It’s All About Blue!

Aloha, all!

     And welcome to my stop on the "It's All About Blue" Blog Hop!  This is a small blog hop sponsored by a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators who get together online just to do blog hops, and you may have come from Cynthia Ferenz's blog, Stampin' Dragon.  I've been a member since this group started several months ago, and this is the first chance I've had to be able to take part in a tour.  If you can say the word, "Busy," then you know how I've been. 

     And if you can say the word, "Blue," you'll be correctly describing my project for the day!  You might remember my last blog post where the challenge was to use my favorite Christmas Colors, and I chose Blue and Silver.  Well, as happens a lot of the time, that blue and silver was still out on my craft room work table, so it was easy to conjure up some blue.  But conjuring up the design was a bit harder. 

     Earlier this week, I saw a photo of one of the tables in the White House.  It was delightfully decorated with paper-crafted Christmas Trees.  I was sure I could duplicate them, but then I ran up against my own limitations, especially in terms of my creativity.  As you can imagine, the White House has only the BEST decorators, and somehow my invitation got lost in the mail this time around.  You need not wonder why that happened!  What I ended up with every time I tried to put this tree together was something that looked like a bunch of lamp shades stacked on top of one another.  I finally got the height and width and colors organized the way that I wanted them and I like the way it turned out.

     I made the Star with some of the Silver Glimmer Paper, featured in the Stampin' Up! 2011 Holiday Mini Catalog, cutting it with the Sizzix Stars #2 Die. The next problem was decorating the tree.  I tried wrapping various kinds of ribbons around it – rats, we don't have that lovely silver trim from last year from Stampin' Up! – then I tried hanging some bells on the bottoms of the layers.  It was just too much – so I decided to leave it alone, except for some circles of the Silver Glimmer Paper that I hope look like ornaments.  Oh, and some of those delightfully sparkle-y Basic Rhinestone Brads.  The circles were punched with the Owl Builder Punch (those "eyes" are SOOO useful!) and the bottoms of the three layers of the tree were punched with the Eyelet Border Punch.  Oh, and the blue colors that are in the tree are Marina Mist (my "go to" blue for this Christmas season) and some Bashful Blue for an accent.

   I designed the whole tree as I went along so there's no tutorial yet.  But I will have one done by the end of next week which, coincidentally, is just about the time I'm going to be sending out my next Newsletter.  So, if you'd like a copy of the instructions – including a template for making the top "layer" of the tree, sign up for my Newsletter today!  The link is at the top of the column on the left.  I'll be including several different kinds and sizes of paper Christmas trees!  I can't let the White House outdo Robin's Craft Room, can I??

     And speaking of being outdone – you have just GOT to go check out Angela Walters' Blog, Life With a Weiner Dog.  I'm sure that Angela and Frank have something wonderful to share with you today.