Lotta Latte Box

It's time for the Coffee Loving Cardmakers' Winter Blog Hop, so I made a gift box featuring a YNS die I won from their Summer hop!

The box is large, about 9 x 5 inches, and I created it in SCAL and cut it on my Silhouette Cameo. I took apart some actual coffee sleeves, inked the blank side, and glued them around each side. The snowflakes were made with a Martha Stewart punch,  and I added some betel nut pieces in the middle. I used a coffee bean stamp from a Stampin' Up! set to deocrate the sides. The blue tag was bought at Ikea years ago, and I backed it with a piece of a coffee sleeve. The words were die-cut from an adhesive paper; the "coffee" is a YNS die, and the "time" is made from a letter die from QuicKutz. I had tons of fun making this, almost as much fun as I had looking at all the gorgeous projects at the Coffee Loving Cardmakers' Winter Blog Hop!

Here's the present I put inside, a coffee travel mug that I painted for Mom at Hot Pots:

Inspiration/Challenges:
Coffee Loving Cardmakers: WINTER/HOLIDAY Themed Coffee, Tea &/or Cocoa project
Silhouette Challenges: Anything Goes + Silhouette
Simon Says Stamp: Tags

Thank you for visiting!

Christmas fun at Crafting with Dragonflies

This fortnight at Crafting with Dragonflies our theme is Christmas. I made an exploding box with a surprise lantern inside.

I added a treeline border to all the sides of the lid; it's a die from Memory Box. The tree inside was created with a die that came with an issue of Simply Cards & Papercraft.

I glued the battery-operated light to the box, so I cut a little hole on the bottom  to make it easy to turn on/off.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Dies R Us Challenge: Christmas + Dies
Sassy Studio: Anything But a Card
Try It On Tuesday: Bags & Boxes

Thank you for visiting, and hope you'll join us at Crafting with Dragonflies,

Dia de los Muertos Lantern Box

I just had to take the Magical Box (also called an Exploding Box) challenge at City Crafter, and decided to make it extra magical by turning it into a Day of the Dead lantern. I'm also entering this into the Paperminutes Skeleton challenge, the 4 Crafty Chicks Paper Piercing challenge, and the Halloween challenge at Allsorts.

Here's the box, all closed up. It's 3.5 x 4.25 inches. I used K&Co. paper, some pretty ribbon, and orange flower tape. I found the images online: the skull on the left is by KitKat79; the one on the right is by Kate Pullen (About.com). I colored them with gel pens and then pierced them with my awl. I wanted big holes, so I used a piece of corrugated cardboard as the piercing mat.

This box has a surprise, in that it contains a battery-powered tea light:

The tea light is velcoed onto another box inside the main box:

The interior box's lid is decorated with Cockscomb flowers, which are traditional for Dia de los Muertos. I love these flowers (my husband's aunt in Mexico has some); they're wrinkly and fuzzy and bright. To mimic the fuzziness, I added flocking to each.

Then you remove the lid on the smaller box to reveal a Dia de los Muertos play set:

The items aren't glued down, so you can set it up however you like.

I put easel backs on the skeletons so that stand up:

I bought the little clay dish while visiting said aunt in Mexico this summer, and added decoration on it with gel pens. The tiny Mexican lime, cup, and vase are polymer clay. I decorated them with gel pens and Copics. The flowers are supposed to be marigolds. These type of dishes are common in Mexico, but I was also inspired by this photo of a Dia de los Muertos altar.

Inspiration:

City Crafter Challenge Blog Week #80: Magical Box

Paperminutes Challenge #189: Skeleton

Allsorts #126: Halloween

4 Crafty Chicks Challenge #61: Paper Piercing

Update: This placed in the Top 3 for 4 Crafty Chicks Challenge #61: Paper Piercing. Wow, thank you!