Thankful Blooms with Michelle Lanning

Hello All & Happy Fall! I can't believe that Thanksgiving is right around the corner!! We have a week long break from school here and I thought this would be a cute and simple gift to give to my daughter's teacher.

Here are the supplies you will need...

Float Pattern Paper (Brook Collection)
Peach Pattern Paper (Pink Plum Collection)
Heirloom and Lace Pattern Papers (Restoration Collection)
Pens (Any will do)
Mini Flower Pot
Ribbon

I grabbed some Fall colors from some Crate Paper lines and planned on only using the more solid sides of the sheets. I used my paper cutting machine to cut flowers in two different sizes. I layered the flowers and added some circles to the center. I did not adhere the flowers until all were finished. I knew I wanted to make the word, "Thanks", so I made six flowers.

When the flowers were completed, I added alphas to the centers with some strong adhesive. As I was letting them dry, I wrapped the pens with some leftover ribbon I had on hand. You can use anything really! I have even used garden tape (the green one) to make these. But, I used what was in my stash and made sure that the ends were secured with glue.

Adding the flowers was simple. Place hot glue, or other type of strong glue (and let set) to the end of the pen and adhere your flower.

To finish these off, I placed them in a mini flower pot. Usually I would fill the pot with beans, but I had none on hand so I used pasta, which worked just fine. I would suggest wrapping the flower pot in cellophane to finish the gift off, and so the pens stay in place.

Here are all the pens laid out flat. Note the cute leaves from felt! A flower isn't a flower until it's been partnered with leaves!

And that's it! So fun and easy - and cheap! Hope this inspires you to make some for someone you wish to thank this season!

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So, we mentioned to you that we had a box of Crate goods awaiting a new home before the upcoming holiday weekend!! We asked you to tell us what your holiday craft projects entailed this season being that the holiday season is upon us already and nearly seventy of you responded! You're a busy group of crafters! Who'll be needing to make more room for crafty, fun stuff from Crate Paper? We thought Ally White's idea was remarkably different. She's going with the whole tag idea, though plans to store them in a handcrafted box to keep on hand for years to come! Congratulations Ally - you're our Crate Paper winner!

These are some of the most gorgeous tags that i've seen! I love them!!! Every year in our family at Thanksgiving i make some small tags and we all put what we are thankful for on them and sign and date them. We then put them in a craft box that i decorated and someday in the future we will read what each other wrote.

Posted by: Ally White | November 17, 2010 at 03:20 PM

Send us your info Ally at [email protected] - you're box awaits!

Speaking of which, there are a lot of really great ideas to be had of the sixty plus comments we received in response to this week's giveaway. We highly recommend taking a moment to read them to find out what everyone else is working on at this very moment and into December, as you're bound to find something to add to your already busy plate. :) Thanks to all whom shared their ideas!

Emily Pitts will be joining us tomorrow with this month's sketch! Be sure to stop by and say "hello"! Have a great day everyone!