Red and Green Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Cutters Creek Red and Green Blog Hop! Our wonderful design team members have all created some fun Christmas projects to inspire you! The only requirements for the projects were that they must contain Red and Green. The hop starts here at the Cutters Creek Design Team blog with a fabulous project by Chris! Each blog will have a link to the next blog in the chain until you make it back here. Each blog will have a great prize to giveaway, so make sure you comment on each blog to maximize your chance of winning!

On our Cutters Creek Design Team Blog today we are featuring an Altered Cigar Box by Chris. Here's how she made this GORGEOUS PIECE:

I get to start the hop off with my Altered Cigar Box. I’ve had this box for a couple of years now, but when I saw the Graphic 45 Christmas Past Collection, I knew just what I wanted to do. First things first, I wanted legs on the box and went to the hardware store and bought 4 unfinished drawer knobs, which I inked with Vintage Photo and Tea Dye Distress inks. I accented the knobs with a line of green acrylic paint. These were glued to the base with Glossy Accents. I left it sit for about a half an hour and they are quite secure.

I chose 2 papers from the Graphic 45 set and cut them to size—one for the top of the box and the other inside where I put one side on the bottom and reversed the sheet for the inside of the lid. I secured these with Scor-Tape and boy does it hold beautifully. Next I cut out the vintage Santa from one of the pages dusted it with my Embossing Magic powder pad to avoid stray particles and then edged the gold frame with my Inkessentials Embossing Pen. I then sprinkled it with Gold Superfine Embossing Powder and heated it with my heat gun. I repeated the same step with the pine needles only this time I sprinkled them with Peeled Paint Distress Powder. Don’t forget when this cools to rub off the large crystals. It gives great texture. Santa’s beard got a bit of texture too. Here I used Polar White Flower Soft. I just highlighted the whiter areas with the Flower Soft glue and sprinkled on the flower soft. I again used Scor-Tape to set the picture on the lid.


Using SCAL I made two poinsettias and a flourish. I sprayed my poinsettias with a mixture of fired brick re-inker and gold pigment powder. The leaves were sprayed with peeled paint and a yellow-green pigment powder. The flourish was embossed with the peeled paint distress powder, heated, then, rubbed with some Forest Moss Distress ink. To make the large flower I used my Tim Holtz Alterations Tattered Florals. I cut it twice—once out of grunge paper and the second time out of upholstery fabric. I inked the grunge flower parts with Wild Honey, Aged Mahogany, and Barn Door. I ran the pieces through my Big Shot Express in Tim’s Regal Flourishes folder and then lightly rubbed some Peeled Paint over the raised parts. I rolled the tips of the grunge paper petals and on the two medium sized flowers I snipped between petals and overlapped them just like you do when making a grunge rose. I decided to alternate the fabric and grunge pieces laying down the largest fabric piece first. Again I used Glossy Accents to secure each piece and topped it off with a pearl from my stash. A final touch was a spritzing of Tattered Angels Pearl Glimmer Mist.

I used another page from the Christmas Past Collection and cut out the words “A Merry Christmas”, I outlined the first letter of each word with Glossy Accents to give it some shine and dimension. This I ran through my Xyron and then added a few drops of Glossy Accents to adhere to the front of the box. The last piece was the smallest part of the grunge Tattered Flower that I hadn’t used on the lid with a gemstone center.

Inside the lid I ripped two pieces of white paper, inked their edges with Tumbled Glass Distress ink. I used my Cricut Expression to cut three Christmas Trees from the Christmas Noel cart. I cut them from a green paper at 2.25, 3 and 4 inches. I then cut the star (using the shift key for the tree) at 4” from the American Crafts Gold glitter cardstock. I needed to cut this on a multi-cut of 4. The snow on the trees is more Polar White flower Soft and the pieces were glued with a spray adhesive.


When you've hopped all of the blogs, leave a comment, one per person on this post to let us know your favorite project! Comments left up until 11:59pm on Sunday December 12th will be eligible to win. All winners will be selected Monday and posted on each blog so make sure you check back to see if you have won! You will have 48 hours to respond before we choose another winner. Here on the Design Team blog we are giving away an Ecstasy Crafts Decoupage Book called Book #12. It's full of wonderful "Manly Man" images to create some awesome projects. One winner will be chosen on Monday using Random.org.

Hop on over to Mandie's Blog when she has a beautiful project to inspire you!

Here is a list of all the blogs in the hop in case you get lost along the way:
Cutters Creek Design Team Blog
Mandie's Blog
Laura's Blog
Melissa's Blog
Sandi's Blog
Kim's Blog
Vicki's Blog
Lori's Blog