GO GREEN, March Linky Party

I can't complain about the winter we've had in Vancouver, nonetheless, the arrival of Spring is cause to celebrate. The greening of nature this time of year is always welcome and around our parts the daffodils and cherry blossoms are magnificent. My personal joy is when our Magnolia blooms and it looks to be in a day or two. It's called a dinner plate Magnolia as the blooms are gigantic and it is a deep pink.

I've been gardening a couple of times so far and the Linky Title this month, "Go Green" inspired my garden related project. My box/envelope will be filled with a few gardening items for a dear friend of mine who is a master gardener. It is large enough to fit a pair of gardening gloves, some really beautiful plant name stakes, and a couple of packets of seeds.

The background papers are from Crafty Secrets Retro Kitchen Kit , the tickets at the bottom edge are from CD3 Vintage Typography. The Rose sheet music is a scan I used from my vast sheet music collection. The adorable little girl with the watering can is from Vegetable Garden digital stamp set and the sentiment banner is from Flower Garden digital stamp set.

The box is approximately 6"x12" so I printed the base paper to that scale and I coloured in the pink dots. The pink paper has little white dots on it but they didn't show up after I cut it with the Spellbinder die. I antiqued the edge of the sheet music with distress ink. I coloured the sweet little girl with copics and fussy cut her out.

Are these not the cutest little garden implements? This is new Memory Box die. I took a stylus to them to give them shape and painted them with silver paint.

The banner was also fussy cut and I don't mind telling you it was very fiddly! This is one of three butterflies that were stamped in silver and then embossed, coloured with copics and rhinestoned (is that a verb?????)

Here is my very small attempt to comply with the recycling aspect of this Go Green theme, the twine was formally tied around some snow drop plants I bought.

The final touches included ribbon leaf trim ribbon, the obligatory rhinestones (at least obligatory for this girl), and a couple of pearl stick pins.

TUTORIAL 

Now for the tutorial. I decided I wanted to make the box as big as I could out of a 12"x12" piece of paper. You can make this to any size but all the dimensions shown were to utilize a full sheet.

This shows the box open flat with dimensions. The elliptical lines you see are just to show you where they are placed on the box but don't draw them on your box, later I will show you how to use a dinner plate as a template to trace around with a stylus. The right edge is a tab edge.

I wanted an elliptical shape and all I had were circular dies so I used the edge of a plate, placed it on a padded surface, and drew around the edge with a stylus. This line has to be duplicated in both directions. The outer line is cut around and the inside edge is folded on the crease line you created with the stylus.

Here it is with the edges cut and the crease folded in. I placed a strip of sookwang 2 sided tape on the left flap edge to fasten it closed.

There you go, fait accompli! Now you are ready to decorate you own box.

Crafty Secrets has a pillow box digital printable if you don't want to be bothered figuring out your own.

To thank you for playing along, you’ll find a FREE gardening digital paper and printable over on the Heartwarming Vintage BLOG that you can download and use in your project. Or use any Crafty Secrets goodies you might have in your stash to play along. We also have dozens of FREE DOWNLOADS that you can use in your project. You do NOT have to follow the theme to play along, but it’s always fun when you do.

One lucky participant will be randomly selected to win this lovely prize package from Crafty Secrets valued at more than $25:
* Digital Garden Papers: 18 sheets of designer paper including 2 collage sheets of gardening seed packets, vintage gardening text sheets, a garden maze and beautiful botanical papers. (http://craftyvintagegirl.com/index.php/digital-garden-papers-dp-08.html)
* Digital Garden Printables: 16 images, ready to print in a resizable format. (http://craftyvintagegirl.com/index.php/digital-garden-printables-t-21.html)
* Garden Girls Digital Art Stamps: 18 digital stamps taken from vintage etchings featuring 3 sweet garden girls, images for building scenes and sentiments. (http://craftyvintagegirl.com/index.php/das-l21-garden-girls.html)
* Bunny Gift Bag and Tag set: Printable Bunny Bunny Kids Bag with Gift Tag can be re-printed to make adorable mini purses to hold greetings, money, gift cards and small gifts. (http://craftyvintagegirl.com/index.php/bunny-kids-gift-bag-and-tag-printable-download.html)
Thanks for playing along! We can’t wait to see what you bring to the party!

Please visit the rest of the design team to see the beautiful projects they have created.

Kathy Clement, DT Leader http://www.kathybydesign.com

Darlene Pavlick, Dar’s Crafty Creations   http://darscraftycreations.blogspot.com/

Diane Hover, Nellie’s Nest  http://www.nelliesnest.blogspot.com

Ginny Nemchak, Polly’s Paper     https://pollyspaper. wordpress.com/

Gloria Stengel, Scraps of Life   http://gloriascraps.blogspot.com/

Melody Clement, Paper Melody’s   http://papermelodys.wordpress.com/

Michele Kovack, Thoughts of a Cardmaking Scrapbooker  http://chelemom.blogspot.com/

Shantaie Fowler, Inking Pink http://www.inkingpink.com/

Sheila Rumney, Sheila Rumney Design and Photography,  http://www.sheilarumney.com/

Vicki Chrisman, 

http://vickichrisman.blogspot.com/

Guest Designer

Karen Letchworth, My Cup Runneth Over http://karen-mycuprunnethover.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for visiting my blog

Cheers, 

Elizabeth