Say it with flowers!

 It's been over a month since I posted - lots been going on and just didn't get round to it.

Today I am sharing the little flower boxes I made for my colleagues in my teaching bubble, using Crafter's Companion dies and Florist box template.

I have made flowers before - and they are on my blog from early last year - but I tried some new flower dies this time. All of them are from Crafter's Companion Spring Foam Flower collection. I also used my old travel iron along with the CC Petal Distress Tool set. The flower foam is a mix of Foamiroan and CC. 

Because I wanted to put them in the Florist Box (CC template from the same collection), I wanted a solid "stem". I created the flowers in pretty much the same was as last time (see my post from last year) although I didn't bother with ink or with the ball tool. To add a stem, I used Oasis green Hobby Wire, and used hot glue to attach it to the white ends of the stamens that had been pulled through.

I then used Florist tape (I got this from Amazon), to wrap the wire from the bottom, up to the flower.

  

  

I had four flower boxes to make, so used four different dies: Vibrant Dianthus (dark purple), Elegant Ranunculus (lavender), Pretty Peony (yellow) and Wild Poppy (orange). These sets come with 2 or 3 dies for the smaller petals, and with 3 templates for the larger petals. This is OK - but I think I would have been happy to pay more to have the larger dies for speed. The all have foliage dies too, but I feel that they are really only suitable if you are using the smaller petals. You can see from the pictures below that the poppy leaf is fine, but the others barely show (and not at all in the case of the ranunculus). I used several layers of each size for the larger flowers (mostly 3 - but sometimes 2).

  

 

I then created boxes for each, using the Florist Box template and Core'dinations card. I wrapped each one with Baker's twine (this is from Creative Expressions and has been in my stash for a very long time). I lost the piece of paper I wrote all my notes on - but I vaguely recall I used 50" of twine for each. Sounds a lot, so I may be remembering that incorrectly. I used red liner tape to wrap this around the box. 

  

I used an additional piece - this one I recall as being around 17" - to wrap round, and tie in a knot at the front.

I had some leaf and alphabet charms to add on. Unfortunately, the hole in the leaf charm was too small for the twine, so I added some thread, and tied a leaf to each side of the knot.

   

I then threaded the alphabet charm onto one piece of the twine, knotted it on and tied a bow.

  

I used tissue paper to "stuff" into the boxes and then pushed the flowers in. 

 

 

I am really pleased at how these turned out. 

Happy crafting,

Cxxxx