March 3T's and some February winners ...

I will be announcing our February winners shortly but first I would like to introduce you to the third edition of Tips, Tricks and Techniques for 2015 presented by our ever delightful team member, Mary Bennetts.

Hello, Mary here and it is my turn to share some tips with you. I admire anyone that does a tutorial - me I freeze at the thought. I think I was hoping if I kept really, really quiet Jane would forget me. But it was not meant to be, so be gentle with me and I hope you find some of my tips useful.

 If you are anything like me you probably have more ribbon than you know what to do with. So my tutorial is on different ways to use ribbon on your layouts

On this layout I have made my banner from ribbon. I have used a wider ribbon and cut a mitre at the end. I have added some ribbon below my photo and twirled it.

More samples of twirling ribbon above. I tend to anchored each end with a flower and button or brad.

Here I have used the ribbon as I would layering with paper strips and used ribbon as my top strip

Make a bow for your tags by tying two different ribbons together

Satin Seam binding would have to be my favourite ribbon . It is so soft and easy to work with. It falls beautifully and you can spritz it with water and scrunch  it to give it an old look. Here I have used it to make a flower and then to frame my photo.

This is how I make my flowers.

Cut a circle out of cardboard. The size of your circle will determine the size of your flower

Then cover your circle with double sided tape and starting from the outside work your ribbon , pleating it as you go, around working to the centre . Once you get to the centre you can either secure with a brad or add a bit of glue and add a gem stone

  

So there are many , many uses for ribbon ...

Below I have pleated the ribbon and secured with staples for a bit of interest

 

I find I nearly always add satin seam binding to my clusters, it just adds a nice softness. I hope you use some of these ways to jazz up your layouts with ribbon,  Thanks, Mary.      

Fantastic Mary!  I hope you can use some of Mary's ideas to help reduce your extensive ribbon stashes (you all know you have them :))

and now onto some February winners .....

Some absolutely stunning creations we submitted last month - thank you everyone for playing along with us, you made finding our voted upon winners extremely difficult.

In February we were working from this stunning painting by Josh Miels for our colour challenge.

Susan Says is our winner of the prize pack from Mystical Scrapbooks but I am happy to change this prize to a voucher to a digital store of your choice.

 AnnaU is our winner of the prize pack from Flourish with a Bling.

Our random draw winner of a lovely prize donated by Lizzy Hill is #18 - Karen McLaughlin.

Congratulations ladies.

Could the winners please contact me  with their postal details.  Don't forget to grab our winners badge from the sidebar. 

Our Creative Team highlight from last month is Jo with this amazing page.  She will receive a little surprise something from me.

Don't forget to enter this month's ARTastic challenge.  All the details are in the left sidebar. Remember you have until the end of the month to submit your entry.

Please pop back on the 15th when we will have more delightful team inspiration to show you.