More May Flowers with Eileen Hull Designs

Hi everyone and welcome. This month Eileen Hull's Inspiration Team are celebrating May with projects created using Eileen Hull Designs various floral dies (both Bigz and Thinlits from Sizzix). Last week I shared a Floral Heart Wreath along with a tutorial for making the flowers and foliage - you can find it HERE. Since then the sun has remembered where we all are and now the flowers in my garden are blooming in abundance!

Feeling inspired by this month's theme and needing to create a hinged box for the Handmade at Helen's workshop at the weekend I created a second project using Eileen's flower dies;

Based on Eileen's Sizzix ScoreBoards XL Die - Book & Pages, Trinket Box & Frame I made a simple hinged lid with an aperture cut in the centre and painted it with Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints (Marine, White and Ancient). Feeling it needed a little more decoration I applied embossing ink using one of Seth Apter's rubber stamps and applied his Baked Texture 'Deep Sea' Embossing Powder from Emerald Creek Crafts. It is the perfect match for the Marine colour!

The all important flowers were cut from thin card using Eileen's Sizzix Thinlits Die Set 13PK - Stitchy Flowers & Leaf. I spritzed them with water before scrunching together and left them to dry for a few hours. Once glued together to form the blooms with added leaves I sprayed them with a mix of Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord Distress Spray Stains before highlighting with the Ancient Acrylic Paint. The leaf fronds were cut from white card using Eileen's Sizzix Thinlits Die Set 4PK - Floral Arch & Words and were arranged with the flowers to trail over the lid and sides of the box.

Though not heavy, the weight of the flowers is sufficient to hold the lid down as well as adding that glamorous finishing touch. Some coordinating ribbon and drops of Liquid Pearls 'White Opal' from Ranger completed the look.

Now, I mentioned earlier the workshop at Handmade at Helen's - this is a fantastic shop/venue in Dumfries where they have lots of exciting guest designers attending as well as a wealth of craft supplies to entice you. I had been asked to teach the assembled group of wonderful ladies how to create a Trinket Box and Junk Journal in one day, so they had their work cut out for them!

Needless to say they quickly grasped the various design alternatives and were soon putting their own spin on each project using the wide variety of materials and media that Helen had provided. By the end of the day they all had beautiful creations to take home and have promised to share them with everyone in the Eileen Hull Fan Club - in fact I know Shirley and Gael already have! In the interim I have my own photos to share alongside some taken by Helen - strangely enough most of them were camera shy or otherwise occupied at this point but Shirley and Jenny were happy to appear with their projects;

A huge thank you to everyone who came along for the class and made it such an enjoyable day. And special thanks to Helen who did a superb job organising everything (including a gorgeous lunch) and making me feel so welcome.

That's it from me for today. I'll be back again tomorrow with my latest project for the Frilly and Funkie Challenge blog. In the meantime take care of yourselves and get creative!

Jenny xxx