Quick and Easy Easter Basket

Welcome Tutorial Tuesday! Hope your week is off to a great start.  Today I have for you a quick and easy Easter basket. Perfect for a hostess gift, gift for co-workers, friends, just about anyone, or the center of your Easter table. I happened to come across this great tutorial at Scor-Pal on making a box. I knew I wanted to make a simple basket and wanted it 4" across the bottom and I wanted 3" sides. Based on the formula in this tutorial (4+3+3 which is the box size plus two times the height size) I knew I needed to cut a 10" square to make my box and then score each side at 3". I then cut the flaps as indicated in the tutorial.

This picture is from the tutorial

I adhered my box using scor-tape. My handle which was just the 2" X 12" strip of patterned card stock I cut off to make my 10" square. I attached my handle to my box behind the outside flap so the bottom of my handle was hidden. Now that the basket was together, it was time to decorate it. I cut my rabbit from the Easter 2010 Cricut cartridge at 2 1/2".  I ran the rabbit through my Xyron sticker maker upside down so the sticky was on the front of my bunny. Okay so now I have a confession to make. I thought that at some time in the past I had purchased the Earth colored Ultra Fine Flower Soft. However, if I did, I sure couldn't find it and was not where I store my flower soft. So now I had a dilemma. I wanted to make my rabbit furry, so what to do? I took some of white Ultra Fine Flower Soft and added several drops of  ginger alcohol Ink to it in a plastic sandwich bag and rubbed it around in the bag to get the color I ended up with. However, I also ended up with ginger colored hands and it had a bit of an odor to it from the alcohol ink. So while it worked in a moment of panic I plan to get some of the Earth colored Ultra Fine Flower Soft when Kim has it back in the store. Just much simpler to us.Once I had my bunny sticky and the flower soft the color I wanted I added it to the front of the bunny and pressed down on the flower soft (that's how I got the colored hands) to be sure it stuck to the adhesive. I then added a bow at his neck and a google eye to him and adhered him to my basket.

Next I cut the grass. The grass is also from the Easter 2010 cartridge and was cut at 1 1/4". Each strip is actually 2 of the images that I flipped and welded together on my Gypsy. You could do the same thing with the Cricut Craft Room if you don't have a Gypsy or Design Studio. I cut my grass out of some Core' denations paper and the light green is actually the back side of the card green. I adhere the grass to my box at the bottom and then fluffed up the grass to give it some dimension For my Easter eggs, I cut these from the Doodlecharms cartridge using real dial size and 3/4" and 1". Before cutting the eggs I grabbed some scraps of card stock in pink, yellow and lavender. I used my WOW! Funky Border Strips clear stamps and several colors of distress ink to create some patterned paper to cut my eggs from. If you haven't tried any of these clear stamps you should. WOW! makes them so they work really well with their embossing powders (just a suggestion all you WOW! club members). Kim carries several of their stamps sets. It is worth checking out.

On the lavender paper I used the Peacock Feathers Distress ink and the small dot border stamp. On the Yellow paper I used Shaded Lilac and the small squares border stamp. On my pink paper I used the Squeezed Lemonade and the Pickled Raspberry distress ink and the single row of dots border stamp. I first stamped the Raspberry and left about an 1" between the two rows, then went back and stamped the Lemonade between the Raspberry. Once I had the eggs cut out I used my Spica Pens to add a little glitter to the eggs and then adhered them to the front of my basket. I hope you enjoyed seeing my basket and will check out the awesome products used from Cutters Creek. And remember if something is ever out of stock just contact Kim through the Customer Service link and ask if she can order it for you. She is great about special ordering so never hesitate to ask. I hope you all of a great rest of your week. I would love to know what you think of my basket.

Happy Easter Basket

I took today off and ended up playing most of the day. Had a lot of fun and came up with this Easter Basket, I found the little basket at the Dollar store along with the egg picks. I used the Garden Soup Cricut Cartridge to cut my flowers out at 3". I tried to match the colors in the flowers on the basket. I used my glue gun and attached them to wooden skewers. I used my Tim Holtz scissors to cut the skewers off a little because they were too long. I cut my little bunnies from the Doodlecharms cartridge. I cut one bunny at 3" and one at 2". I used a black gel pen to draw in his whiskers and mouth. I used some pewter colored small pearls for the bunny's eyes and some pink chalk to add some light pink to the inside of his ears and to his cheeks. I cut the Happy Easter at 2" from the Easter Season Cartridge from 2010 and added some Star Dust stickles to it. To finish the basket I put in some of the crinkle cut grass and removed the remaining eggs from the picks and just placed in the basket on top of the grass.

I entered this project in the following challenges:

Go Fish Challenge Blog - Make an Easter Project
Fantabulous Cricut - Make a project with a gentle animal
Exploring Cricut Challenge  - Make a Spring Time project

Advent Calendar

Here is my project I have been working on for the last two days. Last Christmas I made my mom an Advent Calendar so this year she asked if I was making one for her this year. So, I thought why not. So off to Google I went and did a search for Cricut Advent Calendars. Here is the site I found for inspiration.http://www.bubblyfunk.co.uk/tracie-hudson-christmas-advent-a-39.html.

This calendar was made using small matchboxes. Of course I thought I can make those. I used the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More, Cricut Cartridge and cut 24 matchboxes. I cut the drawer part at 3" but had to enlarge the box part so the drawers went in easier. I resized the box part of the cut on my Gypsy and cut them at 3.08". The boxes were scored and assembled using Score-Tape. I added green and red brads from American Crafts. Directions on how to create this project can be found on the link above. I used two 6" X 6" pieces of chipboard for the top and bottom portions of the "cabinet". For the top I cut Christmas Wishes from the Winter Frolic Cartridge at 2 1/2". Cuts for the sides were cut at 1 1/2". I cut the numbers for the drawers at .45" using the Roly Poly font from the Plantin Schoolbook Cartridge.

The mittens were so small when I cut them I couldn't use the snowflakes that were cut to go on top of them. Instead, I used my white gel pen to draw in the snowflakes and then used my Quickie Glue Pen to apply glue and Martha Stewart Sugar Cube glitter. I also used the same glue and glitter for the white cuff's of the mittens.

Patterned Paper: DCWV Christmas Stack

Paper: Bazzill Card Stock, and Scraps from Stash

Cartridges: 

Winter Frolic -Sentiment

Simply Charmed - Santa and Chimney

Jolly Holidays - Mittens, Noel Banner, Gingerbread Man

Doodlecharms - Stocking

Tree and Snowflake Buttons

Adhesive

Beacons 3 in 1 Glue (buttons)

Score-Tape (boxes and cabinet)

ATG Gun

Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive

Quickie Glue Pen (numbers)

Foam Tape

Stickles

Lime Green

Christmas Red

Stardust

Brads - American Craft Burgundy and Leaf Green

Martha Stewart Sugar Cube fine glitter