Hi again everyone,

Well we're three shows in and hopefully lots of you now have a good stash of lovely goodies from Lisa's collections. The versatility is amazing and the fact everything goes so well together is testament to Lisa's creativity and the fact she thinks like a true crafter.

For today's post I thought I would show how I took the stunning 4 point flowers from the show on the 28th Feb and made them into a little spring table centre - perfect for a Mother's Day or Easter gift and these little beauties will last forever - bonus!!!

Lisa Horton Crafts goodies used: - 4 point flower stamp, pennies in a row stencil, clear embossing powder, green sisal (I love this stuff) and a sneaky peek of the Woodgrain stamp which will be coming very soon (you'll just have to keep watching the shows to see when!!). :-)

I started by simply stamping the two largest flower stamps onto parchment multiple times with my favourite Distress Oxide colours and then added a little bit of coloured pencil to make them dual tone (no need to be neat and tidy with this - nature is perfect in it's imperfection so just go for it).  I then ran the stamps through my die cutting machine - life's too short for fussy cutting!!! I then flipped the die cuts over (you want the stronger colour to be on the outside) took a large flower shaping ball tool and pressed into the centre's to start giving a bit of shape - this also helps break up the fibres in the paper and makes it nice and flexible. Use a pokey tool to pop a hole into the centre of each flower ready for adding in the stems. Using the side of a pair of scissors or tweezers curl each petal (a bit like curling ribbon) so they close into the centre and then flick out the very ends of the petals so they look more lifelike.

Once you have done all that use your fingers to squish the flowers so they look quite closed and slot a single flower stem through the centre curling it round your finger at the base of the flower so the flower head droops down.

Next step was building my display stand - I used a simple MDF circle and covered it with paper and then used two different greens through the pennies in a row stencil to create the 'grass'. I built a little box (or you could just use a matchbox if you have one handy) to use as my planter - I added a little shelf inside to sit some air dry clay in which will hold the flowers later. I stamped the woodgrain stamp in a brown ink and then used clear embossing powder to make the grain stand out and be textured, tore this into strips to make planks and added more ink to the edges and across the embossing to make the wood look even more life like. I added the planks around the box I had made to make it look like a large wooden crate, popped a bit of air dry clay into the dip I had created and a little on the ground for a rogue clump of escapee flowers and added a bit of the green sisal.

Once all that was done it was a simple case of adding in the flowers to finish of the display and voila, a little spring flower display to brighten up a dull day.

Hope you like my little design - I definitely enjoyed this one. :-) 

See you all soon, Jo. xxx