The "How-To" Of My Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Tea Party

Hi, guys! Hope all is well.  I promised that I would pop back with the details and supplies that I used on my tea party goodies for the Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Challenge.  If you didn't see the pictures from the tea party they can be found here.

When planning my florals for the napkin rings and place cards, I decided I would use my new Distress Paints to color them.  I used Tim Holtz Glassine Papers and Tim Holtz Kraft Resist papers.

Place Cards:

Napkin Rings:

I used the same flowers as the place cards, but decorated them all a bit different.  Some I used gears in the center, others buttons, etc.  The rings were made by cutting paper towel rolls.  I then wrapped them with tissue tape and sealed the rings with Claudine Hellmuth Matte Medium.  After drying, I sprayed them green with Dylusions Spray, then hot glued the flowers to the ring.

Stenciled Cookies

I love to stencil cakes and cookies.  Normally, I use my supply of plastic cake stencils.  That is what gave me the idea to make my own with kitchen parchment.

I ran a piece of kitchen parchment with the Tattered Floral die through my Vagabond machine.  That became the stencil.

Tip: Make sure you pull the parchment straight up as sugar will pool on it and it could fall onto your cookie, messing up the clean design.

I am looking forward to using Tim's Gingerbread die at Christmastime to decorate my gingerbread. So many options with my die collection!

Tea Sandwiches

These were a hit, and fun to do.  They are time consuming, but I will give you a few pointers to make it easier.

Using kitchen parchment again, I cut out the large flower from the die.

Tips:
1.  Use firm bread.  Rye worked great!
2.  Keep bread cold.  If it gets warm it will be hard to cut.
3.  You can also make a stencil out of firm cardboard (use food safe!) and it won't curl up.
4.  Use toothpicks to hold the stencil to the bread.   My husband used a paring knife to trim; I used my
     kitchen scissors (I am used to fussy cutting!)

After the bread is cut, just make sandwiches as usual.  Ours were tuna salad.  I then topped each with an olive.  Use the excess bread for bread crumbs, or to feed the birds (which is what we did).

I am looking forward to doing this again with brownies and think the gingerbread man made with wheat bread would make adorable holiday sandwiches.

Fascinator:

I used a hard headband that was sturdy to start with.  I attached some fun branches left over from my Valentine's Day bouquet (too cute to discard)!  I then twisted 3 colors of tulle together and hot glued it over the headband.  I then went to town attaching all the fun flowers I had made using the Tattered Floral die.  I used metal, felt, various papers, buttons, bottle caps, etc. to decorate.  I added leaves that I cut from the Tattered Leaf die.  Too fun!

I hope I have answered some of your questions, and inspired you to take out your dies and use them in fun ways.  I am grateful to Tim for this challenge, as it spurred me to use my die a lot, and I had a blast!

Have a great day!  Until next time!