Roll Up, Roll Up!!

Following CHA, the shop is being flooded with exciting new products - it's hard to choose what to buy first!! But as soon as I saw the new releases in stock from My Little Shoebox, I immediately fell in love with the Roll Up Flower die cut sheets and new they'd be top of my purchase list!

The sheets consist of die cut shapes, which easily roll up to create fabulous flowers, as well as some bonus ultra-trendy cloud and pennant shapes to add to your pages too. There's a sheet for each of the five new lines released at CHA, including the Playtime & Destination lines pictured below, so there's  a colour way to match any project.

I decided to use the beautiful Audrey line to create a page; the feminine colours and bow motifs were a perfect match for an old photo of my Grandmother that I'd received the very same week as my goodies arrived.

The Roll Up die cut flowers couldn't be easier to create:

1. You start by popping your chosen shape out from the sheet and carefully separating the spiral (it's joined together in places by tiny little paper dots).

2. Begin rolling your flower up - starting from the outside working in to the centre. I found that rolling the paper around a cocktail stick helped to get me started and made it easier to hold while rolling it up.

3. As you roll, you should start to see the flower forming as you roll:

4. As you get towards the end, you will see that you are left with a disc shape that can't be rolled - add some adhesive here,

5. Then press your rolled paper onto your adhesive and admire your finished flower!

6. You'll see that the sheet also has some plain die-cut flowers, which can be used on their own or layered together with the Roll Ups to create custom designs, mixing and matching the colours and patterns however you wish:

Here's a selection of flowers I made with the Audrey sheet. When you consider I have half of the die cut sheet still left in the packet it really is excellent value for money at £2.99 - you have lots to play with!

When you begin to think about adding beads, buttons, and bling to the flowers too, the possibilities are endless. The completed flowers are really pretty and add a great deal of dimension to your projects, as you can see here:

I couldn't wait to use the flowers on a page, so together with some of the matching Audrey papers, created this:

Please click on any of the following photos to view a larger image

I chose to use the pretty Funny Face paper as a base for my page, and created clusters at the bottom corners of my photo using the Roll Up flowers, together with cameo faces and bows cut from the My Fair Lady and Breakfast at Tiffany's papers.

I used a clear glaze pen to add a glossy shine to the cameos and popped a small adhesive pearl in Bubblegum Pink to them to add more detail:

I handcut a border from the Breakfast at Tiffany's paper to run along the top of my photo, along with some more of the pearls and a pretty little Jenni Bowlin bow embellishment - which not only matched the bow motifs in the papers but I later realised echoed the bows on my Grandmother's pretty silk scarf in the photo - bonus!!

I created my title using Thickers which I popped on to die cut pennants from the Roll Up sheet, and strung them together using some pink Bakers Twine. I added a little pearlescent detail to the Thickers and punched butterflies (and all around the edge of the patterned paper to highlight the artisan-label shape), using Liquid Pearls...another product that is super useful and incredible value for money - it lasts for ages!

Thanks, as always, for stopping by xxx