God's Little Lamb ~ Petal Cone Basket and Bleaching Technique

I saw these in a few places online. I have no idea the ingenious stamper that was the ORIGINAL designer for this. but when my girlfriend Pam was at the house on Friday, to make petal cones for her granddaughters baptism, I said "give me a minute to try something I saw online"..

If this was your original idea, can you email me and I'll change my post to give you credit! :D For my local gals, if they have a project in mind, and make a purchase to make a project, when the goodies get here we roll up our sleeves together.

I've been doing favors all week for two different parties and invitations. It's so fun and rewarding to see how special it makes people feel when they finish their artwork that is worthy of a gallery! (in my humble opinion!).

Okay ~~~ Where to start.. I guess, I'll tell you about the handle first.. I took a regular 8 1/2" x 11" piece of matching cardstock, and punched the 8 1/2" end to make the handles. After doing a few of these you'll need a break, but I'm surprised how sturdy the handles really are! I punched holes on either side of my basket and ran a brad to attach the handle.... The best part of this punch is, when you punch one 8 1/2" strip, you have a regular piece of paper and dont need to cut in order to start the next strip.. it goes really quick.. I did them while catching up on my favorite soap in front of the tv.. :D

The base of the basket is two petal cone cut outs.. From where the petal folds, I measured down two inches and scored.. **note ~ this is a little tricky, you have to turn your project and essentially score twice to make it come together.. Then you cut at 3 inches.. There is a little tab left over at the bottom, and you need to slice upward to make the base.. I hope that's clear.. maybe i'll need to "do" a tutorial for it. If you google this petal cone basket, i'm sure you'll find a bunch of posts on it. So ~ we made a little less than 40 of these on Friday morning.

This set is ANOTHER set that I'll never part with, and when my friend Pam told me what she wanted for favors for her granddaughters christening... I knew what set I wanted to pull out! The invites had a lamb on them and referred to God's Little Lamb.. Isn't that the coolest?? So I embossed this lamb, and the post yesterday explains about the process for that.. Next I took some ordinary house bleach, and put it in a glass bowl on top of some paper towels. I used an aqua painter and picked up the bleach to bleach out the "fluffy part" of the lamb.. So it's on pink paper, but the lamb is white. This was our "scratch" sample, so on this one we also bleached the little heart necklace and the face of the lamb to color it in, but pirouette is such a light color pink, we decided that we would just leave it and run a blush blossom marker for the face, not color the necklace and drop a JEWEL self adhesive bling on top..

We saved all the leftover pieces from the die cuts and shredded them to make "Easter" grass in the bottom of the basket. They are so beautiful! I originally thought I should cut the paper banner a bit shorter, but the more I looked at it, I think I like the extra long, ribbon like banner that is also cut from the same die. Pam is a kindergarten teacher and kept the "ice cream" looking pink tops for her students.. she'll be making ice cream with them as the weather gets nicer.. Best of all... when you make it with paper, there's no calories!

This Sunday, my friend Jo and her friend Chris were at the house.. Of course we made a card, and I had an idea to take this idea to the elegant side... So I made one with craft paper..

We colored the image for this one with a marker and added dazzling diamonds to the flower.. A little seam binding and this basket is ready to go.. it's a really quick project and they make GORGEOUS favors, especially this time of year!

If you are local to me and would like to see how to assemble one, pop on by this week... I'm making 72 more for a part this weekend.. :D

Happy Wednesday!

Rubbah hugs,
Selene Kempton