The Dog Ate My Rabbits!

That's right. That's really what happened! Here's the culprit--
I sat and punched out circles and ovals, little circles, more ovals, and had assembled several punch-art rabbits (see last post). I left them on the coffee table and when I returned the next morning they were ALL GONE! Every last shred of paper, glue, pop up dots....gone. Does he have a bone to chew on??? Yeeees, but he prefers paper! He's a dachsund for cryin' out loud, and he still managed to check out the top of the coffee table and pick up every last one of my rabbits and eat them. So that's why this post is late. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to give excuses, but the truth is, I was a little disheartened to lose all my work, and just didn't even feel like stamping or taking pictures of this basket for my club members who chose the 3-D project.

So finally, here it is: 1. the first picture shows what your envelope would look like if you folded it into an envelope. These were cut using the Big Shot and the Scallop Envelope die (catalog pg 198, $21.95). You need 4 envelopes for a 4-sided basket.















But since we are going to make a basket, fold the three flaps backwards, like in this photo.














2. Adhere the side flaps together with the other envelopes. I used snail adhesive, but if you want your box to be sturdier, you could use sticky strip.














Adhere all four together, then adhere the last flaps to make a square box.
3. Turn it over and fold in the bottom flaps and glue together to make the bottom.



























4. Punch a small hole in the side of the box, in the area covered by the decorative flap on the outside. Punch another hole on the opposite side. If you are confused, keep reading through step 5.
Make a handle, punch a hole in each end and adhere to the basket with a brad.














Notice that I put the "head" of the brad on the inside of the basket and the "feet" of the brad on the outside. The feet are going to be covered when you put a little bit of adhesive on the
underside of the flap and glue it to the side of the basket:














And then the fun part--decorate your basket any way you like and fill it with fun!

Fall Treats

I got together with my downline this weekend, and we had a great time playing with new products! We got out my Big Shot and tried out different holiday dies. We made the fall scallop bag (on the right) with more mustard, elegant eggplant, designer paper from autumn traditions and some burgundy grosgrain ribbon. We cut the eggplant scallop out with the big shot by laying a small piece of the eggplant card stock over that part of the design, under the more mustard piece--cutting out both pieces at once. Then we used the scallop punch for the smaller designer paper piece. We punched two holes in the scallop, marked through the holes onto the box and then punched the box. Run the ribbon through the box first, fill with treats : ) and then thread the ribbon through the scallop lid and tie. I recently finished 30 bags like this for a pastors' wives conference that I'm going to in October. Later, I felt inspired by candy corn to experiment a little with the scallop box! It is a little difficult to see in the photo, but I ran summer sun, pumpkin pie, and whisper white cardstock through the diamond texturz plate, then cut the pieces out using the scallop bag die. I adhered the pumpkin pie piece to the bag before assembling it--then punched the square hole in the bag from the side (before the sides were glued on). I covered the hole with a piece of window sheet, and then attached the sides. I cut the scallops off, making the V shape, and then adhered white over it, trimming it to the same shape. Stuffed in some candy corn (in a cello bag) and added the ribbon. These bags are so cute with the "window"!
We also worked on some cute cards with the Sweet Centers stamp set (holiday mini) and sweet treat cups....I'll post those pictures tomorrow!
Just a reminder that the decor elements growth chart is only available until Sept 30th, so if you are interested, let me know. If you don't remember..... leave a comment and I'll send you the flyer again.

Big Shot Projects

This is one of my favorite stamp sets, from last spring's Occassions Mini, Live Your Dream . It is a simple card using pacific point and tangerine tango. I used a blender pen to ink up the flower with tangerine, and then added summer sun centers and garden green leaves. I made an identical card for a little girl, and made the butterfly image at the top into a spinner piece; but I didn't have time to photograph it before I needed to mail it! So you'll have to use your imagination! What's a spinner piece? Check it out here.
I have to start showing you some of the things I've made with the Big Shot! First, these were given to 25 of my my co-workers for National Public Health Week. These are "matchboxes" as shown in the Occassions Mini on page 16. I used textured cardstock for the box, and then patterned designer paper for the top slider. The box stays together pretty much without any adhesive, so they were pretty easy to put together. I kept the embellishments/tag simple since I was making so many, so I just sponged around the tag with a coordinating ink, and wrote the message. I filled them with 4 pieces of chocolate--Hershey's miniatures and some new Hershey's chocolates that are shaped like Dove chocolate, and put them in everyone's mail boxes. Everyone enjoyed them! : )