Hello, and welcome to the first Design-abilities blog hop! We are the Spellbinders® Blog Team and we wanted to do something fresh, fun and creative to bring our team together. But before we get started we want to let you know this blog hop is just for fun and creative inspiration we are not sponsored by Spellbinders Paper Arts®. Starting this month we are going to have a Blog Hop every other month (on the 16th) and we will have a link list to all of the designers. Sometimes we might not all be able to participate but we would still encourage you to visit all of the Blog Team members and check out their blogs. You will find all kinds of ideas for die cutting, papercrafting, mixed media, DIY projects, jewelry, home decor, lots of tutorials and techniques. As designers we are always inspired by each other and we hope to inspire you too.
For today's project I used Spellbinders die templates from five different sets: the numbers four and five dies from the 5" x 7" Matting Basics A set, leaves from the Foliage set, three different borders from the On the Edge set, and flowers from both the Rose Creations and Grand Peony Creations sets.
You know that I'm not fond of mass production, right? :-} Well, sometimes we just have to step up to the plate. . . I needed a craft project for twenty moms at our local MOPS group, and I figured that I wouldn't get by with having them make cards every month! I found some darling felt flower projects on Pinterest but needed to come up with something that they could put felt flowers on. I found several examples of phone cozies (here, here, and here). I test-sewed about half a dozen cozies, trying to come up with the best way to make a workable project for twenty moms. I really wanted to have all of the pieces pre-cut, and I wanted them to be able to be sewn by hand. (I've got to keep them busy for at least an hour!) I had already picked out flower dies from my Spellbinders stash, but I still needed to solve the problem of the body of the cozy. Then I had a brainstorm. What if I cut the wool felt pieces with some of my larger basic dies? That would make them precisely the same size and simpler to blanket-stitch. I finally settled on the 5 x 7 Matting Basics A set for a simple rectangle. I cut the fourth size up and found that it fit my iPhone perfectly! I knew that some of the moms might have larger phones though, so I cut half of the pattern packs with the next sized rectangle up; I'm hoping that we can send everyone home happy with those two sizes.
This is what my floor looked like by the time I was finished cutting--pretty bad, isn't it?
That little slanted pocket on the front can hold a credit card or a little extra cash--the emergency stash.
I have a thin case on my phone, and it fits fairly snugly in its spiffy new pocket. Wish me luck--we're working on these this morning!
I hope that you get a chance to visit each of the links below; I'm sure that each designer will inspire you!
Heidi Blankenship
Linda Duke
Seth Apter
Sherry Cheever
Becca Feeken
Thank you for joining us today and we hope you enjoy the blog hop! Please be sure to join us December 16th for our next blog hop.
