Santa Claus Lane - Simon Says Stamp DT Card & A Twirly Thingy Tutorial!

Good morning peeps,

Yesterday my plans of spending the whole day playing in my craft room went to pot as hubby now has another week off work & idiot here went & bashed & bruised her bad shoulder on a door & then forgot what I was doing & pulled my cars handbrake on with my bad arm instead of reaching over & doing it with my right hand, I won't tell you what I said but the air was blue both times lol.

Today is new challenge day at

Simon Says Stamp

& this week our challenge is 

photo inspiration

The possibilities are endless with this lovely piccy, just perfect for Remembrance Day, thinking of you, use the colours, poppies etc.

I did intend using a Poppy stamp but Poppies make me feel sad as they always make me miss seeing my dad all dressed up & proud in his uniform, buttons all polished up ready for the Remembrance Day Parade through the town.

Anyway back from memory lane lol, I decided to make a Christmas card instead & challenge myself to use the colours as I don't usually use the traditional reds & greens for Christmas cards and to be honest I'm not sure I will again lol.

Ingredients -

Images - Magnolia, Santa hands out presents, Holly Swirls & Santa bench

Medium - Copics

Papers - Melissa Frances Deck The Halls

Sentiment - Inkadinkado

Sparkle - gold & diamond stickles

Pearls - Melissa Frances

Twirly thingy - homemade using MS Microbeads, scroll down for tutorial

Tools - MS Poinsettia Flourish PATP, Nesties, Spellbinder fancy tags, Magnolia Doo Hickey Mistletoe, Hellebores & leaf

As always our lovely Heidi is sponsoring our challenge with a whopping $50 in store spending spree.

Don't forget to keep an eye on the store blog for new products, tutorials & fabby giveaways

 I'm not entering any challenges this time as I just don't have time :(

I've had loads of requests to share a tutorial of how I make my "Twirly stems" so I hope this helps

Ingredients -

 Micro Beads / Glitter

Florists wires (not the really thin ones) from garden centres / florists or other floral suppliers

 Spray adhesive / strong glue

Tray or scrap paper

Thin stick / pen / plastic straw

Oasis (optional)

I begin by wrapping one end of my wire around the stick (I've used an Orchid plant support stick), and gradually turn the stick while holding the wire to coil it around the stick

 Once you are near to the end of your wire straighten out the end of the wire as this "stem" is used to glue the twirly on the card, and then slide off the stick

 The shorter & wider "Twirly stem" I coiled by wrapping around a quickie glue pen to show the sizes vary depending on the thickness of the the stick/pen/straw etc you are using to wrap the wire around so use whichever suits you

 Once the wire has been "twirled" I pop the glitter or micro beads in the tray ready to use & either give the twirly a really good spray of adhesive or "dunk" the twirly in the glue, remove and let any excess run off back into the bottle. I've used Colall glue mainly because I'm able to show you properly what I mean as it's easy to see through the bottle, & I tend to squeeze the bottle to make the glue rise and cover my twirly properly. If you use this Colall glue you need to work fast with it as it's fast drying.
 I find the Stick & Stay spray easiest & quickest to use, luckily I am well stocked up on this at the moment as I have 2 new cans left over from my DT packs from when I designed for Crafters Companion.

After any excess glue has dripped off or you have sprayed the twirly thoroughly with adhesive, roll it around in the microbeads / glitter keeping hold of it by the stem & making sure it is all covered.

Now pop your twirly stems either in oasis or out of the way somewhere to allow the glue to dry thoroughly and you're done.

In the picture below the 2 twirly stems on the left are from Magnolia Sweden & were part of my prize for winning TOMIC, and the tall thin twirly I have covered with glitter and the other 2 with micro beads to show the difference.

As you can see there are different heights and widths, it's totally up to you to choose the size you want them just adjust the space between each coil when shaping the wire, there is no right or wrong way of making them just have fun and I hope this helps & it all makes sense!

I'm done peeps, it's miserable weather so I'm going to have a lazy day and catch up with some blogging and try and decide what I'm going to do for a large order of party invitations.

Thanks for stopping by