HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Happy 143rd Birthday Canada!

It's also the 1st of the month, which means a new challenge at Paper Cubed!

The challenge this month is to create a celebration table decoration!

I chose to decorate for Canada Day! 

Pop on over to P3 to see what the rest of the uber-talented design team has come up with! Don't forget to check out their blogs and leave them some love. While you're there, why don't you play along with our challenge? You could win some fabulous Tim Holtz products!

I am also entering this for the H2H challenge this week, which is "to get patriotic and use stars and/or stripes". Well, up here we celebrate Canada Day on July 1 and I used stripes! Canadians are patriotic too :)

(Click on the picture for a larger view)

Recipe:

CTMH papers from X7107B That's Amore and X7115B Jingle paper packs

CTMH D1291  Celebrate Canada (Retired) My Acrylix Stamp Set

CTMH Z2166 Tulip  and Z2114 Cocoa Exclusive Inks

CTMH Z679 Liquid Glass adhesive

CTMH  1385White Daisy and X5753Tulip Cardstock

4" styrofoam ball

wooden dowel

empty peanut can

florist oasis

hot glue gun

toothpicks

white satin ribbon

This topiary centerpiece was fairly easy to make, although time-consuming...

I started with a styrofoam ball and an empty peanut can stuffed with florist oasis with rocks under it to weight it (the ball can get top heavy when it's done).
I used a narrow dowel to suspend the styrofoam ball into the decorated can. Everything was secured with a hot glue gun.

Then I made many, many paper roses with various CTMH B&T duos papers in shades of Tulip and Cranberry, and white.
There are several paper rose tutorials on youtube, I modified mine to glue a toothpick into the center of each one so it could be stuck into the styrofoam ball.
Once the ball was full of roses, I filled in some of the open spaces with maple leaf stamped paper strips, also stuck in with toothpicks.

I then covered the top of the can with crinkled paper strips, and stuck in the heart shaped flags.

I plan to use this for Valentine's Day too, I'll just switch out the Maple Leaf stamped items for ones stamped with hearts!

As I post this, I realize I have been neglecting my blog for the past 12 days! My apolgies! June has been such a busy month, and we took the kids camping on the last day of school so I've been having internet withdrawal :( 

Thank you so much for continuing to visit my little craft blog!

Lorrinda

EDIT to add: I have had several requests for a paper rose tutorial, I found a very good photo tutorial HERE and a video with some shortcuts HERE. I combined the two to make my roses. I'd like to add that cardstock is too heavy to make these, printed paper works much better. If you have some that is printed on both sides (like CTMH B&T duos paper) even better!

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This project was chosen for the Friday Five at H2H challenges!  I was hoping a Canadian entry would make it into the "patriotic stars and/or stripes" challenge finalists. Thank you so much ladies!