Kiwi Lane Designs Blog Hop

Welcome to Ladybugs's Spot!!!  

Sooo excited to be participating in the Kiwi Lane Designs Blog hop!  Read all the way through to find out how to enter to win their $25 giveaway and a BONUS favorite woodcraft original from my Etsy Shop!!!

This is my first time working with Kiwi Lane's designer templates, and I loved it!  I received the Christmas set to create with.  Perfect!!!  

Here's what I came up with......

The Poinsettia template totally grabbed my attention first, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  I traced the template onto five different dark red papers, making three of each.  Next, I cut an "X" style slit in the middle of each flower then folded each of the petals in half to give it some dimension.

Staggering the three papers for each flower together, I layered them under one of these cute, little gold ornaments inserted through the slits in the papers.  Next, I stuck in a small spray from my craft store berry picks and added some floral stem wire to the back to hold it all together.  Once the wire was secure, I wrapped and shaped the berries around the ornament part.

View from the back with wire stem.

I repeated this same process for all five flowers, then arranged them in a tall skinny vase.  Wanted to incorporate another texture and some green, so I filled the vase with a garland clipping.  This provided some great stability for my wire stems, which were super easy to bend and arrange exactly as I wanted them to go.  I used another template to cut some bright, corrugated, green leaves, tucked them in and tied some burlap around the vase with twine. Absolutely love the way it looks!!!

These flowers also look great tucked into garlands or wreaths!
Or on packages too!

 Loved those bright green leaves so much I thought they would make for a very elegant wrapping on a special gift.  Gold paper, burlap, some red ribbon..... glued on my leaves, three pieces of curled copper jewelry wire and my favorite glittered glass gems.  Beautiful!!!

 You make the glitter berries by brushing mod podge onto the back them sprinkling with glitter.  Brushing on your adhesive allows for great control over where your sparkles will go.  Simply shake off the excess and finish with a light spray of a high gloss varnish to seal it all in.  I've been using these on all kinds of projects lately and they always look fantastic!

The leaf and berry combination would also make darling cards!  You can even incorporate craft pick berries in place of the jewels with the leaves like we've done in our Christmas Joy Letters!

As a wood designer, I had to make some of these darling ornaments!  The large size template in the set would be perfect for some big, chunky ornaments, but I really loved the idea of creating re-usable gift tags!  Using the smaller template I cut out some on 1/8" plywood with my bandsaw.  So quick and easy!

 Sanded down any rough edges, drilled a small hole and sprayed the back side with chalkboard paint.  Took two coats.  Then I painted the front and sides with bright colors and covered them with glitter using the same technique as the glass stones.  Tied some silver cording through the hole and now I have lots of happy, blingy tags to tie onto Christmas presents!  The chalkboard backing makes them totally re-usable and adds such a cute finishing touch!

Seriously loved working with these designer templates and will definitely look for more from Kiwi Lane!

So, here's how this blog hop works.....  Visit each of the blogs listed below and leave a comment on each one as you go along.  You receive one entry per comment and a random winner from one of the blogs will receive a $25 gift certificate to Kiwi Lane Designs!  Awesome!!!

* WIN your favorite item from our Etsy Shop too!!! Leave an additional comment on this post about your favorite item from Ladybugs' Spot to be entered to win it!  Shipping included.  Bonus entry if you also become a follower of our blog!  That's a Win Win for sure!  :)

This contest will run though 11:59 PM MST on Sunday, December 8th.


Here's the blog line up.....

1. Kiwi Lane - Kiwi Lane Designs
2. Mary Hartmann—Bowden - Me Quilter
3. Janie McKissick - Typical Scrapbooker Crafts
4. Carrie Bryant - Happy Scrappin’
5. Amy Berrett - Ladybugs’ Spot *You are here!*  
6. Cassandra Henson - For the Love of Scrap
7. Carrie McDaniel - Carried Away with Crafting
8. Apryl Holland - One Scrappy Soul
9. Erin Colby - Our Slice of Cheese
10. Brenda Smith - The Imperfect Scrapper

Have fun and good luck!!!