Paper Seedlings: A SINGLE GOLDEN RING

When I first saw the Gold Hoops Embellishments on page 156 of the Annual Catalog I must admit I was quite intrigued. They looked classy classy classy. Measuring 2 1/8" in diameter, I needed to add them to my new catalog stash.

Unfortunately they did sit there on my work table for a few months since I wasn't sure what to do with them. They were so fine and I kept worrying myself about how I was going to attach them to a project.

When the October Paper Pumpkin arrived with all the lovely Christmas-y card stuff, I suddently had a lightbulb moment. I took one of the stamps that came with the kit, the pretty flower, and stamped it onto Whisper White cardstock. I then proceeded to color it in with my Stampin' Blends in Light Cherry Cobbler, Dark Call Me Clover and Dark Daffodil Delight.

After my coloring was done, I tried mightily to fussy cut the image. There were little berries on thin stems. Leaving a bit of white around those portions, I did not like the results. At all. Trimming off the berries (!), I was satisfied, and thought the flower would look gorgeous on one of the rings, like a little holiday wreath.

Of course, the wreath needed some greenery too! So, from Shaded Spruce cardstock, I used the evergreen branches from the Sounds of the Season (jingle bells) dies set and cut two of the small and two of the large branches.

I adhered the greenery to the back side of the flower/leaves.

As I had mentioned, I wanted to add this little arrangement to one of the golden hoops. But how?

Well, before I got that far, I wanted to have a backdrop for the wreath. So I ran a large tag through my diecut machine inside the Tasteful Textile embossing folder (page 185 of the Annual Catalog). I'd just recently gotten this embossing folder and hadn't had a chance to play with it at all. Embossing a piece of Whisper White cardstock with it, I was truly pleasantly surprised at the result. It looks exactly like a piece of fabric. It turned out to be the perfect piece to feature my little wreath.

After sort of placing everything together to see how it looked, I ended up putting Stampin' Dimensionals on the top and the bottom of the back of the flower to straddke the hoop. Holding the hoop in place, I attached the hoop to the embossed piece with the Stampin' Dimensionals. There! That took care of the bottom of the hoop.

A closer look at the main portion of the card:

I held two pieces of baker's twine, a Cherry Cobbler and a white/metallic gold, together and tied a bow. I attached the bow to the top of the hoop and to the embossed piece with a couple of glue dots, folding them to hide them from view. Yay! Now the whole hoop was held in place!

When I finished up the card by adding a sentiment in Cherry Cobbler, some Shaded Spruce cardstock, all popped up on a Whisper White card base, I felt it still needed something. The perfect something turned out to be a 1/4" strip of Cherry Cobbler cardstock at the top of the banner to balance out all the Cherry Cobbler.