How to Dry & Store Rose Hips for Rose Hip Tea

Rose Hip Tea (Rosa canina) is so refreshing and packed with vitamins and minerals. A great hot Winter time drink. Delicately sweet, this is one of my favourites, and I consume it daily throughout the Dark Months.

For rose hip tea, simply put 1-2 teaspoons of dried rose hips in a tea pot, let it sit for 15-20 minutes, then strain into a cup. Drink at will.

Step 1

Pick as many rose hips as you think you need to last you until next year. I also wash them first.

Step 2

After washing your rose hips, dry them in the sun on newspaper. Then top and tail them by removing the stalk and the little pointy bit where the flower was. This isn’t important, but I do it.

Step 3

Normally I dry them whole, but this year I decided to test splitting 50% of the batch in half before drying. This made absolutely no difference, other than pleasure-ably wasting time 

Step 4

For convenience and because the weather has not exactly been that sunny this year (2008), I used a food dehydrator.

Dehydration took about 5-6 hours for this particular batch. But this is “wild stuff”, so times may vary depending on the quality of the hips, how many you’re drying etc.

Step 5

When the rose hips have dried, this is what they look like.

Step 6

Next put them in a food processor. This year I borrowed my neighbours small one and it worked very well.

Step 7

Grind away until the contents look like below… you don’t want to grind the rose hips too small other wise in the next step they will simply fall through the sieve along with all the hairs… which kind of defeats the object of sieving (Step 8)!

Step 8

Tip the contents into a metal sieve, and just shake to remove all those pesky hairs that can be irritating to some people. I find it fascinating that they all easily fall through leaving you with some scrummy dried rose hips.

Step 9

Tip the dried rose hips into a jar or air tight container, and consume at will.

There is no need to go to the trouble of removing the seeds (unless you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with).

Polymer Clay & Trinket Embellishment Tutorial

Okay so for the tutorial.....You will need....

~Polymer Clay, Sculpy, Fimo or Store Brand (I used black)

~Pearlex or Perfect Pearls (Mica Powder...I bought the Pearlex Series2 12 pack ages ago and still have loads of it left....The colors I used were Turquois, Aztec Gold and Spring Green)

~Bo Bunny Metal Trinkets and Jewels

~Blade knife for trimming 

Step #1:  Soften and roll out a 1" piece of black polymer clay (I used black because I feel like the colors of Pearlex show up nicely against it).  Cut a heart shape out with a blade knife.  Now take a small piece of the black clay and roll out into a thin strip, and roll out a number of small ball shapes.  Apply to the piece with gentle pressure (when it bakes it adheres well to the base piece) 

Step #2:  Using a paint brush apply the Turquoise Pearlex (Mica Powder) to the base of the piece (I used two colours....see below).  Be sure to get the Pearlex right to the edges. 

Step #3:  You can add an additional color in and just softly blend them . 

Step #4:  Using your finger, dab it in the Pearlex and just run it along the raised design you created, this is my favourite part, the contrast of the metalic colors is just magical! ....You can add your metal accents now if you wish but don't add your jewels to it unless they are glass because they will melt in the oven when you bake off the piece.   Bake in a 275 F oven for 15 minutes (use a disposable foil tray for this, you don't want to use something that you will later cook with)

Step #5: Once my piece has cooled I spray it with a protective clear coat (I couldn't find old clear coat spray so I used some hairspray and it worked well!)  Now you can add any pearl or gem accents and glue on your metal accents if you didn't bake them with the piece.  I recomment that you spray the back of the piece with a protective coat in order to protect the scrap paper incase any residual oils come off of the polymer clay.

Experiment with different shapes, try using stamps and small and large glass beads.  Here are just a few of the designs I created using just some clay, Pearlex, stamps and glass beads. TIP:  (the trick to making a straight line with the glass beads is to string them on a piece of wire, push them into the clay and then pull out the wire strand leaving the beads behind in the clay)

I hope I've inspired you to give it a go!  Have a fun scrappy week! xx 

Mixed Media Canvas (With a Video Tutorial!!)

I've really enjoyed dabbling with mixed media designs lately and although I've done some mixed media designs on my scrap pages I thought it was time to try out a mixed media canvas! And I'm so excited to share with you the step by step video I prepared to share with you how I put this project together!!  I've been reading books on mixed media, exploring different techniques and one that I just have to give a try was this couture figure mixed media design.  I was at Chapters over the weekend and had picked up a book called Collage Couture by Julie Nutting, so I would say this is where I drew much of my inspiration for this canvas design I made up here.  For this mixed media piece I used a whole lotta Websters Pages In Love collection papers and some Dusty Attic Chipboard as well.

I first began by sketching out a figure on some paper and then sketched out a dress design.  Below is a picture of the sketch I made... 

I then layed a piece of white paper over my sketch and began drawing out the individual pieces that would make up my couture figure.  Below is my template for the figure..... 

I know that sketching doesn't come easy to everyone so if you are not up for drawing out your own figure, you are welcome to print off the above template to make up your own couture figure.  If you right click on the picture above and 'Save Picture As' to your computer, you can print out the template and cut out the shapes to make your own couture canvas.  Just print it out on an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper, cut out and then trace the pieces on the patterned paper of your choice.  ....Here are some close-up photos of my finished layout (You can watch a video below and see how I put the whole canvas together).... 

The quote I used for this one I thought was fitting because of the playful movement of the figure I drew up, I found the quote on Pinterest.....it says....

"There was something in her movements that made you think

that she never walked but....

Always danced"

So, grab yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy a little video I put together showing a step by step on how I put this mixed media canvas together, I hope you enjoy it!

 

How to Make Your own Eggshell Mosaic Embellishments!!

 

Prepare by making taking your eggshells and soaking in warm water and a dash of antibacterial soap. (I've been told to soak it overnight, but I found soaking it for an hour worked well for me) ...I had loads of eggs because I made a big batch of Eggs Benedict for my family one evening and saved all the shells! :)

Now you'll want to make sure you pull out all the inner membrane in the shells.  This is a necessary step, otherwise your shell pieces won't stick to your chipboard, the glue will only adhere to the membrane and the shell could fall off.  So be sure to remove all of it.  For me, most of it came off in big sections (I find if you use really fresh eggs the membrane comes off easily).   

Step 1:  I've said it before....I save everything!  Here I used the pop out squares from a window chipboard design frome Dusty Attic.  Normally these would be discarded but I thought I'd use them as the base for my mosaic.  You can also hand cut out shapes from scrap pieces of chipboard to use as your base (I cut out some hearts for another upcoming project) ...now to the point..paint your chipboard pieces with a little bit of Gesso, white acrylic paint will work just as well.

Step 2:  For a small mosaic piece such as above, I just cover the whole piece thoroughly with some glue...I used Aleene's Tacky Glue.  But if you are working with bigger pieces of chipboard, work in smaller sections. 

Step 3: The quickest and easiest way to do this is to take a larger piece of eggshell, place it on the glue (curved side up) and push down with your finger to crack.  Allow some of the cracks to be a little larger so that when you color your piece the ink will show more in the cracks. 

Step 4:  Use small bits of eggshell to fill in area's that did not get covered by the first piece of eggshell.  Don't worry about bits of the egshell hanging over the edges.  Allow the glue to dry completely and then carefully crack off the excess eggshell bits. 

Step 5:  Once you've cracked off the excess bits of eggshell from the edges, just take some sandpaper or a sanding block and gently sand the edges if needed. 

Now the fun part!  Pull out your alcohol inks, Perfect Pearls (mica dust) or Glimmer Mist.  The key is to use translucent colors for staining your pieces, the effect is nicest with clear colors as opposed to opaque paints.   ...Too much color? no probem, just dab with a paper towel to remove excess, if it's already dried, use a little bit of Tim Holtz Alcohol Blending Solution to remove or lighten the colors.  Here I used a combination of Tim Holtz 'Pool' and 'Meadow' alcohol inks. (sorry about the poor photo for this one, I was taking the photo with my left hand while trying to squirt on the alcohol ink for the pic :)

I added a wee bit of glimmer to my mosaics with some Inca Gold Pearlex (Mica dust)....or you could use some spritzes of Glimmer mist instead.  I finished it off by giving the whole thing a nice thick coat of Glossy Accents to give the pieces a nice shine.  Let your piece dry, and then it's ready for use!  I added one of the new Websters Pages Charms to accent the center mosaic piece