Party Decorations

I love to do "non card" projects with my paper crafting supplies - and making your own party decorations is a really good way to get more out of your stash.  I had my girlfriends round for the first time since we moved on Friday for a girly dinner and cocktail party so I got busy with my stash to get the room looking pretty.

Firstly I made a fun wreath inspired by cocktails for the door to the dinning room to set the mood for the evening (we did get through quite a lot of cocktails!)

It's a really quick and easy make - take one polystyrene wreath base, one pack of paper cocktail umbrellas - chop the sticks a bit shorter and shove them in all over til you cover the whole wreath.  I then got my Martini Fancy Die from Hero Arts and die cut a load of glasses in shades of card to co-ordinate with the umbrellas and tucked a few in under the umbrellas and glued a few on top.  I added a few flamingo cocktail stirrers to up the kitsch factor to 11 ;-)

We have a big wooden fire surround in the dinning room that was ripe for decoration so I wanted to make a banner using the simply gorgeous Monogram Alphabet stamp and die set from Concord and 9th.

I spelt out "girls night" for my banner and stamped all the letters with versamark ink and embossed them all with Hero Arts Gold Embossing Powder.   I die cut them all with the co-ordinating die and then set about stamping all the floral elements using the same colours throughout.

I used coral bliss, aqualicious, parrot and evergreen from the AlteNew cube inks and then used a couple of markers in yellow and lilac to add some more detail to the smaller elements that have no stamps (they are designed to be left white but are easy to colour by hand too for a different look).  To turn it into a hanging banner I die cut the hanging tab (the bit that looks like an I in the die set) from co-ordinating shades of card, glued them back and front just where they touch the card so you can thread cord through the top.  I used Lawn Fawn's Gold Glitter twine to match the gold embossing and add extra sparkle.

As you have the whole alphabet plus and heart and an ampersand to play with you can make endless banners - names, Mr & Mrs for weddings or engagement parties, spell out number for big birthdays etc  and they are surprisingly quick to come together.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Tomorrow there is a fabulous new release from Lil' Inker Designs which should be in store mid- to late-afternoon.
• We have received 6 HUGE boxes of restocks from Lawn Fawn, so will get those online asap.
• We also have some new items from Hero Arts and Echo Park so will get those processed as quickly as we can too.
• We're still waiting for the remaining items from Art Impressions to ship from the new distributor.  We've been waiting over 8 weeks so are already working on another "new" way to get them more efficiently.

Catch you next week

Tara