Sweet Spring Celebrations

Happy Egg Hunt!

We're continuing on in Papertrey Ink's anniversary celebration and today's prize is pretty sweet... the top 5 "Spring" products & dies. 

Your task, should you choose to accept it :) , is to visit all the design team blogs, count up all the Easter eggs you find in the official photo (up above), and leave your findings over at Nichole's blog for a chance to win.  So count away, friends!

The design team's task is to bring you two of this month's new sets... Sweet Spring and Scrambled Eggs.  Let's kick it off with Sweet Spring...

I went whimsical with this sweet set from Lisa and I'm super pleased with the cheery results... I love cheery cards :)

When I make a card I generally start by playing around with the layout.  In this case, I knew I wanted to feature the flowers in a sort of landscape-y look but I still wanted to work in the sentiment - enter the Clouds dies. 

To make the background I layed out a large and small cloud die-cut onto the front layer and spritzed over it with some spray mist {Patina by Tattered Angels}.  I kept the mistsing light by spraying from pretty high up (maybe 2 feet from my table top) and tried to keep the mist heavier at the top and lighter at the bottom.  That left some pretty white clouds behind in the midst of the mist :)

The large and small flower images seemed like the perfect spot to practice my super simple Copic coloring so that's what I did next...

I used three or 4 Copics per flower... no blending, just putting the colors right in the lines and adding a few bright spots in the middles.  A little shadow behind the flowers and green stems helped to set everything off. 
Loving the font combination on the sentiments in this set!  I added the little butterfly right at the end of the sentiment and brought the fun colors from the flowers up into the butterfly to tie everything together.

Loving how the spray mists adds that bit of sparkle to everything, too :)  Seems like just the right touch for spring.


And speaking of spring...

it's only a matter of time before the Easter bunny comes around :)

I am totally excited about how these sweet treats turned out. 
Totally.
Excited.

The little Easter bunny and sentiments are all from the new Scrambled Eggs set from Heather.  Man, that set is flippin' CUTE. 

The little bunny egg image coordinates with the previously released egg die, the bunny ears have a die of their own, and I used the Tag Sale #1 die for the tag bases so these cuties came together pdq.  {Did anyone else grow up with a mom who said "pdq" all the time?  Pretty darned quick. Possible that it was a rural Oklahoma thing.  Or thang, as rural Okies like my said mom would say it :)  }

A little scalloped grass does double duty as a place for bunny to sit and a way to ground the image.

And the tags are wrapped around the tastiest carrots I've ever seen :)

I saw the Martha Stewart crepe paper carrots around Easter this year and finally had the perfect chance to make them.  Good ol' Martha.  You can find the basic idea right here. 

The original instructions direct you to just wrap your treats up in a carrot shape with the crepe paper.  After reading the comments on the orginal post I went with the advice I saw there regarding wrapping up the treats with some tissue paper first, then wrapping the tissue paper carrot with the crepe paper.  I knew I wanted to use jelly beans as the treats, so that just made the most sense to me.

I started by laying out the jelly beans in a carrot-ish shape...

Then I folded the tissue paper up and over the beans so that they would be held in at the bottom...

I moved on to folding the tissue paper over the the side and kind of rolling my way along.  I did need to fold the top of the tissue down as well to keep the beans from coming out that way. 

And then I did my best to finagle that whole thing into something vaguly resembling the shape of a carrot :)


A little tape at the end held the tissue packet together.

See?
Slightly carrot-ish.

If you wanted to skip the whole tissue paper step you could always get those clear cone shaped treat bags from the craft store.  Just stick the jelly beans in there, secure the top, and start crepe wrapping. 

As for the crepe paper wrapping part, I stuck pretty closely to the original instructions.  I did secure my crepe with tape right when I started.  I also kept reminding myself that it was a CARROT... not an excercise in perfectionism :)  Therefore, I gave myself permission to twist and fold the crepe as needed to kind of help keep things smooth, etc.  And remember that the crepe paper is pretty tough stuff... stretch it as you go.

In general, I started near the top, twisted down to the bottom, tried to form a point, wrapped back up to the top, and repeated all that one more time. 

Once I got back up to the top with the orange crepe, I added my little grassy tops...

I'm not sure how Martha's people eschewed glue for this project... I totally embraced the glue {those are Glue Arts Adhesive Squares}.  I wrapped an adhesive square around the bottom of the grassy tops and stuck those in at the top before I wrapped the orange crepe around up there. 

I used mini adhesive squares at the top to secure the orange crepe down.  I also tried to give the green tops a firm push into the top of the carrot to kind of give it the proper shape.


Honestly, they were super easy.
And it's always gratifying when all of your kiddos crowd around you demanding carrots :)
{Because if anyone's going to tell you the truth about what a craft project actually looks like, it's a 4 year old. 
Guess how I know that.}

All righty, folks... time to hop on along on your Egg Hunt :)

Here are all the other design team blogs for your viewing pleasure...

Nichole Heady

Betsy Veldman

Erin Lincoln

Maile Belles

Lisa Johnson

Dawn McVey

Heather Nichols

Melissa Phillilps

Michelle Wooderson

Danielle Flanders

That's all, folks!
{Get it?  Get it?  Come on... gotta love a Bugs Bunny reference at the end of the carrot post!}


{Welcome Spring} card

Supplies not available now but available 2/15:
Stamps - Sweet Spring
Supplies available now:

{Sweet Carrot} tags

Supplies not available now but available 2/15:
Stamps - Scrambled Eggs stamps & die collection
Supplies available now: