November Sparkles Team Meeting Swap

I've been trying to think of what I wanted to do for my swap for our upcoming team meeting.  Our theme this time around is 3D Christmas.  I did some surfing on the web earlier today, looking for ideas, and kept going back to this post as well as this one from Connie Collins.  She used the 5-Point 3D star die to create her gorgeous projects.  I don't have the die (ok, not yet - I just ordered it), so while I continued searching the web for ideas, I came across this post on Splitcoast by Cindy Cade.  Cindy has a great tutorial showing how she made her 'pop stars', and what's even better, when I checked the gallery there on Splitcoast for more 'pop stars', Cindy had uploaded a template for those of us without the die.  I gave it a try tonight and I'm really happy how mine turned out. 

Since I don't (yet) have the die, I used Cindy's template, using a little bit of snail to help hold it onto the can while I cut out the star points.  Cindy's stars have a different embossing for each point, but I personally didn't like that, so I used the Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder, placing the cut out aluminum shape in the same place for each star point to have a more uniform look to my star.  To emboss the aluminum, I used the multiplatform with tab 1, one cutting pad, then the embossing folder, with the premium crease pad on top.  I think I'll try it without any tabs next time as the embossing punched all the way through in some places.  I have a really old hand-held stapler that staples very close to the edge, which worked great to hold my star points together.  Since all of my points were hand cut, there were some slight differences in how they fit together, so I needed to hide the center where they all met.  The medallion, also inspired by Connie Collins, uses the Perfect Punches stamp set, stamped on Very Vanilla in Cherry Cobbler ink (I stamped two).  I punched out the center of one with a 1 1/4 inch circle punch, mounted that on an Always Artichoke 1 3/8 inch circle punchout, and then punched out the second image with the scallop circle punch, The two are adhered together with stampin' dimensionals.  I used a 1 1/4 inch strip of DSP from the Deck the Halls pack, scoring every 1/4 inch, folding back and forth to create the accordion circle for the rest of the medallion.  Large glue dots help hold it together as well as hold it onto the aluminum star.

To finish off my project, I mounted antique brads through Artichoke Deck the Halls big buttons, pushed the brad ends through the Cherry Cobbler seam binding, and pushed the brad ends through the two small holes I'd punched along the crease in the aluminum to adhere the button/brad combo.  Here's how it turned out:

I think I'll wait until the die arrives to make the rest for my swap since I'll likely need to make four or five more of these, but I'm thrilled I was able to make one without the die.  I hope the gals like my 3D swap - it was fun to make!