DT Challenge: Back to School

Happy Sixth of the Month! AND...Happy Labor Day. :) I've been out of the saddle for a bit, but I wouldn't miss creating a project for our Limelight monthly challenge for the world! This month, we have focused on creating back to school goodies and cards for teachers and students. My children are starting preschool this Tuesday (Cameron is going to be in Pre-K, and Katy is in the 2-year-old class), so I knew I wanted to create a little treat to tuck in their bags for the occasion.

Remember the pumpkin basket I made last fall? I loved that basket!! :) It was my inspiration for today's project. I made an apple container in the same fashion as the pumpkin basket. The difference here is that, since I wanted this apple to be completely closed, I used my Crop-a-dile to punch through both ends of the twelve (6x1) strips of patterned paper and fastened both ends with a brad. This apple actually contains a Gala apple. I will probably, however, tuck a muffin (packaged in a glassine bag) inside for the kids' lunches on Tuesday. Cameron has been asking for blueberry muffins lately, so I'll be making a batch tomorrow. I think several of these paper apples could also be very cute piled into a decorative bowl for a centerpiece, too! So many possibilities!

The patterned papers I used for this project are all from Jillibean Soup. For the fruit, I used Minestrone - Chopped Tomatoes. To create the stem, I used Minestrone - Olive Oil. I started with a 3x1 strip of the brown paper and curled it into a spiral stem for dimension. To create the leaves, I used a short length of Parrot Green Twill. I simply tied a knot in the middle of the ribbon, then trimmed the ends to resemble leaves.

To create the 3x3 card, I decided to just cut an apple by hand using the same patterned papers. I forgot to photo the inside, but the sentiment inside reads "You're crazy cool!" It's from an SU stamp set.

I hope you enjoyed my project today! Be sure to visit each of the DT members on my right sidebar to be totally inspired!