Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Hi there!  Just a quick post to show the fun Easter project I recently made.  This amazing SVG file is called Waiting For Easter. I purchased it from the Creatieve Papier Uitspattingen website. It includes the bunny with top hat as well as the log bench. All of the SVG pieces were cut out with my Cricut Maker.

I decided to dress Mr. Cottontail in some lovely pastel colors for Spring. I didn't think to take a lot of pictures while creating, but I'll give you what details I can.

The roses on his hat and lapel are from the Tiny Tattered Floral die by Tim Holtz.  I also used this die set to create the flowers for the bouquet on the bench. 

I used some pastel paper scraps to cut out the flowers, rolled them up and glued them to the top half of a 1-inch Styrofoam ball. Then I created a small paper cone and tucked some Tim Holtz collage paper around the edge to look like the pretty papers that often accompany a fresh flower bouquet.  I simply hot glued the flower ball into the cone to complete the bouquet.  I like to think that Mr. Cottontail is waiting for Ms. Bunny to arrive so he can present her with these lovely flowers on their way to Easter Brunch!

I wanted to give the log bench a realistic appearance, so I cut the outer panel pieces from Tim Holtz Distress Mixed Media Heavystock paper. I embossed the panels with the Tim Holtz Lumber 3D embossing folder to get the realistic log texture and then I colored the panels with Tim Holtz Distress Stain in Vintage Photo and Bundled Sage. 

After the stain dried, I used a blending tool to lightly ink over the top grain with some Vintage Photo Distress Ink. Obviously I have a slight obsession with all things Tim Holtz! I applied the panels to the assembled bench after slightly curving the pieces so they would glue down nicely.

I used another Tim Holtz embossing folder called Tree Rings to emboss the end pieces of the logs and again lightly inked over them with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  I used the exact same methods for the larger log and assembled my bench with some hot glue.

I'm really so thrilled with how the bench turned out!  

For the final detail, I added a white pom pom tail to the back of Mr. Cottontail with some hot glue. It seemed like the perfect finishing touch. 

With Easter being so late this year, I find myself happy to have completed this project early so that I can enjoy looking at it for a while.  I really hopped right on it this year!  Pun intended.

Here's one last look at the whole project:

Thanks for stopping by! 

Distressed Bunny Marquee

**UPDATED AT BOTTOM**

I've had so much fun combining two of my favorite things to create this distressed bunny marquee. Those two things are a wonderful design from SVGCuts and digging into my stash of Tim Holtz supplies!

The Bunny Marquee Sign is from SVGCuts Happy Easter kit and I was eager to make it as I love having seasonal marquee signs around the house.   I actually already have a very Spring-ish Heidi Swapp butterfly marquee done in pastel colors, so I wanted to go another way with this project.

I've had this sheet of wonderful Tim Holtz Easter paper in my supply for years! It was time to do something fun with it.  I build the base of the bunny with a dark chocolate brown cardstock and actually then hand cut the bunny paper panel because if I cut it at the angle that my Cricut would allow, the bunny art would have been on a diagonal. I could have used my 24" Cricut mat and adjusted it for that, but it was such an easy manual cut, I just traced the cutout of the back panel and used my scissors.

 

I had a piece of some really cool ruler paper from another Tim Holtz paper pack and decided to use that as the outside band. I think it really gives this such a fun and vintage, distressed look.  I distressed around the edges of all the papers with some Ranger Distress ink in walnut stain.

You might wonder why I went multicolored with the bulb caps.  I have a few reasons and actually, this is still kind of a work in progress.  I alternated the pink and mint bulb caps on my butterfly marquee, and really loved the effect. However, this left me with 12 of each color for this project. It actually works pretty well with the bunny paper I used and I think it looks nice when lit.

BUT...I have a vision to make this even better and I just need to get to the craft store and buy some clear faceted bulb caps to finish this off.  As I mentioned, I love using Tim Holtz distress products and I really think this project would look so cool with some vintage looking mercury glass bulbs.  I experimented with some alcohol ink and clear bulb caps and came up with this altered bulb:

I LOVE how it came out!  I think I will love it even more if I can do this to a faceted bulb where the alcohol ink will get into all the nooks and crannies!  Here was my experiment with the distressed bulb on the lit bunny. 

 This is just what I envisioned! It also knocks down some of the brightness which I like too. So hopefully I'll get my hands on some clear faceted bulb caps this weekend, distress the heck out of them and give my bunny a quick and grungy makeover!

Thanks for stopping by and as always, I'd love to hear what you think!

**3/30/16 Update**

I forgot to update with the final version. Here's my bunny with the distressed bulbs - I think I love it!