Doily Details

Doilies, doilies everywhere! If you've arrived here from Nichole's blog and you're participating in the Doily Hunt, then the picture above is what you're looking for! How many doilies do you see? Well... you're about to see about a million more :) so prepare yourself to be double doilied. It's release week at Papertrey Ink so that means loads of fun new stamp sets and accessories... and today's theme... {insert sigh of happiness here}... doilies. Good grief, I've died and gone to doily heaven. But these ain't your grandma's doilies. Check it... That would be part of our school area... now decorated for Valentine's Day with a colorful doily garland. {Because school's always more fun with decorations, right?} And this doily is going to have a second life as a decoration for Noelle's room... because it just seems wrong to put something so cute away after just one little holiday. I used the Parisian Lace Doily die to make the base doilies out of Aqua Mist cardstock. The Parisian Lace die comes with the coolest little gadget to make getting all those tiny cut pieces of cardstock out of the die cuts in no time... let me tell you, that thing is genius. Serious time-saver. Therefore, I love it :) The white doilies were made with one of the new Doily Details dies. I just attached the white dolies to the aqua mist doilies with some foam tape for some extra dimension. I love how well all the doily dies work together! The top part of the garland is made with a fun little connected heart garland made with regular old crepe paper streamers and the largest Heart Prints die. I added a few Valentine's Day decorations to my mantle last week and one of those decorations ended up being the inspiration for my garland project... It's a super simple "magic trick." {Or, at least, that is what I told my 6 year old. He was actually impressed.} Simply take your crepe paper and line it up over the heart die. Fold the crepe paper back and forth, back and forth... To keep the hearts connected, you need to make sure that your folded stack of crepe paper fits within the edges of the die. The crepe paper will flatten out a bit as you work with it, so it's better to start out a bit narrow as, in my experience, the folds seemed to widen out a bit as I went along. Crepe paper is like magic in that it is so darned thin, you can fold it up about a million times and cut the whole thing in one pass through your die cut machine. Ok, maybe not a million, but a lot. The piece I used for my garland is one continuous piece. Nearly a million hearts in only one pass of the die cut machine... you just can't beat that. {Yes, I am now addicted to crepe paper.} When you pull it out of the die, it's a bit like one of those "magic towels" that you see in the stocking stuffer section at Christmas, etc. You know... those towels that are all squished down to the size of less than a hockey puck but when you add a drop of water it somehow explodes into a full size towel. That's what makes this project magic. You just gently peel the layers apart and somehow it explodes into a cutie pie garland. This would totally work with loads of dies. Try it out. Impress your kids. Wear a tophat. {Send a picture if you do the last part.} To reinforce the joints, you can add a little strip of scotch tape to the back side and trim the tape around the edges. It easier if you do this step before you add the garland to the doilies. {Hello, voice of experience.} I used some strong adhesive squares to adhere my heart garland to the doilies. And then I needed to add some fun buttons for some extra punch.A little ribbon adhered to the last doilies makes for an easy way to hang it. Fun, right?And super quick. That makes it even better in my book. Along with the Parisian Lace die and the Doily Details die collection, we're also showing you the coordinating stamp set... Delightful Doilies. I am so, so happy with this doily set! The stamps that make up the larger doily images are split into smaller sections so that they are more manageable. I stamped all of the doilies on this card in VersaMark (watermark ink) so that I could heat emboss them with colored embossing powders (American Crafts). If you're concerned about lining the images up, let me relieve you. It was pretty much a cinch to line the images up, and that was with clear ink! Also, I find that it's so much easier to get a clean impression with a smaller stamp than with a very large stamp. Stamping the large image a few times and getting a clean image every time was much less frustrating than stamping a very large image and getting an uneven impression. I used the medium and small Delightful Doilies dies to layer my images. This sentiment from Fillable Frames #3 just seemed perfect. I masked the stamp with scotch tape, stamped the sentiments separately, and heat embossed the second part. I love how it turned out. The bright colors mixed with the kraft cardstock give it a kind of bohemian feel to me... a nice change for doilies. It makes me happy. That, and the 70 degree weather that is making its home here this week. {Hello, sunshine. I've missed you.} For more doily happiness, just check out the rest of the Papertrey Ink design team... Nichole Heady Betsy Veldman Erin Lincoln Maile Belles Lisa Johnson Dawn McVey Heather Nichols Melissa Phillilps Michelle Wooderson Danielle Flanders Later! {Parisian Lace} garland Dies - Parisian Lace, Doily Details (both available 2/15), Heart Prints Cardstock - Aqua Mist, White Accesories - Vintage buttons, Button twine {You are my Sunshine} card Stamps - Delightful Doilies (available 2/15), Fillable Frames #3 Cardstock - Kraft, Rustic Cream Ink - VersaMark, Dark Chocolate Dies - Delightful Doilies (available 2/15) Other - Button twine