Come Into The Garden

... or rather, bring your weeding gear, please.  Our back garden is very jungle-like at the moment as we have a terrible problem with the convulvulus weed (hedge bindweed) that is raging everywhere and is seemingly impossible to get rid of!  It has wound itself around every possible plant it can find, and delights in taking hold of any structure it can find and hiding it!  The flowers are pretty enough, in its defence, but, my, it is a devil of a plant!  (Worse still, it smells faintly of dog do-do if you break the stems whilst pulling it out - yeeeeeuch!)  There's nothing for it but to done suitable hand protection and painstakingly rub the leaves with a systemic weedkiller, which I am assured will do the trick, although not at the moment, obviously, because it is raining like the clappers!

So, I was very pleased to find that the Papertake Weekly Challenge theme this week is 'In the garden', and making a garden-themed card is just about the closest I like to come to anything green.  Add to this that Project Tuesday require an easel card this week and I thought it might be quite nice to combine the two. 

Image: Heather Ellis, 'Pure Innocence 017'

Papers: My Minds Eye, 'Quite Contrary' range - 6x6 pad, which was free with 'Cardmaking and Papercraft' magazine this month.

Tools: EK Success Retrol Floral Punch; Floral Punch leaf spray; Tim Holtz hitch fasteners (for drawer knobs)

Other: Brilliant tutorial for a 4-drawer easel card from Kristine Breach at Ink Something 2
Because I'm not really a lover of easel cards, I liked the idea of making
it into something more gift like and Kristine's brilliant tutorial was my starting point.  It was very easy to follow and is open to lots of variations once you've got the basic idea. 
 

It's an awfully long time since I used my Pure Innocence digistamps but this one is so appropriate for anything garden-related so she was first choice this week.  I paper-pieced her dungarees and shirt and then coloured up the rest of the image with Copics before adding the blue 'glow' with my Prismas.  I couldn't resist using a little heart gem on her dungaree pocket, though!

As this would be given as a gift, I saw no reason not to go to town with the bow and I used a wide, wire-edged organza to make a large but pretty bow.  Then I punched out and made up a few flowers to co-ordinate with the papers and attached them to the front of the card. 

I trawled the web for a suitable sentiment - something not too profound, though - and found this one, which I absolutely love.

It just about sums up my approach to gardening and as my back never gets used to it, well, you can guess the rest! 




Just for completeness, here's a side view of the finished article - you can see how the drawers are placed one per side, following Kristine's original tutorial. 

This was a thoroughly enjoyable project to make - you should give this version of an easel card a go because it has all sorts of potential, particularly as a multiple gift box for Christmas, for example.  Each little drawer could hold a little trinket, a pot of cream, chocolates, jewellery, whatever you like.  Just a tip, though:  I have mounted my drawers on to stiff board to give them a little more rigidity and I did the same with the base of the easel, just for stability, particularly if you need the drawers to hold something a little heavier than a necklace or a few chocolates.

Once you've got the basic idea, experiment by making different sized drawers too - mine were made with
8 x 8 cardstock instead of 6 x 6 and I intend to try with 12 x 12 very shortly, to see what size the drawers would be.  And if you do decide to have a go, I'd love to see what you come up with!

Happy crafting.
xx