Quick and Easy Easter Basket by Deanna M

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.

Distressed Card by Deanna M

I received some new WOW! stamps and of course I had to try them out. The sets I bought were Everyday Sentiments, Funky Border Strips and French Music. This is what I came up with. This card style is a bit out of my comfort zone, I don't make a lot like this one. However, I had a lot of fun working on it.

My card base is a light tan card stock cut and folded to make a 4 1/4" X 5 1/2" card base. I added a dark brown mat cut at 4" X 5 1/4" from the Tim Holtz Nostaglic Collection Core'dinations card stock. And another tan mat cut at 3 3/4" X 5".

For my final layer, I started with some white card stock cut at 4" X 5". I used some Tim Holtz distress ink in old paper, antique linen, tea dye, and vintage photo to ink up my paper. I started with my lightest color and worked my way to the darkest color layering the color as I went. I then lightly spritz the paper with some water and allowed it to dry. Next I took some of the Tim Holtz Distress Stain in tarnished brass and inked around outer edges of my paper. I allowed it to dry for a few minutes then turned the paper over and spritzed it with water until it was fairly damp and then crumbled it all up. I spritzed from the back so my ink on the front wouldn't react to the water. I carefully opened up the paper and dried it with my heat tool. Once it was dry I took my blending tool and some Vintage Photo and lightly went over the top of my paper to enhance the wrinkles I had created.

Using Vintage Photo and the French Music stamp I stamped the inked paper. Because of some of the creases, and wrinkles I got a very broken up image which was what I wanted. I then cut it down to 3 1/2" X 4 3/4" so it would fit the front of my card. I took my scissors and distressed the edges of the paper and the adhered all my layers together.

I wanted my sentiment to be the focal point of my card. So using my Cricut and the Elegant Edges cartridge and the Oblong creative feature I cut a scallop and shadow at 3". The shadow was cut out of the dark brown and the top layer was cut out of the light tan.

I inked the edges of the tan scallop with some Tea Dye Tim Holtz Distress Ink and used Vintage photo to stamp my sentiment. Because this ink lightens a bit when it dries, it was a perfect choice to use with the sentiment to carry my distressed theme.

I added some rhinestone flourishes to the front of my card. These were actually clear rhinestones that I colored with a Spectrum Noir marker GB10.


My flowers are a 3d Rose cut that I cut with my Silhouette Cameo. The paper is Core'dinations Gemstone card stock, but not sure of the name of the color but it is a light golden  yellow.

I rolled my flowers and adhered a gold pearl in the center of each flower. I didn't have enough small gold pearls to trim my scallop so I used some Gold Pearl Liquid pearls for that. I adhered the sentiment mat to my card using some foam tape.

I hope you like it. I had a lot of fun working on this one as it was a bit more of a challenge for me.