A Basket and a Parasol

Stick with me today, as this entry may be a little long. Since I've been a bit remiss about posting lately, I am going to try to give you two for one (grin). I am going to be sharing two cards that I made for Darlene at Dutch Paper Crafts using dies she released just this morning.

This first card is a little "thank you" card using CR1206 and also CR1210. CR1206 is the beautiful basket, and CR1210 is a little die that gives you five tiny flower shapes and five little leaf shapes. Both dies cut and emboss, giving lovely details. I used white card as my base and layered that with red card and a piece of blue DP. I used a Fiskar's border die and a strip of red grosgrain ribbon. Now the little basket took a bit of time and patience, but the outcome was well worth the effort. I ran the flower die through my Cuttlebug enough times to get a number of those tiny roses. This requires running the die through once for the cutting and then again for the embossing. I also ran the leaf die through a number of times. I found that using my Cuttlebug rather than my Spellbinder Grand Caliber worked better with these tiny dies. The extra pressure of the Grand Caliber caused the dies to stick into the cutting surface and made the dies hard to get out. (I almost lost one as it went flying across my table after finally releasing from the cutting surface!)

After cutting the basket, I backed the lower portion with a small piece of dotty DP and wove ribbon through the top portion of the basket. I then started layering the roses and leaves "inside" the basket. Once I used all the roses, I felt I needed a few little "filler" flowers, so I used a small Marvy hand punch to punch the tiny white flowers. I used my ball shaper to cup the little flowers and then dotted the inside with a yellow Copic marker. Lastly, I added the thank you sentiment which I stamped and matted onto red card.

The embossed details on the basket and the flowers are quite amazing considering the small size of the dies. While working with this die, my daughter and granddaughter stopped by for a visit. They both looked at the shape of the basket and "saw" different things. My daughter saw a parasol. My granddaughter saw a lamp shade and a dress. With that many different ideas, I had to use the die again, so made the card below.

For this card, I went with the parasol idea. I cut the die and then cut off the handles. I cut one side of the handle into a U shape such as one generally finds on a parasol. I then glued the handle back onto the basket in the center. I backed the entire basket shape with a pink pearl sheen paper, and added that tiny bow to the top.

Again, I started with a white card base which I layered with green card and then pink DP. I placed a strip of white lace and above that a strip of white satin ribbon and bow.  I then placed a green circle cut from Marianne die CR1201. I added small pink pearls to the right side of the die and a two-tone pink rose (from Wild Orchid Crafts) under the bow.

I used the sentiment "Wishing you Sunshine" on this card (which I layered onto the pink and then the green), but after I'd finished, I got to thinking how pretty this would be for a Wedding or Baby shower card or even for the invitations.

I hope you enjoy the cards, and I hope you will hop over to Dutch Paper Crafts (link in my side-bar) and have a look at these beautiful Marianne dies that Darlene is selling. There are four different shaped baskets in this set, and even if you don't feel you need all four, they are all so lovely that I know you are going to find at least one or two are going to "have" to find their way into your craft stash (grin).