St. Patrick's Day Deco for Love To Craft Challenge #44

Saints be praised, greetings and welcome! Today is March 1st and we start a new monthly challenge over at Love To Craft Challenge Blog - here's what I've made to hopefully inspire you to join us!

I may only have a wee bit of Irish in me, but I love to decorate my art corner to celebrate St. Patrick's Day along with Spring and Easter. Kids my age grew up making sure to wear something green to school on March 17th so we wouldn't be pinched by classmates. (Ask me why I say forget just once and learn the hard way! LOL) Green and orange are such bright colors and it's a happy holiday!

Since I already have a good selection of decorated tags, I decided to make a deco with 4" round coasters, and of course decorate both sides of it as it will hang with the tags on my Tim Clip Carousel.  I wanted to focus on Patrick and on the shamrocks that he used in his teachings for this deco. Luckily, I found what I needed in my computer files from Free Vintage Digi Stamps.

  

I began by choosing 2 4-inch round coasters from my stash. I left the one for the front as is but die cut the second one for the back with a Spellbinder scalloped circle die which made it a wee bit smaller in diameter. I then colored them with distress inks, green and orange, respectively. After that, some stenciling on both sides in contrasting colors and patterns.

  

I didn't take pics of each step, but here are a couple more process shots. I cut 2 Spellbinders die crosses from gold and orange papers and then I cut a Spellbinders Lotus Pendant die from patterned paper. I fussy-cut some collage sheet images and stamped and heat-embossed some shamrocks and punched them out with a circle punch.

For the front side, I used the bigger coaster base and layered on the pendant die cut, a cross and an image of St. Patrick. I used gold Stickles inside and around the cross, around the image and dotted inside the pendant. I wanted some kind of trim sandwiched between the coasters, so I used a few of those big paper muffin wrappers colored green inks and then flatten out and glued to the back of the larger coaster. I then Stickled in gold all around the outside of the coaster on the wrapper.

For the back coaster, I layered the other cross and an image and sentiment and then the clover circles, and then adhered the coaster to the back muffin wrappers. No hang hole needed as the carousel clips hold it fine.

Thanks for visiting me and allowing me to share my Love To Craft Challenge Blog design team make with you today. Please do take a look over at LTCCB at all the creativity my teammates have posted to inspire you. Anything handmade, as long as it's decent, is welcome and you have all month to play and you can link up 5 different projects.

Have an awesome Sunday and week ahead! XOX

CHALLENGES:
1.   Try It on Tuesday: Go Green or Recycle -- mainly green colors
2.   Brown Sugar #298: AG
3.   Crafty Creations #406: AG
4.   Aud Sentiments #245: AG
5.   Cut It Up #194: Fave Color with a Die -- In March, my fave color is green and I used 4 dies listed in post (scalloped circle, 2 crosses and lotus pendant).
6.   The Creative Crafters #25: AG

7.   Outlawz Sundays Songs & Rhymes: I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover