Springtime and Easter Baskets!

It seems like the weeks have gone whizzing by lately ... and y'all should SEE my craft room!! It is a DISASTER area!! I haven't really cleaned it up for nearly two months ... I haven't done a lot of crafting, either, so everything I have done in the past two months has remnants of itself piled in one place or the other ... sigh ... I need to find some time to clean this up ... but I'm gonna need a shovel to do so!!

On the good news front ... my mother in law came home from the rehab center on Thursday. She is doing incredibly well ... bones are all knitting nicely, and the thing that she is going to have to work on now is regaining strength and range of motion in her healing upper arm (where her humerus bone shattered). She is such an inspiration. My own sweet mom is going to be headed home from the rehab center on Wednesday. She is thrilled and scared ... she is still on the mend, but they say it may take up to six months for her to regain the strength she had before this episode (and she wasn't all that strong to begin with). But, she IS getting better, so that makes us happy!! My foot is making slow progress, but I am working on massaging/exercising it every day. Patience will win ...

And I am FINALLY posting the long-promised tutorial for the little basket I made for the Control Freaks Blog Tour way back in February ... like I said, no idea where the time went!!





First of all, you are going to need a 6"x6" piece of patterned/designer series paper. Score each side at 2" and 4", so that what you have resembles a tic-tac-toe board. Fold along score lines.









I used my Simply Scored board to help me with my cut lines. I scored a line at 5/8" and 1 3/8" from the top left edge to the first horizontal score line at 2". Flip your paper so that you can do this same thing in each corner of your "tic-tac-toe" board. Snip the score lines so that your paper looks like the image pictured here ...



Next, you will mark the top and bottom center pieces halfway across the top edge (since the section you are marking is 2" wide, mark it at 1"). Then, score a diagonal line from the mark you made to each of the lower corners of the 2" square (which would equate to the top center and bottom center of the "tic-tac-toe" board). Cut the lines so that you have triangle shapes, as shown.




You are now going to take the flaps you made in each corner and overlap them on each other so that the flap that ends up on top (the one on the outer edge of the "board") is parallel with the bottom of the basket. Do the same with the flaps in the other corner.








Once the flaps are secured (I used glue dots), It will look like this photo ... snip the little triangle piece that is sticking out at the top off ...









Punch two 1" circles from coordinating cardstock. Place the punched circles over the top center of the front and the back of the basket.







To create the handles, cut two 1/2" by 6" strips of cardstock or patterned paper. Secure the handles to the basket about 3/4" from the outside edge with a brad.

Embellish the circles with buttons and twine, if you wish!





Fill the basket with treats and adorn the bag with something fun (you knew a butterfly was gonna figure in here sooner or later, didn't ya??)!!

Ta-DA!!! That's it. Really quite easy ... I hope my instructions make sense. Sometimes it is so hard to get what is in your brain into words!!



Paper: Summer Smooches DSP, Whisper White, Lucky Limeage
Accessories: Simply Scored, 1" Circle Punch, Summer Smooches Brads, Bold Brights Button, Whisper White Baker's Twine, Beautiful Butterflies Bigz Die, Beautiful Wings Embosslits Die, Rhinestone Basics, Cellophane Bag

Have a lovely Easter weekend! Eat some chocolate!!