I'll tell you what my first impression of this new Big Shot die was not favorable. Yes, I admit it. I thought to myself, that looks very fussy. It looks like it will be difficult to put together. Do I really want to spend that much time fussing with a box? Then I went to convention and one of the presenters demonstrated the box. She even mentioned the word fussy. Nope haven't changed my opinion yet. Then last week I was able to get one item out of the catalog at half price. Okay, I thought, for half price I will see just how fussy this box really is. Well, I am getting ready for an upline meeting this Friday and my 12 year old Daughter Abby was wanting to "craft" with me. She has her own desk in my studio and frankly could be a Stampin' Up! demonstrator as she has been doing it as long as I have which is since she was 3.5. She often times will sit next to one of my customers gently giving them tips and hints when they are struggling with an element. She joins us at all of my downline meetings never skipping a beat, or slowing things down when we are working on projects, sometimes even teaching us a trick or two, but I digress here. She was looking for a "project" as she calls it. I said "here" and handed her the unopened die. Her eyes got really big and she said "Really?"! I said "yes", give it a try with a piece of retired Designer Series paper as a practice. So off she gets to work. She carefully read the directions (something we often forget to do) and with a little help locating my crease pad (I highly recommend it for this die) she was off to work. She needed very little help. We discussed which way the creases should be folded and she was off and running. The box went together beautifully. So guess what I did. I handed her some new DSP from the Well Worn packet and said here make it out of this for me. Here is the results. I did a little sponging on it and added a few elements. Voila' Adorable!
So the moral of the story is....yep, if a 12 year old can do it...so can I! I mean YOU!
The flower is one we made at my downline meeting last week. At convention I purchased a DVD that was available to us called Workshop Wow. It had demonstrations from all over the country. This was one that Sharon Cheng showcased at the Fort Worth regional last year. The flower is created using Coffee Filters. Yep you heard me right. It is a coffee filter flower. Of course as I do I took her idea and tweaked it. We used Aqua painters to give our flowers more of a watercolored look. Here are some of the flowers my girls made that evening. I took the picture with my iPhone so forgive the quality. But you get the idea.
Isn't the variety gorgeous?! I love the choices of color and the difference between the number of petals and if you scrunch this way or that. My daughter Abby really loved them and this week she has really gone to town creating. I challenged her to think outside the box with color and punches. She stepped it up to the Big shot and yesterday when her Aunt was visiting she said..."Just a minute" with her finger raised high and ran to her craft area. She came back with a flower magnet for Aunt Joy's fridge. It was beautiful! I didn't get a picture of it but I know Aunt Joy will love seeing it on her fridge every day! Makes me long for those days before Stainless steel! Ha Ha.
So, if you want to give it a go or want to learn how to earn it for half price too, click on my signature box to go to my Stampin' Up! website.
Blossom Box Die #123127
