Happy Monday All!

Well I haven't been posting a lot of layouts these past few weeks but I have been working on some that I will be posting later in August and I'll also have a bit of news to share. Today though I am posting a layout that I did of my granddaughters grade 7 graduation. I can't believe she'll be in High School in September - where did all those years go to! 

I decided I wanted to go for a more simple clean look for this layout as compared to the more shabby/chic style I usually do and I was really quite happy with the way it turned out. The layout was done using bits and pieces of goodies from my stash. The teal flowers are from Prima and the pink satin flower I made. I've done a quick tutorial for this flower that you can find in the post below this one. Here's the layout and I hope you'll give my tutorial a try. Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

Satin Ribbon Flower Tutorial

This tutorial has been inspired by some of the many other flower tutorials that I have seen on the internet, this one is just my way of doing this flower. 

Supplies needed:

Glue

Needle & thread

Scissors

Self adhesive flat back pearls

7” of 1 inch wide satin ribbon

7” of ½ inch wide satin ribbon

Take your 1” wide ribbon and fold it in half and stitch the ends together. I know some people like to stitch the ends together after each flower layer is gathered and tied but I find it easier to do it at the beginning. Also some satin ribbons have one side that is quite smooth and shiny and the other is more of a flat/non-shiny finish (as mine is here). If that is the case fold the ribbon in half with the shiny sides together.

 Now take your thread and knot one end of it and do a slip stitch all the way around one edge, being careful to leave a couples of inches of thread hanging from where you started your stitching. 

 Once this is done you can then take the two threads from either end and pull together to gather the ribbon and tie the threads together. I like to tie/knot the two threads 3 times just to make sure it won’t come apart. Now you can just sort of play with the ribbon to get the gathers the way you like it.

 Repeat this same stitching process to the ½” wide ribbon, pull to gather and tie the tie ends as done previously. You’ll notice that the thinner ribbon is a lot more gathered than the 1” ribbon. If you would like more gathers in the 1” ribbon you can add and extra inch or two in length to the 1” ribbon. The wider the ribbon the more length you will need if you like lots of gathers. I just happen to like mine to be less gathered on the bottom. Remember it’s your flower so you can do which ever way you like!

 Now you can glue the two layers together and add your pearl center and viola – you have a simple and pretty flower to add to your layouts or cards! You can also use a brad or whatever type of bling you’d like for your center.

I hope you'll give this tutorial a try. If you have any comments I'd love to hear them and if you have any question you can email me at sdinnell@scrappers-heaven.com. TFL!

Back home....finally!

Well I've actually been back for two weeks but I just finally managed to get in some free time to update my blog. Babysitting all of my daughters pets while she was away went pretty good. At least I managed to get in some exercise since I had to walk the dogs every day, lol. Now that I'm home I figured I'd start doing my beach walks again, since I had got use to walking everyday with the dogs, This way I can start losing some of this weight I'd put on since I quit smoking at the end of January. So far I've managed to lose 7 of the 13 lbs I've put on - Yeah!

This past Saturday we had a big BBQ for my dh's birthday which was on Sunday. It was a great time as we cooked a big huge Bison roast. I'd never had Bison before and boy was it yummy! One of our friends is the chef at our local pub around the corner from us and he made up his own yummy marinade  for the Bison and then he also brought over this super delicious Brandy Peppercorn sauce to have with it - did I say this was yummy? Very yummy! I thought I'd share a picture I took of the BBQ with you just below. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great weekend!