In The Garden

I’ve known all month exactly what I wanted to do for the current My Favorite Things Outside the Box: Florals Challenge. I’ve been spending most of my free time in my own garden, but finished all the planting on Tuesday. Yesterday I finally made time to create the card—and just in time, as the challenge ends at noon today!

I’ve had the very cute “Sunflower Sweetie” set from MFT for quite awhile, and it’s another of my NBUS! After coloring the cutie with Copic markers and fussy cutting her out, I started creating the garden flowers with the MFT “Box Card Bouquet” dies. These flowers will get a lot of use, I think, beyond the Outside the Box cards.

I used Ellen Hutson’s “Landscape” dies to create the grass, and Honey Bee’s “Slimline Borders” for the fence which I die cut from woodgrain paper. Once I had all the elements, I assembled the box with the “Outside the Box Level Up” dies, and added the sweet little girl, the fence, and all the flowers.

The patterned paper is also from MFT — “Tiny Checks” — as is the sentiment from “Bitty Birthday Wishes.” One thing I love about these cards is that they fold and can be mailed in an A2 envelope. It’s really a genius design.

In addition to the Outside the Box Challenge, I’m adding this as a second card to The Card Concept Challenge: Garden Pleasures inspired by the Black-eyed Susans in the photograph. Trying to determine a style for this card is a bit more complicated than my usual CAS–I’ve settled on Freestyle Collage as the closest candidate. And a third challenge, that opened up yesterday–Simon Says: Use Dies or Punches. Almost totally dies in this case! And, of course, an entry to NBUS!