Boxed Set Of Four Leafy Cards - Simply Stampin' Challenge #33

This week's challenge over at the Simply Stampin' blog is a Leafy theme challenge.  Well, that's right up my street as I love leaves! I really hope you'll join in with this lovely seasonal theme challenge as I'd love to come and check out what you create!

I'm sure I can't be alone in keeping packaging with the idea of  "doing something crafty with that one day".  I have quite a collection of items and I finally dug something out - a square acetate box - and re purposed it to hold a set of four cards and envelopes.

To decorate the front of the acetate box, I cut a square of Old Olive CS, embossed one half with the Square Lattice folder and added some lovely glittery striped paper from the Holly Berry Bouquet pack to the other half.  I then tied some Chocolate Chip satin ribbon around the join in a knot.  I used the gorgeous fern stamp from the Growing Green set -  I absolutely LOVE this leafy image - to stamp two images in Cajun Craze ink on Very Vanilla CS and I cut them both out and attached them to the embossed Old Olive panel with glue dots.  I stamped a leaf from the French Foliage set in Early Espresso ink onto Cherry Cobbler CS, cut it out and mounted that over the ferns with linen thread tied round the stem in a bow.  I then glued the whole panel to the front of the acetate box with Sticky Strip.  Here's the box:

 5 1/4" square envelopes were the perfect size to fit the box so I made four cards measuring 5 1/8" square.  I used Cajun Craze, Chery Cobbler, More Mustard and Old Olive CS for the card bases and added a rectangular panel of Early Espresso CS that I'd embossed with the Square Lattice folder to each card front.  I then stamped each square Very Vanilla panel with the fern using the same colour ink as the CS and stamped the image three times without re-inking.  I then stamped a different Curly Cute sentiment on each panel in the matching ink.  The Cajun Craze card got Happy Birthday, Cherry Cobbler got Congratulations, More Mustard got Thank You and the Old Olive card got Thinking of  You. I stamped the French Foliage leaf in Early Espresso ink on each of the four CS colours and cut them out.  Before gluing the vanilla panels down I wrapped linen thread around each panel, popped up a leaf and tied a bow around each stem.  Here's a photo of the four cards:

 

I stamped a fern on the Very Vanilla panel inside each card and on the front of each envelope.

This last photo shows the box together with the four cards.  I kept the layout very simple, did everything in stages and then assembled at the end so it didn't take long at all to make the set.  The cards aren't too dimensional either so they fit really nicely in the box.

Supplies:
Stamps: SU! Growing Green, Curly Cute & French Foliage sets
CS: SU! Cajun Craze, Cherry Cobbler, More Mustard, Old Olive & Very Vanilla
Patterned paper: SU! Holly Berry Bouquet DSP pack
Ink: SU! Cajun Craze, Cherry Cobbler, More Mustard, Old Olive & Early Espresso
Tools: SU! Square Lattice embossing folder
Embellishments & accessories: SU! Linen Thread, SU! Mini Glue Dots, Sticky Strip & Dimensionals, square acetate box from stash