A Special Birthday Project

My friend, 'C', celebrates a special birthday next week, on the day after my own birthday (and no, I'm not going to tell you how old either of us is!).  She is a delightful lady and is a lover of Victorian gothic.  I wanted to make her something a little special and personal for her birthday, so this is what I came up with.

Papers: box covered in Bazzill (although I took the label off before I recorded the colour!)

Flourishes and stripes are digital papers by Pink Petticoat, 'Just An Old Fashioned Girl' mini kit, and 'Stripes' colour collection papers. I recoloured the papers a little, to get the deep, dark purple I wanted.

The monogram represents C's surname, which is Von R......., and I made this quite simply in MS Publisher by placing each letter in a text box and then moving them around until I was happy with the result.  The letters are in different fonts, because I couldn't find a 'v' and an 'r' that I liked in the same font! 

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to quite capture the colour of the base purple - suffice it to say that all the elements are much more co-ordinated/tonal (including the ribbon) on the original.  Ho hum!  But you get the idea.

I punched a border from dark purple Bazzill with my Fiskars border punch and added black pearls for detail. 

Inside the box is a set of monogrammed small cards, tied with a purple organza bow, and co-ordinating handmade envelopes, as you can see in the lid of the box in the second photograph:

I also added a ribbon in the bottom of the box to facilitate getting the envelopes out.  This comes from my book-binding days, where a ribbon would be attached in the base of a presentation box to enable the book to be lifted out without damaging the spine.  The ribbon is glued under the base covering and then lies across the base of the box, with enough left to fold back over the envelopes.  Pulling on the ribbon will lift the envelopes up out of the box, for easy picking.

I'm really pleased with this project and, best of all, I know that C will be absolutely thrilled with it.  All I have to do now is be patient until it's time to give it to her, and, as you may have noticed, patience is not one of my virtues! 

I'd love it if you would leave a comment as I'd be interested to know what you think of this project.

Happy crafting.
xx