Flowers for a friend

A friend is leaving work tomorrow and I wanted to make something special as a parting gift. I love to give and receive flowers but, sadly, they don't last very long so I decided to make some that would last! I saw this idea on the Calico Crafts blog (made by Trish) and decided to try my own version. I bought the cardboard suitcase from The Artistic Stamper a couple of months ago and had been looking for a suitable idea for using it.

I painted the suitcase with cream acrylic paint to give it a base and painted the straps and handle with brown acrylic paint. I added Black Soot distress ink to the brown straps to age them and also rubbed small amounts of gold ink (from a gold mark pen) to add more depth. The suitcase was distressed and aged using Frayed Burlap and Scattered Straw. I kept adding colour until I was happy with the result. I used a sanding block to distress the edges of the case.

I used papers from my stash for the flowers and cut flower shapes in various sizes and styles using my Cricut machine. I distressed them using a mixture of inks to add muted colour. a faux pearl in the centre of each flower completed the look. The stalks were made using bamboo skewers and the flowers were glued to them using a hot glue gun. I cut the stalks into various lengths so that the flowers would be of different heights when glued into the case. I used a hot glue gun to glue the flowers into place. - you will need to hold them in place for a few minutes whilst the glue dries and hardens. To hide the glue at the bottom of the case I added thin strips of coiled paper which also finished the piece nicely.

Everlasting flowers...a pretty gift.