DT Special Assignment Day!!

Thursday is here again and that means some inspiration from our Design Team!  Julie is here today to share a fabulous gift idea with you!

________________________________________

Altered Box Tutorial

by Julie Gillespie

Most people love to receive homemade gifts, especially when it is also something beautiful and useful. I have a good friend that loves to keep a lot of greeting cards on hand for all occasions, so I decided to make her birthday gift this year. It started out that I was just going to make her a nice package of assorted cards….but it soon ballooned into also making her a gift box to hold the cards. I have seen a number of altered boxes over time but have never made one myself.

I went shopping with some ideas in mind as to what kind of box I wanted and what I might want to do with it. I found a good sized boxed that had a hinged lid. It had “leather” trim and a canvas covering. The design was more for a teen but it didn’t matter as I was planning to cover it up anyway.

First, I painted the body of the box in a “leather brown” colour. It took two coats to cover the design on the box. (I still have a few little touch ups to do around the hinge and edges.

After it had dried I started adding embellishments. A piece of decorative paper on top…some flowers and lace…and then a piece of card stock with metal embellishments and her initial (R ) which I had embossed to give it more texture. I then added some rub-ons as trim. A fleur de lys chipboard piece was adhered under the clasp to pick up the same design from the paper on the top of the box. 

 

I then added more rub-ons to the front of the box. Lastly I adhered lace trim to the sides and back, and topped it with some “braided” trim.

The last step was to make dividers for the cards. I used fairly sturdy cardboard (the back of a paper stack actually), cut it to size, added a “tab” piece cut from cardstock to the top, and covered each piece with different papers. The dividers were made to fit fairly snugly within the box. I used rub-on words for the tabs.

OK…so that wasn’t the last step…now I have to make all the cards… I made 4 while making the box. One of them is made using my August products featuring Authentique papers and Maya Road chipboard. I also made my first Copic marker card (the purple floral one)! I will continue to make cards over the next few weeks that will be added to the box. I attended a card class during Crop for the Cure so I will also use some of those as part of the gift.

The last thing I will include with this gift is a small date book for my friend to record all the special days she wants to remember. It will also be handmade of course, a mini-album that will fit inside the box in front of the card sections.

I hope this inspires you to make some of your own gifts for the loved ones in your life.