Creative Expressions Sheer Inspiration Blog Hop!

Hello!
Yay, a blog hop! I do like a good blog hop to play along with, don't you?!
So..... Welcome to the Sheer Inspiration blog hop, brought to you by the lovely folks over at Creative Expressions! If you have arrived here from Tracys blog, then you're in the right place...if not, no matter! The full list of all taking part is here:

Tracy Evans

Trish Latimer (me!!)

Jean Gursoy

Trace Metcalfe

Gillian Simson

Tracey Laughton

Shary Nettleship

Michelle Webb

Don't forget to check out our fellow DT member Kim Dellow's blog on Friday April 5th for a special surprise!

Now...what did I make? This....

The focus of the blog hop is to showcase some of the gorgeous ribbon Creative Expressions has. I have chosen the fabulous stripey Grosgrain ribbon, in the black/ivory colourway. As you can see, it didn't stay ivory for long!

I created flowers from my ribbon, here is how.....

First, cut the ribbon into strips...

Then sew the ends together to turn them into cylinders....

Next, sew along the one edge of the cylinder, using a running stitch...

Pull the thread tight, and oversew a few times to secure....

Now, you could use the flower just like this, but I like to get messy! To dye the ribbon, simple cover with Distress Stains and then dry...

When you dye any kind of fabric like this, the resulting colour will depend on what that fabric is made from. Pure cotton will give a far darker colour than a fabric with lots of manmade fibres in it. This is just a case of trying out your fabric (or ribbon of course!) and looking to see what shade is created!
I punched a circle of card to act as my flower centre. I coloured the card with the exact colour (Seedless Preserves) of Distress Stain that I used for the ribbon.....

You can see how the manmade fibres in the ribbon tone down the purple, compared to the colour on the cardstock. I love the tone on tone look, personally!
The flower is now all ready to be added to your project!
I started with an 8 x 8 piece of cardstock, and added background colour using Distress Stains in Peacock Feathers, Shabby Shutters and Seedless Preserves. Simply apply stain to your craft sheet, spray with water then dip and swish the card through the mess! I wanted white spaces, to did this a little more sparingly than usual!

The background was then stamped using the same Distress colours, just in ink pad form! I used Bubble wrap background, Chicken wire, Alphabet and a Grid from the Urban Beats plate....

I used coils of wire for my flower stems...

My turquoise flower was created in the same was as the other two, I just cut the ribbon into strips before I pulled the running stitch tight. Be careful not to snip too far if you try this, or you'll chop up the whole thing by mistake!

The leaves are actually petals from Sam Pooles fab Zentangle Flower stamp......

I added a few stripey touches to echo the stripey-ness (is that a word?!) of the ribbon.... a strip down one side..

And some 'grass' along the bottom (mainly to hide the glue where I attached the wire coils, but don't tell anyone!)

I had initially created smaller 'grassy' pieces to add at the bottom, but went with a longer strip in the end. I still used the 'rejects' along the edges though, I quite like them!
The simple words were typed and then glued on...

Phew....and here it is again so you don't have to scroll back up!

I hope you like my ribbon creation!
The marvellous people at Creative Expressions are offering a prize of £15 on each blog on the hop! To enter the giveaways simply leave a comment on each of the 8 DT blogs (listed above). The hop will close and prize winners will be announced on Monday 8th April on the Creative Expressions News blog. One winner will be chosen by Random Number Generator from the comments of EACH of the 8 blog hop posts!

 The next blog to hop to is Jean Gursoy

Enjoy!

love Trish xxxxxxx