Easy Wicker Background

 I haven't posted anything for a while because my husband and I went on a little vacation over to Glacier National Park.  Have you ever been there?  This was our first trip to Montana and it is so gorgeous.  We took the Red Bus Tour from the West Entrance over to the East Entrance which was about 6 1/2 hours.  The narration was fabulous and the bus stopped a lot along the way.  The Red Buses have open tops, and stops a lot so you can stand up and take pictures.  This picture was taken on the East end of the glaciers.  If you haven't been there, I'm sure you will be wowed by the beauty of the park. We also went over to spend an afternoon at Whitefish which was about 30 minutes west of Glacier.  We had lunch at the resort on the lake and you could see many huge mansions, up in the mountains, on the other side of the lake.  They told us many movie stars and athletic stars have homes there. We also spent time in downtown Whitefish.  I had the best (homemade) huckleberry  ice cream cone I have ever had there.  That little ice cream store was the busiest place there!

It was fun to get  back in my craft room and start designing again.  This is a card I started before going and vacation and finished it up today.  The pretty flowers were made from flower dies from two different Marianne Designs doily packages, each with a different size flowers (you get one doily and one flower in each package).  The larger flower comes with the doily in the "LR0168" package and the smaller flower is in the doily package "LR0169".  There are two layers of the larger flower and one small flower in the center for these dimensional flowers.  They were cut out using a "mustard" color card stock and sponged on the ends with a rust ink.  The stamen is a punched "Large Sky Flake".  The pretty leafy swirls are the Marianne Designs "Forest Branch" (LR0150).  Three different sizes of Cheery Lynn Leaves from two different packages of leaves (D134) and (D136) were die cut and placed under the flowers. 

 

Marianne flower dies from LR0168 and LR0169

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I love woven backgrounds so I asked Joan, (Joan's Gardens) to order the Cheery Lynn "Wittle Wicker" (W101) die so I could see if it was very easy to create a woven background with it. I love this woven die because it really is easy to create a woven design.. 

First you cut two woven panels out with the die.  I cut the ends off one so I just had strips to weave into the other woven panel.  I cut one of the ends open and used a chop stick to pick up every other strip so I could lay one strip going across the other way.  This picture shows three rows completed and I am working on the fourth row.  Once you have picked up every other strip, just slide in the horizontal strip and push it down snugly to the previous row.

 The weaving goes very quickly when you do it like this.  I have almost finished inserting all the horizontal strips in this picture.

This is the completed woven piece.  I used white card stock and sponged it with Tim Holtz Tea Die Ink for the completed card. 

To frame the wicker piece, I created a frame by using a Spellbinders Classic Scallop Nestability for the outside of the frame and used a smaller Nestie square die to cut the center out.  The wicker was cut down to fit behind this frame. Sticky back brass brads were added to each scallop.  My card is 5.5" square.  I used white card stock for the card front so it was also sponged with Tea Dye Distress Ink.  The flowers and leaves were arranged along the left side.  The pretty butterfly is one of the Cheery Lynn "Exotic Butterfly Small" (DL113) die cut in dark brown and under it is the matching "Small Angel Wing (DL113A) cut with mustard card stock.  I needed the "angle wing" on this butterfly so the woven design didn't show through the openings in the wings.

If you like the woven look, I hope you will try creating it with this die.  You could use this to create a woven basket too. 

As you know, all products I use can be purchased from Joan's Gardens.  

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