Mixed Up Crafts Milk Carton Gift Box

Milk Carton Gift Box, - Seahorse -

Today's project, another Mixed Up Craft project (mixedupcraft.com), was a fun but quite time consuming one. The milk carton itself is very quick to make, the style of decorating, however, took me a long time.

Front and right side of the Milk Carton.

Left hand side and front of the Milk Carton.

Back of the Milk Carton

Back and right hand side of the Milk Carton

 The process with pictures. 

1. You will need a piece of card stock measuring 8 1/4"x11".
On the 8 1/4" side score at 2 1/4", 6 1/4" and at 7 3/4"
On the 11" side score at 2 1/4", 5 1/4", 7 1/2" and at 10 1/2"
DO NOT BURNISH THE SCORE LINES YET!!

2. Choose the motif you want to have on your carton, and stamp it on the card stock. Use a stamping platform if you are uncertain if you will be able to get a clear and crisp result in one go.

The flat milk carton scored and stamped.

Close-up of the masked images.

The stamped images with the masking pieces adhered over them.

3. Since I have chosen to ink blend my background I am going to need to mask the stamping that I have done. Stamp the same images on low tack adhesive paper, like masking paper or post-it paper.

4. Then fussy cut the stamped images and adhere them over the original stamped images on the carton.

Original stamped image shown next to masking.

5. Start to ink-blend over the masked images. Use a light hand, but make sure to get ink into all the little nooks and crannies!

Inking up the carton with a mix of the Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Inks (rangerink.com), Mermaid Lagoon and Salty Ocean.

6. When you are happy with your ink-blending, you can remove the masking from the stamped images to reveal perfectly crisp and white images ready for you to color!

Masked and ink blended!

7. Color

8. Look at the template below and cut away the grey areas. This means that you need to cut the bottom vertical shorelines up to the first horizontal score lines. Wedge the smaller "tabs". These will be folded in together with the larger tabs to form the bottom of the carton.

Solid lines are score lines, cut away colored-in grey areas, fold in along stippled lines to create the top of the milk carton.

9. Put glue along the long skinny side tab, and fold the carton in at the next score line in (the second score line fro the right), fold the other side of the carton over (at the second score line from the left) to meet and glue the two edges together. 

10. Cut two small hole at the top of the milk carton, put some ribbon through the holes and tie a bow to hold the top of the lid together.  

11. Fill the box with whatever you you want to give away!!

The box measures 3"x4"x2 1/4" (ca. 7,7cm x10,2cm x 5,5cm)

Enjoy!!😁

A well deserved break....

I am in the midts of exams, and I haven't really had the time to make cards lately. Yesterday I had my first exam, and today I decided I would take a day off from studying even though my next and final exam is on Thursday. Therefore I wanted to reward myself by finishing up a card I started working on  before I started cramming for the exams.

I decided to try out a technique I have not tried before after I had seen one of my favorite youtube card maker, Natasha Foote, making a card using acetate as part of the card. Instead of creating an acetate window like she did, I decided to substitute part of my card with acetate. Therefore I decided how much of the card I wanted to be see through, before I measured and cut the front panel of a 6"x6" card. Then I cut a piece of acetate that was just a little bit bigger than the piece that I had cut out of the card front and used 1/4" double sided adhesive to glue it in place.

In order to be able to write inside the card without having the writing showing through the acetate, I glued another 6"x 6" card with the opening turning the wrong way, on the back of the first card. The result was a long card that could be folded into a 6"x 6" card.

I blended some Worn Lipstick, Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord Distressed Oxide Inks and sprayed it with some Grape Fizz Perfect Pearl water mixture, heat set it before I cut out pieces about 1/8" smaller than the 2 card front panels. I adhered both with double sided adhesive. Then I cut two pieces of matching dark purple ribbon so that it was long enough to wrap all the way around, covering up the place where the acetate was attached on the back of the card front. The ribbon is also held in place with strips of 1/4" double sided adhesive.

The next thing I did was to mask off most of the inside of the card so that I could blend some Cracked Pistachio and Mustard Seed Distressed Oxide Ink on the part of the card that can be seen through the acetate. This was then spritzed with Perfect Gold Perfect Pearl mist to create the oxidized effect.

I chose the colors for this card based on the butterflies on the front. They are die cut from some scrap paper I had practiced my ink blending on a while back. At first I kept the shadow of the butterfly white, but then I decided that it would look better if I ink blended them to mach the inside stipe of the card.

 I die cut the word Dream three times and layered them with a piece from a scrap piece of the purple front panel on the top, and blended some more cracked pistachio and mustard seed distressed oxide for the shadow behind the word. I then traced around the sides of the word with a matching metallic purple marker. Unfortunately I was a little sloppy, had a little accident and got some stripes on the purple front of the word, and decided to color the whole word with the metallic marker.
Next I glued the butterflies and Dream on to the front of the card. I finished the card off with some light purple diamonds form Little Things from Lucy's Cards.

 This is what the card looks like when you open the front. I would have liked to have had a better way of attaching the ribbon around the acetate, but it will have to do this time.

The card measures 6" x 18" when it is opened up all the way.