Elegant Carnations

I'm off to a Regional Training Event today, joining 60 other Demonstrators for a day of fun and learning - can't wait! It's almost a mini convention and I'm so pleased to be taking along three of my downline, Helen, Cath and Alison. Cath and Ali are new demo's having only signed up in the last two months and their enthusiasm and excitement is so contagious! All three ladies are very talented in cardmaking and scrapbooking and I know their swaps will be exceptional. I will share with you what I bring home from everyone and you'll be able to see for yourself how brilliant the talent there is within Stampin' Up! I've done my swaps, last minute dot com as usual, and they're a blatant case but I'll show you them another time. What I will give you a peek of is what I've made for the Demo's Choice - this being a little competition for Demonstrators to go to town and let their creative juices flow. I think my creativity is hiding somewhere but thankfully a few weeks ago I did make something just in case I didn't get the time.... it's a box...

... not very exciting but a pretty box anyway. Over Christmas I picked up a few gift items and one of them was handsoap and hand cream packaged together. The lilac and cream packaging was so pretty of course I had to team it with some SU! colours - Lavender Lace, Very Vanilla and Elegant Eggplant with a hint of Old Olive. I also bought a fluffy cream flannel and wrapped everything together with that beautiful wide striped grosgrain ribbon. I'm sure I've said before but tying bows is the easiest with this ribbon, so soft and lush.

And then I made my box, adding some of the window sheets to the inside of the lid to give a glimpse of what's on the inside.

Monica demonstrated at Convention how to make some fabulous flowers from punch outs of the scallop circle. I've since seen a fantastic tutorial on how to also transform them into carnations as you see on my box. Emma Foulkes is the lady that has done the video and you can find it here. Although Emma used paper for her's I've used 6 scallop circles in SU! cardstock. Once the flowers were dry I wiped a glue pen over the edges of the carnation and sprinkled Dazzling Diamonds on them - very sparkly. These carnations are gorgeous and I love making them. I also made some smaller ones that you see on the sides of the box which are done in the same way but punched from the larger flower of the Boho Blossom punch.

The stamp for the outside of the box is Bella Toile, one of the large background stamps. So classy and again went with the pattern from the packaging of the handsoap and hand cream. So that's me done. I've just got to pack my swaps and I'm off to bed - it's an early morning for me and I don't really do early. I'll need to set every alarm clock in the house...ha!

Tfl,