A Little Gift

Now, before I start this post, I must warn you that the following photographs are possibly the worst I have ever taken - even worse than my first attempts.  My excuse, you ask? Well, I made this little gift today to give to friends when we went to see them for dinner tonight.  And I was very pleased with the result, too, as were they.  In fact, I don't think it would be too far to say that they were delighted.  BUT (and here's the excuse), I suddenly decided I had to record everything before we went out and it was well past any chance of natural light for the photographs.  So I used artificial light (yeuch, too yellow) and I have to admit that the photographs were taken in a great hurry.  Remember this (and forgive me, please) when you see what I've posted.

So, the idea was to give a small pack of hand-made cards to our friends and I wanted to use some beautiful vintage images I'd downloaded from Digital Two for Tuesday and jazz them up a bit with modern sayings. And I wanted to make a cute little box to keep the cards in, too.  This is what I came up with:

All images: Digital Two For Tuesday
All papers: My Minds Eye

This is the little box, only 11 cm  square (roughly) and 1.2 cm deep, secured with silver ribbon.

And open:

 

The collection of five cards - soooo out of focus and nasty yellow light!

And the five cards separately - again,bad photographs but you get the idea!

As usual, I so wish you could have seen them for real - they were really cute.  The cards were only 10cm square, so that was a challenge for me in itself.  I'm not used to working so small.  But I think I might do it again, as the cute factor is definitely worth it.  I think I'll repeat this series, perhaps moving some of the 'punch lines' to an insert to save space on the front of the card.  See, each project is a learning curve.

The little box was so easy to make - the main thing was to make sure I measured well and allowed sufficient room for the cards and envelopes to fit in easily.  I had to use a piece of A3 card as the whole thing wouldn't fit on to an A4 and I didn't want to have to join pieces.  Essentially, I treated the box like a deep envelope, I suppose - maybe I'll post a quick template and tutorial tomorrow.  The nice thing is that the box can be made to fit most sizes of cards, just by tweaking the measurements as appropriate.

It's such a shame that the photographs are so dreadful but I hope you get the general idea.  I've decided that I shall make more of this sort of gift this year, for all those moments that you need a little something to give.  I'm also going to be making some more shopping lists and notebooks, and I have a cute journal just waiting to be given 'the treatment'.  I'm going to get some more little boxes made, too - filled with chocolates, they make a lovely table present for special dinners or a darling little gift for a chocolate-loving friend.  Aaaaah - I love it when my mojo runs wild!

Anyway, it's late and I need to sleep - although I've drunk so much cola today I'm on a caffeine high!

Watch out for the template and tutorial.

Happy crafting

xx