Lynda Kanase Design Team Challenge and C4C483

Hello my crafty friends

It's time for Lynda Kanase's Design Team Challenge, and Lynda asked us to use her Flower Basket, Card In A Box for our projects today. I used several different die sets by Lynda for my Mother's Day Card, and since it tied in with the Crazy4Challenges theme today I'm rolling them both into a single blog post.

On the Crazy4Challenges Blog, our hostess for May is Maryann Einam. Nicky Foden is joining us as our Guest Designer this month - you can find Nicky's blog here:  My Messy Craftroom

Maryann'e Challenge this week is:  Tomorrow is Mother's Day in Australia, USA, Canada and many other parts of the world. Create a card with flowers.

This pretty card is for my Mom for Mother's Day. I assembled the Flower Basket, Card in a Box using older patterned paper from my stash. Lynda has a post with a tutorial on assembling this die set HERE.  You have an option to cut a 'basket weave' from the front of your Card in a Box if you want, but I wanted to try something different so my Card in a Box front was solid. 

I've said before how much I like Lynda's Spring Things die set, so I used some of those dies along with the flowers and greenery from the Card in a Box set and cut a bunch of flowers and flower centres from the same patterned paper and was able to use up a bunch of the scraps! I mixed and matched the flowers and flower centres, then adhered them into my Card in a Box as shown in the tutorial.

I couldn't resist tying a pretty ribbon around the basket handle. I used Lynda's Photo Frame, Lovely to die cut a frame with the 'I Heart You' sentiment (included with the die set) and adhered the frame to an Instax photo of my Mom and I. That was matted and adhered to the front of my Card in a Box and I added one of the leftover flower blooms to the upper left corner.

See the side squares? This is where I changed up the project a little bit. Since I used patterned paper instead of card stock, my basket was a little 'wussy' and didn't display as straight as I'd like.  So I die cut squares from a different piece of patterned paper in the pack and adhered them onto each side. Worked like a charm - it's nice and sturdy now.  Adding those squares to the sides changes how the card folds up for mailing though, and will now require a larger envelope and extra postage.

Another option would be to score these squares along the fold line that is underneath it on the basket die and continue the way Lynda designed the die.  I expect it will get a lot of handling by the care staff etc and I just wanted it to be nice and sturdy. Of course if I had used card stock instead of patterned paper this would have not been an issue at all!

I added a stamped 'Happy Mother's Day' to the back side and that is where we will sign our name. Since the flowers are also visible from the back, I die cut an additional three large blooms and glued them to the back of the flowers, sandwiching the flower stem in between for a clean look.

I added dimensional sparkly enamel dots to each of the flower centres, and a small gold pearl to the butterfly, which is attached to the basket with an acetate strip. Since I am hand delivering this card to my Mom, I didn't need to worry about bulk and extra postage.

I chose a 6" square envelope and wanted to show that the card indeed folds completely flat for mailing.

One more look at my dimensional Flower Basket, Card in a Box. I can't wait to give it to my Mom tomorrow! It will look so pretty on the table in her room.

I have linked my fellow Lynda Kanase Design Team members on the right; be sure to check out their blogs to see what they came up with for this challenge. Lynda will have her group post HERE  later this morning.

Also, check out the C4C blog to see how the Crazies have been inspired by the challenge. We'd  love to see your take on it, so be sure to stop by the Crazy 4 Challenges blog and link up your creations. If you are uploading to an online gallery, please use the keyword C4C483.

Supplies:
Flower Basket, Card In A Box - Lynda Kanase
Photo Frame, Lovely - Lynda Kanase
Spring Things die set - Lynda Kanase
Patterned paper (very old, from my stash) - K & Company
White card stock
Bling - Recollections
Gold pearls - Stampin' Up
Instax SHARE Printer
1056 Squares Crosshatch - Karen Burniston
Seam Binding
Acetate scrap
Happy Mother's Day stamp - Taylored Expressions

Thanks for stopping by today