces, each 8x2.5 on one sheet of paper and then cut in roughly 1/4in strips and I have enough for several more cans!

5. If you are making a tag of some kind, prepare and print it as well.

Assemble:

1. Use ModPodge or other adhesive to attach layouts to can - they will overlap each other just slightly. Allow to dry, seal and then allow to dry thoroughly.

2. Wrap candy bars tightly with wrappers and secure with adhesive. Place stick under new wrapper (on mini bars you can go under the folded original wrapper for even tighter fit). Tie each stick with a ribbon bow just below candy bar.

3. Hot glue floral foam into bottom center of can. Surround lightly with tissue paper to top of foam.

4. Place sticks with candy bars and bow into floral foam at different angles to make a pretty arrangement. Be sure to vary the heights for more interest.

5. Crumple and weave a few strips of tissue paper around the top of floral foam in between sticks to hide floral foam.

6. Wrap strips of patterned paper around pencil or small dowel and place between and around sticks on top of tissue paper until you have a look you like.

7. Tie ribbon bow around top edge of can and attach tag if you made one to a stick near the edge of the can. 

Display, or give as a gift. Enjoy!

Please share pics of what you make! Link us up in the comments! :) And Happy Halloween!! :)

Tutorial Tuesday... Tilt-a-Whirl

Ok, so no whirling involved unless you like this idea so much that you jump up from your chair and being to spin around.

I know. Not likely.

I've always enjoyed those photos with really cool angles, but never remember to take them. So I started doing this...

Original image

Activate crop tool

Select an area to crop, hover your mouse around one of the transformation boxes till you see your cursor turn into 2 arrows with a curve. Click and rotate.

   

  Final image

Tutorial Tuesday... Those Darn Blurry Photos

(Hey, here's a new idea...  Tutorial Tuesday on Wednesday! Doesn't that sound great? LOL! I had this post all ready and then forgot to activate it yesterday. My bad!)

Don't you HATE it when this happens? You take what you hope is a darling photo, go home and pop your memory card into your computer and find this...

Gah! Put this blurry photo on your scrapbook page and you're doomed. Actually, odds are you'll never use it at all. I used to even delete them completely till I tinkered around and came up with this technique. Yes, it's true, I actually figured this one out on my own. Yay me! This is how I personally do it, but every photo is a little different so you'll have to adjust your settings as you go.

First, run an unsharp filter. This was my settings.

My photo is dark (which is why it ended up blurry in the first place. Sun is setting earlier and earlier these days. Sob!) so I'm going to adjust the shadow and highlights.

And these are the settings that worked for my photo...

And here's where I'm sitting right now... starting to improve already.

 

Pretty grainy, so I'm going to soften it up with the diffuse glow filter.

Now it's really looking better, but these sweet faces are way too grainy for my liking.

I'm going to fix this with my blur tool.

And set the strength at 20%.

Using a very soft brush I brush over their faces, avoiding the eyes, till that darn grain is gone. I take my time with this step (because I have to have everything just perfect, but for some reason the effect isn't showing very well here. Probably because the save-for-web is pixelating it too much. You'll just have to trust me that their faces are smooth and UNgrainy, if that is indeed a word)

Adjust the curves a bit...

And end up with this...

And I've made a darn fine photo. Check out the difference...

I hope you enjoyed this! Come back next Tuesday for another helpful tutorial!

I used Heather's Somebunny Loves You and Beary Good Friends kits for this page.

Tutorial Tuesday... Newpaper Photo

(This tutorial is written using Photoshop CS3. To complete the final step of this tutorial you will need some scratchy brushes which you can download for free here. If you're new to installing brushes there is a good tutorial on doing so here)

Hey out there. It's Tuesday again and more fun stuff on the way. I love how this tutorial turned out so let's get right down to business.

We're going to transform a snapshot into a newspaper style photo today. Why? Because it's fun.

Original image... my son being forced to smile on the first day of school.

Desaturate... Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (or Shift+Ctrl+U).

Run an unsharp mask. This is the settings I used on this photo, but yours may be need to be adjusted. Every photo is different.

Create a new layer and flood-fill it with a light brown color. Here's what I used.

Change blending mode to color and reduce opacity till the color of the photo looks right.

Create a another layer and flood-fill with a lighter-version of your original color. (The easiest way to do this is to click on your foreground color and adjust the lightness only.)

Now we're going to create a halftone pattern. Filter > Sketch > Halftone Pattern. Use these settings.

Set blending mode to soft light...

and reduce the opacity till your image looks something like this when you zoom in

(You know, I forgot to take a screen shot of this, but you also need to blur that layer a bit. Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Keep the radius really low... about .5)

Set your foreground to white, create a new layer and add scratches using the brush set you downloaded. Reduce opacity just a bit.

Print it or scrap it!

Beary Good Friends

Keep Out!