Bucket of Forsythia (Tutorial)

While I am waiting for Susan's new release this Fall, I am trying to figure out new ways to work with her older die sets.  

I wanted to create a large bouquet of Forsythia.  I looked through my Garden Notes die sets and thought I would experiment with creating the Forsythia branches using Susan's  Leafy Berry Branch.  

Before I started working on the branches, I die cut a lot of the Garden Notes Forsythia flowers using a bright yellow card stock.  They were all shaped and a dark dot added, with a marker, to the center of each flower.  

When I work with a die set, I like to die cut a lot of the pieces and save extra pieces not used for another time.  These are the Garden Notes Leafy Berry Branch die cuts.

I decided I would probably need three of thee die cut branches to fill Susan's Garden Notes bucket.   The woody stems were colored using a reddish  brown marker.

Next I used a brush and colored the rest of the branch with green ink.  I brushed over the entire die cut on both the front and back.

It is important to shape the leaves, even on a small leaves such as these.  The tip of self closing tweezers was placed on the tip of each leaf, and the sides pinched up to give the leaves dimension.

The branches are now ready for the flowers.  Clusters of the little yellow flowers were glued on all the branches, over where you see the berry impressions.  (The color isn't very good in this photo.)  Forsythia flowers usually are in clusters on the branch.  Susan's Forsythia die set includes a branch and some small leaves, but by using the Leafy Berry Branch, you don't need to glue on the leaves.   Once the flowers are dried on the branches, you can arrange them in the Galvanized bucket.

Attach the bucket to the card front, using dimensional tape in the center (on the back) to give the bucket dimension.  Glue around the sides and bottom.  Once the bucket is attached, using the die cut piece from the top of the bucket to glue down inside the opening, flat to the card front.  The top of the bucket will be standing up a little because you have dimensional tape in the center of the bucket.  This helps leave that edge of the bucket open so you can tuck in the floral branches.  You need that extra piece in the background so it looks like the back of the bucket, and you don't see the color of the card stock behind the bucket.

I add a few pieces of the Garden Notes Ivy in the very front of the arrangement.  The sentiment is one from my stamped stash.  I'm don't remember where it is from.  

It was fun experimenting with different die sets to come up with this arrangement.