Rusty Bucket

As a member of the More Paper Than Shoes Design Team, I am presented with a "challenge" each month.  This means that I am given a short elusive description and an obscure theme by our team leaders.  Then it is my job to figure out what the project is to be before I can even begin to work on it.  Thinking makes my brain hurt sometimes.  LOL  Anna and Kindra, the MPTS Leaders keep coming up with more and more unique and interesting projects for the challenges.

For the September Challenge they gave us the theme:  Rusty Bucket.  A week or so later they gave us some clues to things that we could use:  rope, rusty bucket, torn paper, metal.  This all sounded simple enough at first.  So I started on an idea and then had to lay it aside for some projects in my "real life".  When I finally was able to return to my work space, the ideas that I had before just wouldn't come together the way that I wanted.  So I started with only a couple of things and redid the rest.

Here is my finished project.  A Tag in the shape of garden bucket that has sunflowers in it.  Here in Kansas the sunflowers are in full bloom during the month of September so I felt that this fit in with the season very well.  It's now hanging on a knob on the front of my china cabinet in my dining room.  :)

Above is the upper portion of the tag.  It has three sunflowers that are hand drawn and hand cut.  I added some inking and some drawn lines to the petals.  The petals are then curled a little bit on the tips to create more dimension to the project. 

The seed portion or middle of the flowers are created with two buttons, one larger than the other and stacked on top of each other. 

The leaves are created with patterned paper and green cardstock.  The paper had a leaf design to it.  I cut around a leaf and then glued it to the cardstock.  Then I cut around the leaf again leaving just a little bit of the cardstock for an edge.  After that the leaves were inked and detailed with lines.  One leaf is "popped" up off the surface to give more dimension to the tag.  The back side of the flowers and leaves are decorated too so that even the back of this tag looks pretty. 

Three bugs have been glued to the flowers to put that extra touch of detail to the tag.  There are two dragonflies and one bee on the flowers.

The Rusty Bucket part of the tag is the shape of the tag with a folded edge for the lip of the bucket.  I used a rust colored paper and cardstock which has all been inked and detailed.

For a final touch tiny little wooden letter blocks have been stacked up to spell out the word Sunflowers.

See the full photo of the tag below.