Rosette Tip and Christmas Cards

I have created a few cards for the March 2012 Christmas Card Challenge in the Waltzingmouse Stamps Forum, which is to use the colours blue and brown on our cards. In the process, I stumbled upon a clever way to help in the assembly of paper rosettes (near end of post).


My first attempt with this colour combination was only so-so. It's a card for Santa to leave behind on Christmas Eve. I adore the vintage border stamp that I used to create the background "wallpaper" with Vintage Sepia Versafine ink.

Not sure if you noticed, but the "tree" set is actually Santa's shoe! Here's the heel:

I tried again, using the current Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge sketch for my layout. (See the two snowflakes in the background?)

You might notice this is a tad grungy. I am currently taking the Tim Holtz Creative Chemistry 101 online class, exploring techniques using a number of his products. When I made this card I was messing around with Distress Inks, so went a little crazy with the Vintage Photo and Walnut Inks! I used a new stamp that looks like striped ticking on the right hand side of the stamped background. Love that new stamp!

For my third and final Blue and Brown Card for Christmas I had the itch to make a rosette.

I happened to use a Tim Holtz die to make mine, but you can make these easy enough by accordion-folding a long strip of paper. For this card, I used two strips to create a large rosette. In doing so, I discovered a neat trick.

After I joined the ends of the long strip together, I needed to press down on the center of the vertical standing rosette to make it lie somewhat flat, and then attach an anchoring base such as a disk of paper to stabilize the rosette and maintain its circular shape. I tend to be all thumbs with this maneuver.

Inspiration struck! I spied a spool of tape on my table and realized the large circular opening would nicely corral my rosette, freeing up both hands to glue the base down. (I realize if you have not made a paper rosette, this won't make any sense. But for those of you who have, you'll get the "Aha!" moment I had.)

Spool of tape.

Creative Memories circle making tool.

The spool of tape worked well, but was a little large for my rosette, so I tried an acrylic Creative Memories Circle Template tool with a slightly smaller hole and it worked perfectly. 
Then I started looking around for other items, and this small roll of tape with a standard size hole was perfect for smaller rosettes. The circular shape holds the rosette snugly, and gives me the option of distributing my accordion folds evenly before glueing down the base piece (seen below in the upper right corner).

Hope this tip is helpful to you! Thanks for stopping by and scrolling all the way down here to the end!