Easter Whimsey

I know it seems a little early to be thinking about Easter, or at least I thought so until I drove by my favorite bakery today and saw a sign for pre-orders for paczki day. For those of you not from the midwest and not Polish, paczki day is Fat Tuesday. And actually, traditionally in Poland it's the Thursday before fat Tuesday, when kids walk around door to door, much like on Halloween, but instead of candy they get paczki, Polish jelly filled doughnuts. Well, in the US the tradition got a bit modified so paczki day is celebrated on Fat Tuesday and out town bakery makes the world's best paczki. They're not at all like the Polish paczki I know and love, mind you, but they are just stuffed to the gills with really yummy fillings, not just the traditional prune, but also strawberry, lemon, canolli, Bavarian cream, I could go on and on. Needless to say, paczki day in Itasca is something to look forward to every year! (and if you'd like to read more about paczki day, here's a fairly accurate wilkipedia article.)

But paczki day also marks the beginning of Lent, which means Easter really is not that far away. So, in a way, this card could almost be considered timely.

I made 24 of these babies for a swap today and let me tell you, I must have been crazy when I thought this would be a good swap card to make. It may not look like much at first glance, but take another look. The certainly celery strip at the bottom is hand cut to resemble grass. the eggs, made with the baloon stamp from the Sale-A-Bration birthday whimsey set (an idea I picked up at the Leadership convention) were hand cut, the flowers were stamped and punched bu the stems had to be hand cut and adhered using 2 way glue and the ribbon slider also involved multiple punches. Suffice it to say that this was not in my usual simple swap mode. But for some reason when I made the prototype it just screamed to be duplicated, and how could I resist?

So there you have it, that's what I've been working on the last few days. Hope you (and the swappers) like it!