Hello! Thanks for stopping by. Today I have part 2 of my Level 2 final project for the Altenew Educator's Certification Program. I was asked to re-purpose or upcycle an item.
I chose to make a basket from a box that was being thrown away.
This project took a couple days. I started with a plain white box. I tucked the flaps down so that the edges weren't too rough.
I grabbed rope from my closet, along with my hot glue gun. (The hot glue gun is not my best friend! Do you know how many times I burned myself or got caught up in the hot glue "ribbons" that seem to get everywhere???)
I found it easiest to work on my lap with the rope on the desk... (and then the rope ended up on the floor). I just needed it where I could grab what I needed before the glue dried.
I played my favorite music, and began wrapping the rope around and around the box. I would make a line of hot glue, add the rope, hold for a few seconds, and then go to the next edge.
Oh man!! I almost made it!! I ran out of rope with just a little bit of the box left to go. No worries!! I have other rope. This is much larger, and added a nice contrast to the top of the box.
When I got to the end, I decided to leave a "pompon" for fun. I unraveled the rope to make it more playful.
I didn't like the look, so I grabbed some twine to tie around to make it look more like a knot.
Here is the end result. Well, of the rope part, anyway. There is more to come!
I wanted to add some Altenew flowers die cut from felt to the basket. I have never die cut with felt before, so it was a learning experience. At first it didn't cut well, so I cut directly onto my metal shim. Oh I did not like that noise!! But... it worked!
I cut the petals from the Altenew Craft a Flower Prairie Roses set from white felt. (I wanted a flower without too much detail for this process.) How boring would that be on a rustic looking basket? So... playtime began!
I used Bibi Cameron's liquid watercolors for my color.
First I wet the petals, then I rung them out well. I tipped just the center point of each petal into a drop of ink. It doesn't take much at all!!
This does not look like it's going to work. 😢. But patience, my dear... I let them dry with the ink at the top, letting gravity do it's trick to bring the color down through the petals. I draped them over the edge of a dish to create the shape of the petals. They will dry in the shape in which they are hung.
I did the same for the leaves.
The drying time took about 24 hours, but it actually worked!! The felt drew in the watercolors throughout the entire petal!
Because the felt was a little harder to cut than card stock, the keyholes were not easy to see. I had to look at the packaging to construct the flowers. I glued them together with my not so best friend, the hot glue gun. I added an Altenew gem to the centers, and attached the flowers and leaves to the basket with the hot glue.
For the inside, I sprayed both sides of watercolor paper with water, then I used a large brush and painted with the same purple color I had used for the flowers. I cut the paper to fit, and glued to the insides of the box.
Closeup look at the finished flowers.
My new favorite card is a shaker made with clear packaging, so I am using this basket to store all my packaging until I am ready to use it! I will share that tutorial in another post.
Have a great day!
thats adorbs!
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