Eileen Hull

Three dimensional art... with heart

It’s Summer…

… and our yard is in bloom! Don’t these cherry blossoms look real?


I never showed you the unbelievable cherry blossom centerpieces created by my talented (and patient!) friend Sandy Oujiri for the military wives club we both belong to. 

Sandy’s job was to create centerpieces for our “Cherry Blossom Luncheon”. 200 people had signed up to attend, which meant she had to make 20 of these arrangements, and she was working with a very small budget. Luckily, to Sandy, that is not a problem! 

Sandy used my Sizzix Flower, Layers #9 die to make the blossoms. She alternated stacking light pink, dark pink and white tissue paper and then die cut thousands? from the smallest flower on the die. She punched a hole in the middle of each flower and then added a drop of hot glue in the center, which kept them all in one piece, then scrunched the petals into the middle of the flower and fluffed out. Each blossom was glued to budding branches she cut from her yard.  She made a stand for them so they fit on the table- that girl is just so full of ideas- but I put the ones she gave me in a vase and plan on setting them out at Easter each year. I’m not kidding- the people at the luncheon thought the arrangements were real and she had compliments galore!


Here’s a project I made that’s up on the Sizzix blog using the Bigz Borders and Hydrangeas die from the new Sweet Treats collection. 

I even did a video to show how I made it. This was a labor of love, let me tell you… probably each minute of film took 2 hours to do! It has got to get easier… right??? There are a lot of mistakes but it’s better than the last one.

On the Road…

It has been a whirlwind the last few weeks! I traveled out to Lake Forest, CA to Sizzix HQ for a meeting which went really well (I think, I hope!). Then it was on to Minnesota where Karen Burniston and I taught at VIP Scrapbooks in Rochester, MN and also got to spend time with her sister Julie, her husband Randy and two adorable nephews. Randy cooked us Mother’s Day dinner and I heard from all of my kids so that was a good day 🙂


Then we drove back to Minneapolis to the Mystic Lake resort to teach classes at a retail event put on by Erickson and Associates. Here we met store owners and reps and were able to give tips and techniques for working with our products. It was great to talk to the store owners because I got to hear things from another perspective.

I showed how to make a badge holder from the Index Card box die by cutting off a flap and adding two Business Card boxes to the inside. I put my cards in one box and other people’s cards in the other. You can also fit a few dollars for lunch and a tiny pen. On the back of the box you can put your badge. It’s a great way to carry all you need in one place, especially at trade shows! 

We did a Make and Take the first night and the next day I taught a class called Stacking Candy Drawers. I made stamps from my Borders and Hydrangea die and fun foam. Stephanie Barnard’s inks were used to stamp the flowers on the box. Loving these nice and bright colors! The flowers were outlined with black marker dots for a little extra touch. Adhesive pearls were added for the flower centers and a matching ribbon tied it all together.

 

We received some coupons when we checked into the casino- if you put $10 in the machine, you’d get it back when you cashed out. So each night we would go down and play the quarter slots… the first night we won $82, next night $38 and the last time $25. Since I didn’t have my ID with me the first night, we decided to play on one ticket and split the winnings- lucky lucky me- Karen has a way with those slot machines! 

We visited a very cool paper store called Anchor Paper when we got to Minneapolis (thanks to June, one of our students). So all of my purchases there were covered by the money I won! Almost like it was meant to be…

On Saturday, I head up to NY where I’ll be visiting the National Stationery Show, on the lookout for cool stuff. Will let you know know what I find!

Sizzix Spring Linky

We had such fun doing the Sizzix Fresh Vintage blog hop last fall that we figured it was time for the Reunion Tour! So you are going to see some fun spring Sizzix projects from your favorite designers. Click on the links below to see what everyone is up to: 


I needed a spring wreath for my front door. I wrapped a 12″ STYROFOAM wreath with ribbon that I had gotten on a fun field trip to the ribbon outlet for $1 per bag. In my CHA sample making frenzy, I had amassed quite a collection of die cut Sizzix flowers made from fleece, felt, bubble wrap, paper, canvas and cotton fabrics. So I decided to add these to the wreath along with some leaves. I used a glue gun to adhere the flowers to the ribbon and added a ribbon hanger to the back. Simple, quick and in my favorite spring colors.

If you would like to enter to win the Fringed Flower die, please visit the designers’ blogs and leave them comments. If you feel so moved, please feel free to follow their blogs too. (who doesn’t like a little blog love?) Then come back here to let me know which is your favorite project. I will pick a winner on Thursday night.

What are you working on this time of year?

Birthday Bash

On the night of March 6, the Woolies held their annual birthday celebration. This is a group of 18 amazingly creative women who meet twice a month in the local Wegman’s. Two of the members have moved- one to Hawaii and one to CO, but they keep in touch through email and FaceBook. Read here about how I came to be invited to this group by Pat Sloan.

Since most of the group are quilters (I don’t really quilt but I still love fabric!), each person brought a fat quarter and a $15 gift. The exchange of gifts was quite lively! Here’s what one of the gifts looked like. Are these little guys not adorable? They were made by the talented Lina LaMora.

 
A call went out to the group to help organize different parts of the celebration. Not wanting to look like a slacker, still being new to the group, I volunteered to handle the cake. I also volunteered my friend Lorine Mason so she wouldn’t feel left out 🙂 Plus she makes killer cakes…
We decided to bake cupcakes.  I cut 30 paper cupcake wrappers using my Sizzix ScoreBoard Cupcake Holder die. Did you know those dies also work great with paper? 

 

The Cupcake Stands (below) and pennants (above) are part of the Sweet Treats Collection and I was dying for the chance to actually use them. 
I cut 17 individual cupcake stands. The bases were decorated with sewing pattern tissue (we are mainly a sewing group) and spring colored toppers.

 A blurry picture of a cupcake sandwich. Still have to try this!

All the cupcakes on their stands- so pretty. Lorine did a great job decorating them and the taste was out of this world. They were lemon…mmmmmm.

 Here’s the group!

 These pennants were so much fun to make and really fast! I stamped the sentiment, added a line of double sided tape on the inside fold, tucked a toothpick in the crease and folded it over. 

 All in all, I can’t wait for the next birthday celebration. Thanks for the warm welcome into the group everyone! You are so inspiring…

The Birds go to CHA!

Maybe this could be a series- where oh where will the Birds appear next?

Here’s a project that I created for the ImpressArt booth at CHA. I used their cool metal alphabets to make a recycled soda can mobile. Once again the Bird die came in handy, as did the ScoreBoard Butterfly. Both are from my Sizzix Fresh Vintage collection.

First I cut the shapes from soda cans- two butterflies and birds for each hanging piece. I also cut one matboard shape as a base for each. I hammered the metal stamped words on the silver side of each soda can shape. Then I took alcohol inks and the foam blender and dabbed the color on. Each one is different- some I filled with color, some were sparsely inked and some were in between. What unified the project was the color palette- my favorite blues, greens, purples and yellows.
To finish, I hot glued the soda can shapes to the center of the matboard bases but allowed the sides and wings to bow out giving nice dimension. Then I punched a very fine hole in the top of the shape for hanging and threaded fishing line through each one. I thought I would go insane tying these on- fishing line is very annoying to work with! But it was worth it- the birds and butterflies look almost like they are floating in midair. I also added some beads to separate strands of fishing line to counterbalance the weight.
Another discovery- photographing a mobile is no easy task! I wanted good light so I carefully took the whole piece outside and suspended it from a tree branch. Every time I would go to take a picture, the wind would blow and everything moved! So I have about 30 horrible blurred pictures of this cool mobile. Finally I had to admit defeat, pack it up and send without getting a decent photo… Oh well…
The hardest part of this project was figuring out how to make the hanger part of it. I tried three embroidery hoops tied together with ribbon, and then wired frames in three varying sizes together, but they were too overwhelming for the delicate hanging pieces. I wound up finding a baby mobile at a thrift store for $5. After removing the A-B-C’s and 1-2-3’s, I added my own pieces. Recycling at its best!
Do you have a bird or butterfly project you’ve made with these dies that you’d like to share? Send it on over to me (EileenHull@aol.com) and I will feature it here!
Is spring really on the way? Seems like it in VA…

CHAW 2012

Hi everyone! I returned from CHA last Thursday and am finally getting back to normal. Wow- what a fun busy week it was! Next time remind me not to schedule every minute though… because sadly, I did not get to walk the show and see all of the new stuff 🙁 

Today is first Monday and time to check in with the Designer Connection! Everyone is reporting in on their CHA experiences. Click on the blue icon on the sidebar to see what the members of the group were up to at the show. Did I mention I was part of a flash mob?

I spent a good bit of time in the Sizzix booth, demoing my new line of ScoreBoard dies, Sweet Treats. People seemed to enjoy building the boxes and I loved meeting everyone. 

Here’s a picture of Cara and Tammy standing in front of the display. It looked super cute and bright and fun! Cara is the Art Director and is so very good at what she does- including making my stuff look fabulous. Thank you Cara!

Tammy Tutterow, a talented designer and blogger extroardinaire, is new to the Sizzix team and will be the Design Team and Community Coordinator. So excited to be working with her! 

Here’s a quick video clip showing a few of my new samples in the booth done by the multi-talented Stephanie Barnard, our Sizzix Spokesperson, who also happens to be the owner of the Stamps of Life. 

Karen Burniston and I had a great time teaching our sold-out Sizzix Workshop, Love is in the Air. We were so busy teaching I didn’t get a pic of us!

In fact, I looked on my phone and camera and realized I hardly took any. If you have any photos you could share, could you email them to me? I told you… too busy! Next time… 🙂 It was great seeing you all!


Check out some other attendees’s experiences (with much better photos!) here at the FaveCrafts CHA Roundup.

http://www.favecraftsblog.com/cha-recap-blog-roundup/


I will be posting my portion of the Designer Section Trends Report soon. What a pleasure working on that committee. Check back…