Christmas Gift Wrapping : Pillow Boxes

According to my calendar Christmas is a month away and its time to get my gifts organised and wrapped.  I love, love, love to make my own gift wrapping, so today’s project is about Christmas Pillow Boxes. They really are easy to make and you can make them almost any size you like.  I also like to add a tag to my gift wrapping so that they can be recycled to somebody else.

To make the pillow box that holds a gift card [2 x 4” when finished].
Trim your cardstock to 5¹/₂ x 4¹/₂”. On the side measuring 5¹/₂ inches long score lines at the 2¹/₂ and 5 inch mark using either a score board or an embossing tool. You should have a flap on the end of the paper that measures ½”. 

Turn the cardstock over to the inside and on the side measuring 4¹/₂” draw two lines, each a ¼” wide one below the other at the top and bottom.

 

Use something round, [I used a saucer on the small box and a side plate on the larger one] and line it up with the edge of the pillow box. Draw around it with a pencil. Do the same on the other end and cut along your traced lines with a pair of scissors and trim off the pointy ends of the 1/2” flap.

Place the pillow box on a mouse pad or something similar; line your saucer up facing the other way [towards the inside]. You want to make an eye shape. The edge of the saucer needs to touch both corners of the paper you've just cut. Hold the saucer firmly, [you don't want it to slip] and use an embossing tool to score around the saucer. Do this on both ends.

 
Leave plain or decorate.

 

Stamp the bird from the Tim Holtz Bird Crazy Cling Rubber Stamp and the Christmas hat from the Tim Holtz Crazy things stamp set onto a piece of scrap using Black Archival Ink.  I cut them out using the matching dies. 

 Colour them by scribbling a bit of the colour from Distress markers onto a craft mat and pick up with your water brush and colour as you like. When the bird and Christmas hat are dry glue the hat onto the bird and attached to the gift card pillow box.

 Glue some trim at the top and bottom of the pillow box.  Open the pillow box out and apply a strip of double-sided tape to the outside of the flap. Stick the flap down to make a tube. Gently press and fold in your scored eye shapes at each end of your pillow box.

Bigger Pillow Box
Trim your cardstock to 8¹/₈ x 8¹/₂”.
On the side measuring 8¹/_2" long score lines at the 4 and 8" mark using either a score board or an embossing tool and a steel ruler. You should have a flap on the end of the cardstock that measures ½”.

On the inside of the pillow box draw two lines, each a  ½” wide one below the other at the top and bottom. Remember that the first pillow box holds a gift card so it doesn’t need too much space inside. This pillow box will take something quite a lot bigger and bulkier than a gift card. 

For the next steps follow the above instructions but don’t close the pillow box yet.

To decorate
Secure the Stencil-Art A6 stars stencil onto the pillow box using masking tape. Squeeze a little Dina Wakely lime acrylic paint onto your craft mat Pick up the paint using a sponge. Pounce it few times on the craft mat to make sure there isn’t too much paint on the sponge and then pounce the sponge over the stencil until all the stars have been stencilled. Carefully lift the stencil and leave the paint to dry. When the paint is dry replace the stencil matching the stars as best as you can and trace around all the stars using a white gel pen.

Draw a bauble shape onto card stock and cut it out, using it as a template to trace and cut out three baubles from a left over piece of background paper. [The paper was made by spraying Dylusions Cherry Pie and Bubblgum sprays onto my craft mat and swishing the paper around and drying. Ink around the edges of the baubles with black Archival ink then draw two corresponding circular lines near the top and glue on bits of music paper and attach all three to the front of the pillow box.

Open your pillow box out and apply a strip of double-sided tape to the flap. Stick the flap down to make a tube.

Gently press and fold in your scored eye shapes at each end of your pillow box.

Supplies I used:

Kraft cardstock
Glue and double sided tape
Scissors / craft knife
Pencil, Ruler and Bone folder
Tim Holtz Bird Crazy and Crazy Things Cling Rubber Stamps and Sizzix Thinlits Dies
Black Archival Ink, Ground Espresso Distress ink and a blender tool
Distress Markers
Water brush
A little trim
Candied Apple, card pumpkin and Hickory Smoke Distress Markers
Stencil-Art Stars stencil
White Gel pen
Dina Wakely Lime Acrylic paint
Dylusions Cherry Pie and Bubblgum sprays
Sponge
Scrap of left over background paper
Scrap of left over music paper
 
Experiment with two A4 pieces of cardstock to make quite a large pillow box.

Trust your Intuition

Hi everyone, Angie back again with an intuitive art journal page. Sometimes its good to just let go without a real plan in mind and trust your intuition, hence the title.

I used a combination of Ranger Dylusions and Adirondack acrylic paints for my background, applying them with different sponges, adding a bit of white right at the end.  [these Adirondacks, I must confess have been in my stash for ever], then I used a pencil to write some words onto the page.

I didn’t have the Stencil Art Stendala Stencils then, but I do now and they’re gorgeous, and so I used a round stencil from my stash on the bottom left and right top, using different colours on different parts of the stencil.  You will notice that later I went over the stencil in some places with a bit of white.

I pulled out some more stencils that I thought I might use, including a homemade stencil cut from the Tim Holtz mixed media dies, and without much thought began layering different stencils and colours onto the page.

I knew I wanted something big and bold for my title, so out came my PaperArsy Everything-art alphabet stamps and surprize, surprize my clear embossing ink and Ultra thick black embossing powder.

You will notice that I also used the Dina Wakely media tools and some Wild Plum Adirondack acrylic paint and Dylusions Lemon Zest to do some mark making.

 I stamped the word “trust” then embossed with shiny black embossing powder and my heat gun. However, it really seemed a bit lost on the page so I painted a black strip just below it using Dylusions black paint. When the paint was dry I stamped the words “your intuition” with clear embossing ink and embossed with White embossing powder, and heated with my heat gun, only to find that I had spelt “intuition wrong”.  I used a piece of newsprint and the iron [not set on steam] intending to only iron off the misspelt word, but I managed to iron off both words, so started again. 



I ended off by scraping some black Dylusions paint around the edges of the pages.

In retrospect I should have used White Ultra thick embossing powder on “your intuition” but for some reason I didn’t and I’m sorry now, but this page is about just going with the flow. I still like it; it’s bright and cheerful and the title certainly makes one think.

See you next time.

Supplies:

Ranger Dylusions and Adirondack acrylic paints

Small sponges

Assortment stencils

Tim Holtz mixed media dies

Dina Wakely media tools

PaperArsy Everything-art alphabet stamps

Clear embossing ink

Black and white embossing powder

Heat gun

GIRLS just wanna ……… have fun- Collage

Hi everyone.  Its Angie I’m back after quite long break.  What started off as a routine angiogram ended up with a month’s stay in ICU.  I’m much better now and itching to start crafting again, so ........ here goes.

All the backgrounds in my colourful journal are already painted with Daler-Rowney Aquafine Watercolour paints and have been enhanced with both stamping and stencils. I think I’ve shown how to create this background in a previous project but I'll show you some pages below.

and ..............

So onto the border. I simply measured and drew the border, then used white and black Posca pens to colour in the each block.

As you can see the backgrounds in this journal are quite colourful and I had already decided that I needed black and white images, so the minute I saw the image I’ve used in a magazine I knew immediately that I wanted it in this journal and at that moment I decided on the title as well. Normally I change my mind a 1000 times but not his time.

I first scanned and resized the image then fussy cut it out and glued it down with a glue stick. The reason I used a glue stick is because I only have an inkjet printer and the image will not therefore be waterproof.

I went over the girls’ hair with a black Posca Pen and drew a crown for each of the girls then used a little Silver Stickles to highlight them, then outlined the edges of each girl with a black Charcoal pencil. I also used Ranger Distress Glaze on the image which also helps to waterproof it.

I used a combination of the Tim Holtz lower case foam stamps and my small alphabet stamps to create the title with black Archival ink.

I hope this project will inspire you all to use magazine cut-outs in your artwork.

Supplies

For the background I used an assortment of Daler-Rowney Aquafine Watercolour paints.

No 12 Round water colour brush

Archival black ink

White paint

Wilted Violet and Picked Raspberry distress inks

Stampotique – Kate Crane mixed media stamp

Black and White Posca pens for the border

Ruler

Black and White image from a magazine. You can print a coloured image and print it in black and white if you want to

Silver Stickles

Glue stick

Small pair of sharp scissors for fussy cutting image

Black Charcoal pencil