It’s a Wonderful Day in the Neighbourhood Around the World on Wednesday

Honeybee Home Bundle is a favourite stamp set and die bundle in the Stampin’ Up!® Annual Catalogue, and that is what I am using for my Around the World on Wednesday project today.

Welcome once again to Around the World on Wednesday Blog Hop, travelling around the world through every time zone. You may be starting here or you may have come from the blog of the fabulous Rochelle Laird-Smith.

Around the World on Wednesday Blog Hop is the brainchild of Angie McKenzie, a wonderful friend and amazing paper artist. My name is Cheryll Miller, and I am so delighted to be a part of this varied and talented group of Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators.

What do you love about your neighbourhood?

I LOVE living where I do, in the beautiful, wine region of McLaren Vale, South Australia. I love the different seasons, all of them! It means the garden changes during the year, and I never tire of seeing the hills along the horizon change colour as each season arrives.
Things are always changing in our neighbourhood. One of our neighbours recently removed three lovely 150 year old trees from their yard, and that has certainly changed the dynamic in our street, probably not for the best, although I do acknowledge that their yard that may have been suffering with the shade and roots of those trees.
However, on the plus side, the council has just been along and planted a heap of native trees down both sides of the street, and eventually they will form a lovely shady avenue.

Another recent change to our immediate neighbourhood is the addition of a bee hive in our yard. My sister was relocating and we were lucky enough to inherit her hive. It will be a while before we have any honey, but we are just so happy to have lots of pollinating bees in our yard, which will certainly help our veges, flowers and all the neighbourhood plants as well. So today, I am celebrating the busy bees in our yard, using the Honeybee Home Bundle for my project.

Honeybee Home Bundle …

Isn’t this pretty. I took inspiration from Karen Hadler (Artisan Design Team Member) who created a beautiful Shabby Chic style card using this bundle a while ago and you can see it here.

I am not sure I quite lived up to Karen’s creative genius, but I do love this card. I took a lot of the same products and colours and simply changed up how I used them.

I loved Karen’s distressed white layer, and the vellum embossed with the Hive 3D embossing folder. I distressed the edges of my vellum panel. I also used the Hexagons from the Beautiful Life Dies, but used the solid die cuts, coloured up with Petal Pink and Soft Seafoam an an ink blending brush. So soft and pretty. Karen stamped her bees on Vellum for a light airy look, and I totally stole that idea. I stamped with Stazon on vellum and coloured on the reverse side with Stampin’ Blends.

I valiantly tried to emulate Karen’s bow tying style, but didn’t quite get there. I will keep practicing. Karen seems to get a beautifully exuberant and yet casual bow, which I love. She often cuts her ribbon into narrower strips by cutting them lengthwise, then grouping strands of ribbon with twine and tying loopy bows.
My tips are to get rid of the frayed edges by pulling out any loose threads before you try tying the bow, and don’t be skimpy with your ribbon lengths. I didn’t quite use a long enough length of ribbon and it was tricky to tie the bow. My “loops” are not quite as relaxed as Karen gets hers.

I used a White cotton ribbon (which I just realised is retired .. I think it was part of a ribbon bundle in the Jan-Jun Mini), and Soft Seafoam Seam Binding Ribbon (from the Splendid Day Suite in the Jul-Dec 2022 Mini), plus a length of White Baker’s Twine.

The trick with using vellum as a layer is to compile all the elements of your card onto the vellum first, before flipping it over and applying glue to the back of vellum behind the elements. That way there will be no “glue show through” on the vellum when assembled. Here is a step by step ….

Our hive …

Next up we are are going to take a trip all the way across the ocean to the Nederlands, to Daniel Kassing’s blog …

Here is the full list of blog hop participants this month …. I can’t wait to find out all about the different neighbourhoods around the world.
xx Cheryll

Jan Clothier – NZ
Leonie Stuart – AU
Rochelle Laird-Smith – AU
Cheryll Miller – AU. <<<<<< You are here!
Danielle Kassing – NL
Aurélie Fabre – FR
Mikaela Titheridge – UK
Angie McKenzie – US
Wendy Lee – US
Chris Smith – US
Tricia Butts – US
Teri West – US
Cheryl Hamilton – US