Letter Gift Boxes

I first heard the idea of Letter Gift Boxes when I saw Mixed Up Craft´s tutorial on the letter "M". It was one of this years makes in Sam Calcott´s Mothers Day Series - "M" for Mother/Mothers Day. I thought it would be perfect as a little gift for my young nephew Mats André, filled with treats, of course. Therefore I decorated it with a theme I thought he would appreciate, papers from the Circus series from Craft Consortium. I also die cut a banner and letters to spell his name, which I glued to the front of the box. I then filled it with lots of different chocolate treats.🍫

The banner with his name.

The back side of the box.

A sideview showing the opening of the box.

When I had finished the "M" box, I felt like I was kind of on a roll, so I decided to try to make others. I initially wanted to make a "C" next, as one of my sisters names starts with a "C". I ended up struggling with that for quite a while, before I decided to put it aside and do a much easier letter first, namely "L". I thought that even someone as bad as I am in math, could figure out the measurements for an "L".😂 And I did, it wasn´t that hard at all. I wanted this to be a birthday card/gift to my brother-in-law, as his name starts with the letter "L". He loves his beer, so I decorated it with papers from Papirdesign, a series called "Mens vi venter" I used stamps from Papirdesign, and unbranded dies to make the decorations, and filled this with chocolates, as well. His birthday is coming up in April, so I haven´t given this to him yet, but I highly doubt that he ever visits my blog, so there is hardly any danger of him seeing it.

The open box.

I have not made any more Letter Gift Boxes yet, but as I suddenly remembered that I have a Brothers ScanNCut, making the actual letters is not a problem at all. It is the edges that links the front to the back of the box, that takes time to figure out. So as of now, I have both the letter "C" and the letter "G" lying around waiting to be turned into boxes. When that will happen, I don´t know...😂! Mixed Up Crafts tutorial for the letter "M".

Springscrap with Bikuben

During the weekend of March 25.-27th, it was time for Bikubens digital spring scrap meet, Vårscrap med Bikuben. Bikuben is a very well known hobby store, that a while back changed from being an actual store, to being solely a netshop. They have scrap meets twice a year, in the fall and in the spring, and this is the third year they are doing it, so it is becoming a welcomed tradition. I have never taken part before though, and I honestly did not know anything about what to expect! SO, I cleared my weekend and hunkered down in front of my Mac in my craft room, and was ready to do anything that was thrown at me!😂 I figured it was a good idea to print out the program, so that I could see black on white what the plans were. To my surprise there wouldn´t be back to back with demonstrations and live card making. I already knew that there would be one scheduled craft along, cause I had bought the kit to take part in that, however, other than that there were just three demos and a "show and tell" on the docket. As I said befroe, I had no idea what to expect, and I clearly expected something different than I got. What I got was really good, though, don´t get me wrong😉. There were 15 different challenges that could be entered, and you could in theory enter 5 different projects in each challenge. In addition there were so-called speed challenges and night challenges, so you could in fact craft 24/7 if you wanted to. You could also at your own cost, trade tags and ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). Being a big net store like Bikuben is, thay had accumulated a huge prize pot, and all three days they would draw prizes on your entry ticket. They did, of course, have prizes for every challenge as well. To decide who won, they used "Random", that way no one could claim that things were unfair. AND, last but not least, they had special sales in the store for the participants in the scrap meet.

I will list the differnet challenges, wether I had entries or not. I will show my entry in the categories I entered. I just want to say first, though, that those who know me, and how I craft, will already know that I struggled. I have a very hard time getting ideas that I like, and that I am comfortable with, and I wasted TONS of time just pondering on what to do next. So much so, that I wrote all 15 challenges down on little notes and drew them out of a cup, and that was just to know which challenge to pick. Getting ideas for what to make is a whole other matter🤪. So next time, I will have categories of styles to draw from as well!😃

Challenge 1: Creative with Stamps; use at least 3 stamps and make whatever you want.

Challenge 2: (Crafting)Straws; make whatever you like, but you have to incorporate straws in your project.

Challenge 3: Monochrome Cards;

Challenge 4: Confirmation; Norway has the main bulk of confirmations in April/May. Make a project that has the theme "Confirmation".

Challenge 5: Bingo (pick as if you were playing bingo)

My entry:

Challenge 6: (Use at least 3 of the colors.)

Challenge 7: "For the guys." My entry;

Challenge 8: Cheers!! My entry:

Challenge 9: Tag minialbum, minimum 6 tags (I started on this one, made the bases for 3x 8 tag albums, but had no idea how to decorate them, so now I am left wit a lot of tags for later.🤣)

Challenge 10: Happy Easter! My entry:

Challenge 11: Sketch (Use the same layout/placements, but use what ever theme you´d like)

Challenge 12: Pocket Card (following given instructions, make a card that looks like the one in the picture below)

Challenge 13: Mixed Media

Challenge 14: Stars (use minimum 3 stars in your project) My entry:

Challenge 15: Vintage (I made a tag for this challenge, and started making a matching card, however, I didn´t "feel" it, so I didn´t enter either....😊, in other words; I wasted a lot of time I could have spent on actual entries😳)

Thrown in at set times through out the day there were speed challenges. On Friday the speed challenge was called "Clean and simple", my entry (which was lucky enough to be picked as challenge winner🎉):

On Friday, the night challenge was called "Inspirational picture". On Saturday the anouncement of the challenge was delayed, and I missed it completely, but I saw later that it had been called: Butterflies or other birds. Saturday night´s challenge was called "Signs of spring", which I entered with this rocker card:

Then finally, Sunday´s speed challenge was to make "Playing Card Art". This I hadn´t even heard of before, so I was curious as to try it out. Here is my entry:

If all these challenges weren´t enough, there were challenges in connection to the scrap along, and the other demos as well. I made a card for the scrap along, a shabbychic card with lots of flowers and other decorations. My entry:

All in all it was a great and very creative weekend. Although exhausting and hard on my bank account, it is definitely something I want to do again. The dates for this fall´s scrapmeet is already out, so hopefully I will be able to set aside the weekend of September 16.-18th!

Pop Up Platform Cards (without dies)

In their newest release, Lawn Fawn introduced something they call a platform pop-up, and if the shop I usually buy my Lawn Fawn products from hadn´t just closed, I would most definitely have bought these dies. As it is, I have no idea where to get my Lawn Fawn stamps and dies from any longer. I could of course buy them directly from Lawn Fawn, but as far I as I can see, they don´t charge the Norwegian VAT, which means I would get slapped with an extra sum when the merchandise go through Norwegian custums, in addition to most likely pretty high shipping costs. So, I will have to do a little looking around to see if anyone else offer Lawn Fawn here in Norway. Anyway, to get to the point, since I don´t have the dies, I became really happy when I found a tutorial which shows how to make them, without using dies! I decided to take the time to watch through the tutorial to see if it was doable, and since it was, I bookmarked the tutorial, to make another day. A couple of days ago I decided to give it a try. I´m in the process of making two identical Easter Cards for my sisters, so since Easter is buzzing around in my head, I decided to go with an Easter themed card.

I made the card base, the platform, first, but then when it was time to decorate, I got stuck, as I most often do. Therefore I put it aside and continued with the cards for my sisters instead. The next day I pulled out some Easter stamps, my stamping platform and my alcohol markers to make some little tidbits that I could use for the decorations. It took forever! However, I ended up with more pieces than I would need, so there are possibilities for some more cards. I struggled a little to build the scene, and ended up regretting how I had placed the decorations, once I was done. I should have gone with the lowest decorations in the front. I didn´t change anything, however, as that most likely would have messed up my card. I did take note of not to do it again, though, so I guess you can say that I have learned from my mistake. I do think it is a really cute card, nonetheless🐰!

Back to the main card of the day, though. I decided I would go with papers fitting for a jungle themed scene, dove into my stash of Lawn Fawn cardstock and went with the color "Rainforest", a perfect color for a scene form the jungle. In addition, just to make it even more jungle, I looked through my Made to Surprise paper collection, which I know contains a 6"x6" jungle scenes paper pad. Made to Surprise is a co brand of Craftstash, who are the main sellers and producers of the brand. The designer of the brand, however, is Sam Calcott of Mixed Up Craft, of whom I have spoken of multiple times before. She has two main YouTube channels, one for Mixed Up Craft, and one for Made to Surprise. She is well worth following, as she posts tutorials for beautiful papercrafted items, cards, bags and boxes, on a regular basis. Just to finish my advertisement for Sam Calcott, I also should mention that she has a really popular Facebook page called Mixed up Crafters.

Back to my card😉.

As you probably can see, I left my jungle scene plan, and went with a forest scene instead. I did this when I tried to make my little scene with the jungle critters I have available, and I realized that they were somewhat too large to fit on a card like the one I was making. Luckily for me, Made to Surprise has a woodland collection(double slider woodland collection), as well, which I also am lucky enough to have bought😂. AND, I felt even more fortunate since I knew that I already had some pre-stamped, colored and cut woodland critters. By then I had started thinking that I needed to show more clearly that my critters were in a forest, and I knew that I had seen platform pop up cards with an addition of a "wall-like" extention in the back of the card. The tutorial I had found on how to make a platform card, didn´t have this addition. I therefore decided to have a look at the actual die set on Lawn Fawn, to see what the extention looked like. I thought it looked easy enough to copy, so I decided to try. This is where I should just film how I did it, but I am not that quick and clever on my feet, that will have to be for another day😉, but I can write an explaination: I decided how tall I wanted my "wall" to be, 2 1/2", then I measured the back half of my card, 5 3/4" and cut a piece of cardstock slightly shorter, measuring 2 1/2" x 5 5/8". I marked with a pencil where the score lines on my card were; 1 3/4" and 4", before I scored and burnished. Looking at the "add-on-dies" I knew that I had to trim the upper hand corners, so I measured out the half-way mark of the height of the cardstock, 1 1/4" with pencil marks, and in addition I marked about 1/4" on the outside of either score line at the top, before drawing a line between the pencil marks that I then cut along, making sure I slightly rounded the corners. I then chose one of the woodland scenes form the Made to Surprise paper pad, and cut out a strip measuring 2 1/4" in height. I then measured between each score line, to get the right size for the layers; 2 x 1 1/2" and 1 x 2 1/8". I then laid the smaller pieces over the cardstock, and drew the outline on the back of the woodland paper. Then I cut about 1/8" on the inside of the pencil line, and glued everything in place. I attached the "wall" to the platform, gluing it on the inside of the border part of the card. And voila, I had something that looked like a forest. I have to mention that I have made a template for this add-on, should I decide to make more of these cards😉.

I cut out some grass, and glued the animals and the other decorations I had chosen, on to the grass, after first having tried out the placement. To finish off the card I stamped my sentiment onto a stamped and colored signpost and glued it to the very front of the card.

A really good thing about these cards is that they fold flat, the platform sort of collapses on itself and it fits into, in my case, a 5 1/2" x 6" envelope.

The initial card I made fits into an 4 1/4" (4 1/2") x 6" envelope.

Lastly, I want to give a shout-out to Ann Melvin from Positively Papercraft for posting the tutorial I followed to make the initial card. Below is a link to her tutorial. Just make sure you watch the whole video before making the card, as she makes a couple of mistakes, that she has chosen not to edit out of the video, and to prevent you from making the same mistakes, I advise you to look through the WHOLE making the card part of the tutorial before starting to make it yourself. And hey; I am NOT affiliated with any of whom I have added links to. I just like adding links😂.