Here’s a quick Christmas gift craft idea: mat and decorate a little box, create some dividers, and fill it up with small goodies, neatly divided! 😃 (short video embedded below)
A Little Christmas Gift Box – With Your Own Dividers
Reply
Tag Archives: Gift box
How to help a teen start card making
My friend told me her 13-year old daughter (hi Mia!) was on the lookout for papercraft projects to create herself, especially since the lockdown measures have been keeping all of us mostly at home the past months. So I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be fun if she had not only an idea offered to her, but also the materials to create it, together with an actual project example to learn from.
So I chose one of my card designs that would be fairly simple to imitate, and set out to make one. After which came another fun part: rummaging through my (quite elaborate) stash and finding all kinds of bits, pieces and ephemera for her to use to create her card.
There were some things she would not be able to imitate, like the stamps and die-cuts I had used, so I stamped and die-cut several elements for her and added them to her gift box.
Finally I decided that she could use some extra supplies, since she might want to create even more cards on her own.
I had a lot of fun with this ‘reverse haul’ – giving gifts always makes me happy, it’s so much fun to think about little details that capture what you know about someone, even if that isn’t very much 🙂 So I hope this video inspires you to go look for that same kind of happiness, by creating your own gift box for someone you know (or their teen).
By the way, stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I will show you my step-by-step proces of creating the large butterfly. 😉
Gift Idea: Upcycled Jewelry Box
Sometimes that accessory you buy comes in a small jewelry box. My recent such purchase sported the name of the shop on its lid, but apart from that the box had a very nice antique bronze color, which inspired me to re-use it as a gift box.
So I thought I’d share this idea with you today, for this is the perfect little quick scrap gift idea, which you can finish in about 15 minutes (tops). Simply alter the lid, covering the shop’s name or logo, by decorating it with some design paper, a brad, and some embellishments.
It’s very easy to do, it’ll cost you hardly any time at all, and you’ll have a uniquely customized gift box for your present. 🙂
Altered baby gift box
If you want to give someone a really personalized gift, then altering an object is not only a great gift idea, it’s also a very reasonably priced one. Take this box for instance, it was sold as a plain white box with a white-coated, stamped piece of burlap on its lid. Not super expensive, and with lots of gift-giving potential.
In this case it was for a baby shower, so I altered it using lots of baby blue goodness and other cute stuff.
And here’s another idea: you can give this gift together with some of your less creative friends – and have them stuff the finished box with all kinds of nice little baby clothes, socks, pacifiers etc! This way, you will be able to give a sophisticated gift – with the personal touch as a bonus.
Of course you can do this on all kinds of other occasions: think birthdays, weddings, house warmings, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, etc.
So check out the video, and take all the inspiration you like from it!
Hidden Treasures: an Explosion Boxed Mini Album (new!)
Hi you all! Time for a spring & summer project!
This is what would happen if a mini album and an explosion box married and had a baby. 🙂 It’s an… Explosion Boxed Mini Album!
This lovely box can hold over 55 pictures and sports LOTS of embellisments on the pages. And it’s its own gift box to boot, so a double bonus!
I designed it around a Prima Marketing collection (called Free Spirit), so a 48-sheet 6×6″ paper pad, an ATC card pad, some 12×12″ sheets and lots and lots of flowers. My goal was to have as little leftovers as possible, so it is also doubling as a destashing project 🙂 (triple bonus, yea!)
Check out my (written) tutorial if you can’t wait to destash work with your own lovely papers and create, for instance, a nursery gift, a wedding gift, a birthday gift, or simply a stunning way to present your own holiday or Christmas pictures.
And for those of you who prefer complete kits, that is to say everything you need to create this project, including materials AND my tutorial, go to the Photographs and Memories (USA-based!) online store and have at it 🙂
But first, let me know what you think!
Handmade Memory Box (w. New Cutting Guide!)
When I created my own handmade keepsake box for the memorabilia of my father’s funeral, my mother asked me to create one for her too. Hers needed to be larger though, so I adjusted the measurements while referencing my box-making tutorial.
This time the theme was butterflies & little birds, two of my father’s favorite animals, so I used DCWV’s beautiful Mariposa collection. I added some Limelight cutaparts by Kaisercraft and a beautiful decorative brad by Bo Bunny – just watch the video, in which I tell you exactly what I used.
Since these are entirely new measurements, I added a new bonus cutting guide to the existing tutorial, so now there’s two bonus cutting guides! Which means that all who already owned my box tutorial (which is #17 in my shop) can now download both cutting guides, including this, my latest for free! Simply go to Etsy, click on You, then choose Purchases & reviews. Easy peasy and no extra costs! 🙂
New customers will of course also get both cutting guides in one purchase.
What can I say, I aim to please 🙂 🙂
French Country Memory Box (Handmade)
My friend asked me to create a memory box, like the ones I showed you earlier only larger. She chose the beautiful, romantically rural French Country collection by Graphic 45 – especially since she loves France.
This handmade storage box is pretty large and can hold lots of memorabilia, or even one or more mini albums!
Its dimensions are 19 x 22 cm (7½ x 8 5/8”) and it is 16 cm (6¼”) high, custom-fitted both to the largest and the widest card of a set of cards she wanted to keep in the box, and to the height of the set of cards when stacked on top of eachother, which was 15 cm (6″).
I followed my own box-making tutorial, but with the new dimensions of course. I also came up with a small technique improvement along the way.
I added both the improved instruction and a bonus cutting guide with the new measurements to the existing tutorial – which means all of you guys who already own this tutorial (which is #17 in my shop) can now redownload it for free to get the improved version, and will also get the new cutting guide for free!
New customers will of course also get this new version + the cutting guide in one purchase.
I decorated the box with several cutaparts from the collections and two door pulls. On the lid I also used some flowers, charms and buttons, and a hand-painted wooden letter. All in all these beautiful papers are a perfect summer or fall collection, with gorgeous, full colors.
Boxing Days – Create Your Own Storage or Gift Box
Recently I created my own storage box out of chipboard, which was great fun! Its dimensions are 22 x 17 x 7 cm (8⅝ x 6¾ x 2¾”), for that way it would hold all the memorabilia from my father’s funeral. Not just the loving condolances cards I received at the time (2014), but also the lyrics to the songs we played at the funeral, and the memorial prayer card. Since my father loved the ocean I chose a maritime theme and used the Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light. This collection offers a great choice of 3D cut-apart sheets and diecut sheets, which is perfect for decorating and creating layouts.
This kind of box is also ideal as a gift box: you can personalize the theme and put the actual gift inside. Because of its dimensions, it’s perfect for a book or a daily planner or some such, for most of them will fit (please do measure the book you’d like to give first, and adapt your box measurements if necessary!). This is what I did with a second box I created for a friend: I chose Bo Bunny’s Garden Journal paper collection to decorate, and put a book inside for her.
In the video and pictures below I’m showing you both boxes: the maritime storage box as a memorial keepsake, and the spring-themed book gift box for my friend. As I said, they were great fun to make and if you’d like to create one yourself, there’s an affordable tutorial available in my Etsy shop!
Have fun creating, stay crafty!
Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light
Garden Journal paper collection by Bo Bunny
December Deluge 8: Christmas Treasure Chest – A Signature Sheet Idea
This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. In my previous posts I showed you several December projects, the first of which was a quick Christmas Mini Album, so you can start there if you’d like to see them all. Today: Part 8 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂
As you may know, Graphic 45 paper collections always have a so-called signature sheet, which features the title design of the collection. It’s always the first sheet in a 12×12″ or 8×8″ paper pad, and its design generally depicts a collage of elements that together make up the title of the collection.
In several of my previous December Deluge projects I used the Nutcracker Sweet collection, and used up all of my 8×8″ papers – that is, excepting one: the signature sheet! There’s two of them in each pad, and I saved them for something special. So in this blog post and my next I’m sharing two ideas to use these special signature or title sheets.
First: a Christmas Treasure Chest – enjoy the video and pictures below!
Next up: December Deluge pt. 9: an 8×8″ Signature Sheet Christmas Card!
A Scented Gift Box of Cards
Fairly recently I added a sweet little paper pad to my (ever-growing) stash. It was the Spring Collection by what I think is a new Dutch brand, called Precious Marieke. It has lovely shades of purple and lavender, lots of florals and butterflies, and it really breathes spring or summer.
I decided to create an entire set of cards with this lovely paper line, and since I wanted to gift them to my friend for her birthday, I also needed a box to put them in.
So I upcycled the packaging of some scented candles. I painted it and matted it with the Precious Marieke design paper. And here’s what’s great: the enticing cinnamon scent of the candles was still clinging strongly to their former-packaging-now-gift-box!
So there you have it, a great tip to give someone an actual scented gift box! 🙂
By the way, creating a set of cards is also a great way to use an entire paper pad, without having to bother with leftovers you can’t get yourself to throw away but which are of no real use either 😉
Enjoy the video and pics!
Group Gift Explosion Box
This style of explosion box combines two of my previous styles of decorating: 1. designpaper only; 2. photos only.
This one makes for a great gift idea if you’re giving this as a group of people, like your entire family, or a group of colleagues – like in this case with this particular explosion box. For it has both design paper and photos, and a new element: several personalized messages, printed onto the design paper itself!
And by the way, there’s an explosion box tutorial available in my brand spanking new Etsy shop – called Creator’s Image Studio! 🙂 This tutorial was based on the Explosion of Joy explosion box, but it resembles this one in most of the designs and techniques, so check it out in my Etsy shop!
I’ll post an “official” shop announcement video in my next blog of course, but I thought I might mention it now, since the first tutorial in the shop is on an explosion box 😉 .
So enjoy the video – please like if you do & feel free to leave a comment! And don’t forget to check out the explosion box tutorial in my Etsy shop!
Cute little treasure chest
Here’s another idea to use up all of your design paper scraps: create scrap mats and then alter a little chest with them!
For this one I used my “neverending” design paper stack Serenity, by DCWV – neverending, for I STILL have paper left, even after lots of projects! 🙂
As for what to put into these cute little gift boxes: think gift card, lipstick & eye shadow singles, jewelry, a tiny teddy bear, or, like I’ve done with this one: a matching micro booklet to put all your happy wishes & cute little friendship photos into, plus maybe even a gift coupon of your own making.
Hope you feel inspired by the video – and if so, please like & subscribe 😉
See you next time!