Sparkly Christmas Wreath

Boy you should see the sparkle on this one in person!  This week at Crafty Creations our challenge by our hostess Claire is to make a decoration, when I think of decorations I always seem to think of Christmas especially this time of year.  So the challenge is a decoration but it does not have to be Christmas it can be any kind of decoration, candle, wall hanging, Halloween, door hanger, well you get the picture.  So make sure you come a play along because Claire got us a fabulous sponsor this week.

                                    

You could win a fabulous CD from Polka Doodles.

The Magical Winter CD full of images, papers, sentiments etc....

So here is my decoration, it is a small wreath only about 8 inches big, but I created nearly the entire thing using my Cricut Imagine.

I cut all the branches from the Christmas Noel cartridge, in fact there is 16 in all.  I flood filled them with a pattern from the Imagine cartridge Snow Angel.  Here is a picture of them still on my mat.

I flipped some of them in CCR so the some would be going in the opposite direction.  Then I sprayed them with water and crunched them up, like when you make crumpled flowers so that they would not be so flat and have some dimension to them.   Beware, when you get things wet that were printed with the Imagine the ink fades and runs, lesson learned so the colors are not as bright as they started out to be.  Maybe if I let the ink set overnight it might not have happened, will have to try it again some time.  Here is a picture of them well some of them drying on a paper plate.

Then I cut a circle out of green card stock and chipboard and glued them together to make it heavier and punched a whole in the back for hanging it up.  Then using my hot glue gun I started to glue down all my branches in various directions till I completed the circle.  When they were all glued down I very lightly misted it with spray glue and sprinkled clear and green glitter over the whole thing, had to do something to make up for the color I lost when I wet all the branches.

While I had my glue gun out (don't get it out very often) I decided to have some fun and make some skittles, I made several small ones to color later, then I got the idea to make BIG ones and sprinkle them with red glitter, after all I was already covered from head to toe in glitter.  They came our great, I am very happy with them and they were the perfect decoration for my wreath.  

So one of my dilemmas was, what else would I put on there, wanted to do a bow but nothing I had looked right.  So Sunday my hubby took me to Michaels to try and find something, well after picking up several Christmas stickers decorations etc still nothing I brought home seem like the right fit.   I decided to cut out my own bow.  I cut the bow using the Ashleys Alphabet cartridge and coloring it using my Imagine.  The top layer I covered with red glitter and it was perfect!!!! I even added one of my special glitter dots to the center of the bow.

You can see some of the sparkle in this picture.  

So go ahead jump on in and let's see your decorations.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my wreath and extra pictures of the process, I always forget to take pictures along the way.

Challenges for this card
Simon Says Stamp  Sparkle & bling   ends  - 10/11
Make it Monday   Always anything goes   ends  10/9
Anything Challenge  Dies cuts and/or Punches   ends  10/16
Scrapalicious USA  Something that hangs   ends  -  10/11